Hermione woke to the muted light of the early morning and the screech of "Mudblood, let down your hair!"

Her body sore and eyes bleary, she tried to work through the confusion blanketing her mind. It was like taking a thirty minute afternoon nap just to find the whole day gone, dinner long past, and eight hours lost. Like opening her eyes to shadows and moonlight instead of bright sunlight shining through her curtains.

Hermione wasn't sure why she continued to think as such. She never slept through the night anymore. She always rested in the middle of the day, the time when she wasn't on edge waiting for her torture to come.

At the second furious call for her hair, Hermione shifted her heavy limbs on the bed. The covers brushed over her bare skin, and the firm weight on her waist adjusted to the movement.

Suddenly her night rushed back at her, her foggy brain clearing in a terrifying instant. She bolted upright, jostling Draco so that he, too, woke.

Wiping the crusty sleep from the corner of his eyes, a sleepy grin slowly inched up his face.

"Hermione-"

"Oh no! Oh, Godric, no, no, no," Hermione interrupted, flinging herself off the bed, rushing to pull her robes back on and all the buttons through the correct holes and missing the look of anguish that crossed Draco's countenance.

"MUDBLOOD!"

Hermione cringed, and the misery morphed to one of horror.

"What are we going to do?" Hermione whispered as Draco swore.

The escalating fear that coursed through Hermione's veins suddenly dissolved. In a pleasant daze, she paced to the window. It was imperative that she let her hair down, but the sense of urgency was a calming balm. Vaguely she thought she heard her name called, and once, she had to shake off a restraining grip on her arm. But finally she approached the window.

She tossed her heavy ropes of hair down to the waiting witch below.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?" Bellatrix purred as the Imperious haze evaporated out of Hermione's mind.

She flinched away from the older witch as soon as she was back in control of her faculties. She was prepared for a barrage of Crucios, but they never came. Peering through squinted eyes, she realized Bellatrix was focused on Draco, who had thankfully at least thrown on his robes, even if they were wrinkled and dusty.

"I should have known Lucius's boy would turn out to be a failure." She sneered. "You have too much of that weak Malfoy blood in you. It offsets the nobel Black blood you should have inherited. But to turn into a blood traitor! How dare you!"

With a jab of her wand, a nonverbal Incarcerous shot thick binds towards Draco. He ducked and dodged to evade the cords, but they caught him, winding their way up his body from feet to neck. He toppled over when his feet snapped together as the ties cinched him down. Rolling to his back, his arms were pinned beneath him. To his credit, a defiant look settled over him.

"No!" Hermione jerked towards him, arm reached out as if to help him.

But with a fiery tug on her scalp, she was retained in place.

"You, filthy Mudblood, should know your place!" Bellatrix used her grip on Hermione's hair to steer her to her knees.

Resisting as much as she could, Hermione was just not strong enough to overpower the other witch. Water leaked instinctively from her eyes as she struggled and as her hair pulled against her roots. But after a short fight, Bellatrix used her weight to knock Hermione bodily to the floor.

Sitting on her stomach, Bellatrix grasped Hermione's left arm, wrenching it away from her body. Using a sharp blade, she carved the horrendous epithet into the raw flesh of Hermione's forearm.

Bucking her hips to dislodge her tormentor, Hermione writhed against the sharp tugging that blinded her with agony. A high keening noise escaped the back of her throat as she held back her screams.

Due to Bellatrix's weight on her diaphragm, Hermione was unable to draw breath. The oxygen starvation burned in her lungs and throat, sprinkling dark spots across her vision. She couldn't tell which pain was worse. It was all Hellish.

The weight shifted, and a rattling inhale shot too quickly into her lungs. Choking coughs wracked her body as she tried to balance her breathing to a natural rhythm.

While she was preoccupied with recovering from her suffocation, Bellatrix shoved Hermione over to her stomach. Gripping fistfuls of Hermione's locks, she yanked the girl's head back.

"Proud of this hair, are you, filth? I can fix that," Bellatrix threatened while she fingered a delicate plait .

With her windpipe wrenched too far back, Hermione wheezed for air. This was almost as bad as the waterboarding. She was too panicked to focus on what the Pureblood was doing at her back. Blood rushed in her ears, a deafening thumping that pounded with the cadence of her heartbeat.

It wasn't until her face pitched forward, smacking her face against the stone floor and breaking her nose in the process, that she realized all of her hair was gone. It had just vanished, not a strand to be found in the tower.

"I can give you hair and take it away!" Bellatrix said in a singsong voice while twirling her knife around her fingers. "No more unwarranted visitors. But that won't matter after tonight anyway!"

She swapped her blade for her wand and placed the tip at the base of Hermione's skull. The back of her neck was ticklish from the cool air touching it, unhindered for the first time in a long while. Her head felt light and floaty despite her face being swollen and dribbling blood.

With an emphatic Crucio, Hermione felt the spark of magic transfer from the wand to her first vertebrae the split second before her skin was torn from her muscles. Rusty, wide nails dug deep through her tissue into the marrow of her bones. Her flesh stung with third degree burns or frostbite or a million scorpions, maybe all three at once.

She simply endured for an incalculable length of time before she was released.

The weight at her back was also suddenly absent, though instead of silence, her ears were bombarded with the imprecise sounds of a struggle: grunting, flesh striking flesh, fabric tearing.

When the noise subsided, she was gathered against a shoulder, Draco's shoulder. "C'mon." He groaned. "We have to get out of here. Now."

Nose still dripping blood and muscles still cramping, Hermione gathered what little strength she still possessed and heaved herself upright into Draco's arms. Her head was too light. It seemed to float all the way to the ceiling before she registered that they were actually falling.

Draco had fled the tower by jumping out the window with Hermione in his arms.

"Arresto momentum!" He shouted through Hermione's scream of terror. Too late, they slowed down.

They landed hard, rattling their bones and whooshing the air out of their lungs.

Before they had time to react, a double edged knife stuck point down into the ground directly between their faces. Hermione recognized it instantly and shied away.

They both peered up to find an irate Bellatrix hurling insults and threats down to them. It wouldn't be long before she tossed hexes after them too, Hermione thought.

Moaning as he sat up, Draco revealed a smashed wand in his right hand. It was unmistakably his aunt's.

"So much for stealing you a wand to use," he groused.

"I wouldn't have touched it anyway," Hermione whispered.

Pocketing the useless stick, Draco hefted Hermione to her feet and tugged her to the right, into the cover of the trees.

"Episkey." Hermione's broken wrist reset itself before her eyes, the last of her superficial traumas. "I wish your other injuries were as easy to heal." Draco ran a gentle hand down the side of her face to her shoulder. "Was it always that bad?"

They had always made a point not to talk about her torture. It was impossible to process in the short time between sessions, and Hermione preferred to block the memories during her brief stints of ataraxia. It had become an unspoken rule to leave it alone.

A bark of laughter without humor. "That was just her warm-up."

Draco flinched but let the topic drop.

"Come on, we need to move. Head south or maybe to France. I don't know if distance affects the Mark, but we need to get away." He took her hand in his and started marching through the thicket.

"Wait, wait!" Hermione contended. "I have something I need to tell you." She dug her heels into the earth and wrenched her hand back when he didn't pause.

"What is it? We don't know how much time we have; we need to put distance between us and the tower." He whirled around, silver eyes flashing with alarm.

"This is important!" Hermione insisted. Draco cast his gaze around their surroundings with paranoia. She lowered her volume and spoke earnestly. "Is there somewhere safe you can Apparate us?"

He shook his head before she'd finished her question, eyes shut tight and shoulders tense. "I don't know if it's safe to Apparate you in your condition. I might splinch you."

"We don't have much of a choice. We can't walk across Europe! If you don't know where to take us, give me your wand, and I'll do it."

He looked like he might argue for a moment, lashing out against her bossiness, but he relented, passing her his wand.

It wasn't the same one she remembered from Hogwarts, but she didn't comment on that. Her whole arm was trembling, and she was glad Apparition didn't require precise wandwork. She clasped Draco's hand in hers, vividly imagined their destination, and turned on the spot.

After the moment of feeling squeezed down a tube, their feet landed on solid ground again. Hermione's magic felt strong, but she was physically weak, and Draco had to catch her when she swayed. He transfigured a leaf into a cup and filled it with an Aguamenti. Sitting them down and allowing Hermione's back to rest against his chest, he tipped the water to her lips.

When her thirst was quenched, Hermione said, "I know we've fought over Harry a lot, but there's a reason I need to get back to him. I wanted to tell you before but didn't know if I could trust you with the truth since you weren't willing to betray You-Know-Who."

Draco's eyes glazed over, hard as stone, but he didn't interrupt her. Taking that as a sign to continue, she rushed on. "You-Know-Who created six Horcruxes. He can't be defeated until they are all destroyed. Harry is on a mission to find and destroy them all. By the time we were captured by the Snatchers, we'd finished off three of them, but there's still three left, besides You-Know-Who himself."

Draco gaped at her. "That's not fucking possible."

"Weren't you the one who said, 'there's little a Dark wizard is unwilling to dabble with to reach his ends?'"

"Merlin's balls. If that's true, we're definitely leaving the country. We can go to America, and Saint Potter can deal with all that."

He still sounded in shock, but Hermione glared at him.

"We'll do no such thing! Harry needs my help. I can't abandon him!"

Anger rising, Draco snapped, "Look at you! You can barely hold a wand, and you can't even stand after Apparating! You're in no state to go gallivanting after Potter looking for the Dark Lord's Horcruxes! That's Dark magic!"

"I bloody well know it's Dark magic, Draco. What do you think I was doing for the eight months prior to my extended stay as Bellatrix's prisoner? Hosting tea parties?"

He flinched and wouldn't meet her eyes. "You don't even know where he is. Besides, he seems to be doing fine on his own."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "What aren't you telling me?"

They were both stubbornly silent for the span of several heartbeats. Draco avoided eye contact completely, rubbing his left forearm distractedly, until he broke.

"The night… The night I left, there was a break in at Gringotts. Potter and another, presumably Weaselbe, managed to steal something from the Lestrange's family vault. They escaped on the back of a dragon. I don't know what they took, but the Dark Lord was furious." He broke off with a shiver, most likely reliving being in the presence of Voldemort's fury. He gulped and shook out his left hand.

Hermione drank in Draco's story, considering the implications. It made sense. Bellatrix had been irrationally horrified when she thought they'd been in her vault and had stolen the Sword of Gryffindor. It wasn't too far of a stretch to think she might be holding one of her master's Horcruxes, too (considering Lucius had had the diary for years).

It explained the longer than usual torture with the slew of odd questions Hermione had barely registered, let alone answered, the morning after Draco had adandoned her. How Bellatrix expected her to know anything about what was going on in the world outside her tower, she had no idea.

But if Harry and Ron had found and dispatched another Horcrux, that meant there were only two left!

Think, Hermione, think. If they destroyed a Horcrux, where would they go next? It's too early to go after the snake- unless they got to the fifth one without anyone knowing. But what would it be… Bellatrix was asking about a cup. Hufflepuff's cup! So something of Ravenclaw's.

She must have been muttering her stream of consciousness out loud because Draco cut in.

"They're at Hogwarts." He sighed a heavy breath out his nose. "Fuck. They're at Hogwarts. There's to be a battle. The Dark Lord is calling it 'the Final Battle,' and it hasn't even happened yet." The expression on his face was like his fingernails were being removed from their beds. "Potter's at Hogwarts, but the Dark Lord is going to be there, too. You don't have a wand, we can barely Apparate, you're weak and injured and inundated with Cruciatus Curse aftershocks, and we have no way of getting into Hogwarts' school grounds. We can't go there."

But conviction fortified Hermione's heart. Gryffindor bravery and daring flooded her veins. And she was not giving up.

They had Apparated directly into the Shrieking Shack.

When Hermione informed him of the various secret passageways from Hogsmeade into the castle, Draco thought he would be able to deter her with his own intel. The Caterwauling Charm placed over the village was sure to discourage her.

He'd been disappointed.

When they stumbled over the uneven floor, Hermione almost pitched face first into Professor Snape's unmoving body.

Draco caught her again, but promptly released her as he dropped to his knees.

While he grieved, Hermione swallowed her bile and examined the late Death Eater. The pool of blood at his neck drew her attention.

"Nagini must still be alive. I wonder what he did to incur his wrath."

Draco didn't respond, blank eyes staring unseeing at the pale remains of his family's close friend.

After giving him a moment, Hermione came to Draco's side.

"We have to get going. We can't stay here." She gently nudged him.

With a great inhale, Draco stood, lifting something from Snape's hand as he did so. He offered Hermione their professor's wand, but she recoiled.

"I can't use his wand!" she hissed.

Clearly holding back his emotions, Draco swallowed. "Then here," he rummaged in his pocket, withdrawing his same wand from earlier, "use mine. Who knew you'd be so picky about a wand."

It was a valiant attempt at humor, despite his tone being too wan to be effective. Hermione offered a small, sympathetic smile. After taking his wand, she clasped his hand in hers, giving it a small squeeze and leading him down the dirt tunnel.

They left their wand lights off, but Hermione filled the silence by asking how he'd escaped Bellatrix's Incarcerous.

"I grabbed your comb before the binds secured my hands. I managed to break it in half so it would have a sharp edge and cut through the ropes until I could disentangle myself. You know the rest from there." After a beat of only their breaths and footsteps filling the tunnel, he continued, his words flowing unhindered like the rapids of a river. "It felt like it took me forever while I watched my aunt cut off all your hair. It all just vanished as she cut it. She kept threatening to slip and cut your whole head off. And then she started on the Cruciatus." She felt more than saw him shake his head. "It was so much worse than my drawing room."

Slightly desensitized to it, Hermione moved on before he could dwell. "I… Thank you. It was quick thinking, and it saved both our lives. And now we're both free."

The damp earth finally sloped up, and Hermione warned Draco that they were close.

"We'll have to make a run for it after we exit the tunnel. If the fighting hasn't started yet, we should head for the Room of Requirement; that's probably where Harry and Ron will be. If they aren't, we'll search Ravenclaw tower for something Tom Riddle would have turned into a Horcrux."

She was in full planning mode, coming up with contingencies as soon as her brain imagined unfavourable scenarios. Things like where they could hide if they were discovered, how to explain Draco's presence to Harry and Ron, and numerous offensive and defensive spells.

"Are you aware that you're reciting every spell you know in alphabetical order?" Draco actually snickered. Hermione pursed her lips in embarrassment, halting not only a retort but also her lists.

When they reached the exit, Hermione poked her head out and whispered, "Hominem revelio."

She was pleased when the relaxation of Draco's shoulders against her side indicated he understood nothing happening was good news. She'd never get over Ron's misplaced attempts at consolation in Grimmauld Place after their run in with Death Eaters at Tottenham Court Road.

The sun was a quarter of the way through the sky, and, despite the chill in the air, it was a lovely day. There was something eerie that raised the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck, though.

Surely term must have already started. She'd expected to see students milling about, playing in the fallen leaves or scrambling to class. Hagrid's hut lacked the trail of smoke from the chimney. At closer examination, the garden was overgrown with weeds, and the wooden structure was charred black.

"What is the date?" She turned to Draco curiously.

"October thirty-first." He said it matter-of-fact and clearly didn't understand the meaning that jolted through Hermione. Misinterpreting her reaction, he continued, "I know, I'm sorry. She had you for two hundred-and-sixteen days."

Remorse rolled off him in palpable waves, and Hermione was struck at how he had kept track of the length of her capture when even she had given up on counting the days.

"No, no," she assured him, though a feather could have knocked her over. "That's not it. Harry's parents were killed seventeen years ago today."

Draco pondered the ramifications of that knowledge while Hermione rechecked their surroundings. Even the Whomping Willow was calm, though she knew that would change if she didn't prod the knot to her side.

"We'll have to run for it. Come on. On the count of three."

They were off; Hermione pushed herself through the grinding of her joints and the shocks up her feet. She really needed shoes.

They made it to the tapestry marking the location of the Room of Requirement with little fanfare. There was no one in the corridors or open classrooms. They didn't pass any ghosts or Peeves or Mrs Norris.

They paced, together, the necessary three times before the door revealed itself to them. Draco reached the door first, but he held it open for Hermione to enter.

She stepped into the Room of Hidden Things. Piles and piles of discarded items stretched on. A heap of chairs reached higgledy-piggledy for the high ceiling. Books and tomes scattered every which way, some neatly placed in order, others sprawled pages down and open. A whole conglomeration of fanged frisbees waited, chomping on their neighbors, for their owners to come back for them. Broken ingredients phials and melted cauldrons and snapped quills and crumpled parchment and ripped backpacks and any number of unwanted school items littered the entrance.

Hermione headed for what looked like a stash of lost school uniforms poking around the corner of an especially large mountain of trunks and crates. When Draco called for her, she turned to find him just to the left of the door, indicating to a coat rack. A beautiful, scarlet cloak hung from one of the arms. Sturdy trainers sat neatly at the base with a pair of clean socks folded between them. A stack of hats in various styles defied gravity on top of the coat rack.

"I'll stick out like an expired potion in that," she murmured, but came over to him anyway. Fingering the fabric of the cloak, she found it to be silky and cool, like water or Harry's invisibility cloak. Before she quite knew what she was doing, she swept it up and secured it around her neck.

"It suits you," Draco said as she laced up the trainers. She ignored the hats.

"Come on. Let's see if we can find Harry."

They heard them before they saw them, due to the clusters of junk that formed meandering pathways in the spacious room.

"What's a die-dum?" It was a deep, gravelly, dim voice.

Hermione turned to Draco questionly.

"Goyle," he whispered to her.

"Harry? Are you talking to someone?" came Ron's voice, calling from somewhere out of sight around the twisting turns.

A third voice - Crabbe's, Hermione deduced - shouted, "Descendo!"

One of the taller walls rising above them several piles away began to shift to the side. Loose objects toppled out of the slots they'd been haphazardly shoved, raining down with various tones of plop-smack-crash. Over the commotion, Hermione heard Harry roar, "Ron! Finite!"

Hermione tore down the path, Draco at her heels. Adrenaline pumped through her blood. Harry was in trouble, and she needed to help him. Coming up on a corner, Hermione slid to a stop, peering around the turn with one eye.

Harry's back was to her, untidy hair unmistakable from her angle. He was standing next to a dilapidated cupboard with a stone bust of a wizard wearing a wig and a tarnished tiara. The hulking figures of Crabbe and Goyle loomed before him.

Goyle had asked what a 'die-dum' was, Hermione recalled, catching sight of the delicate headwear. He must have meant a diadem. Did Harry think that diadem was a Horcrux?

"Accio diadem," she said under her breath to avoid detection. She wasn't surprised when it didn't work.

"Are you willing to cover me?" Hermione whispered to Draco.

Without the hesitation she expected, he nodded firmly, adjusting his wand to a more aggressive grip.

As one, they both jumped out from behind their hiding spot. Hermione lunged for the tiara on top of the statue while Draco cast a nonverbal jet of red over Harry's shoulder. It hit Goyle squarely in the chest before he had the chance to dodge.

Focused as she was on her target, Hermione missed what happened in the commotion behind her. Her reach was just too short, her fingers catching on the yellow hair below the coveted crown.

As gravity pulled her momentum down, Hermione latched on and brought the diadem with her, stone bust and all.

"Oomph!" She toppled back into a warm body, fingers wrapped around the precious headpiece greedily. Rolling to the side, she came face to face with green eyes blown wide into a confused countenance she was all too familiar with.

"Harry!" She flung her arms around his neck, nearly bursting into tears at finally being reunited with her best friend.

"Hermione?" He was gobsmacked. "What-? How-? Watch out!" He shoved her behind him, flinging up a Protego shield as an errant jinx ricocheted towards them. He countered with a bellowing, "Stupefy!"

"Is this it? Is this one of the Horcruxes?" She asked breathlessly from behind his shoulder. He was much shorter than the other men, and her eyes were level with his ear.

Before he could respond, heat like a great inferno blazed around them.

"Hermione!" Draco shouted, a blinding panic catching in her ears. Instinctively, she turned to find him, his fear bubbling in her gut like a contagion.

He barreled into both her and Harry, gripping their arms and hauling them along with him. "Run!"

"Geroff me, Malfoy!" Harry spun out of his grasp, his wand levelling with his nemesis of seven years.

"Harry, no!" Jumping in front of Draco, Hermione shielded him with her slight frame. The crackle of static electricity wiggled across her skin as she comprehended that Harry had shot a spell at her. The red cloak shimmered for a moment before settling again. She and Harry stared at each other in shock at both their actions and the fact that she was still standing after a direct hit.

"We don't have time for this," Draco worried, breaking the revery. His hand sought her free one and tugged her along the paths in a determined manner, not checking to see if Harry or Ron followed behind them. Hermione staggered along, tripping to keep up with his long strides.

A horrific shriek emerged from the grumbling roar that steadily grew louder in the spacious room. Hermione hesitated, looking back over her shoulder for the source of the yelp of agony. A putrid smell wafted on the waves of heat, noxious smoke and burning wood and something else she couldn't place her finger on. A sharp yank brought her attention back to Draco before she could swing her head all the way around.

"Don't look back. We have to keep going. I'm not sure if we're going to make it."

"How do you know where to go?" she asked, panting with fear and fatigue.

They passed a tall, looming cabinet.

"I practically lived here all sixth year," he admitted, tightening his hold on her hand.

"Hermione! Malfoy!" The call came from nearby but above, so they searched the tops of the surrounding mounds. Seeking through the dense smog accumulating beneath the ceiling, Draco found them first. He pointed to a spot high above them.

Harry and Ron were perched on a pair of broomsticks, combing through the wreckage.

"Harry! Ron!" Hermione shouted, coughing on the scalding air. The howl of fire was becoming deafening, filled with the stomping of trampling hooves and the crashing of furniture and trash. Pellets of sweat rolled down her face, neck, back. Draco shoved her to the nearest stack, encouraging her to climb.

Harry and Ron spotted them and raced over. Hermione's clammy hand slipped through Harry's once before he hauled her on the back of his broom. Ron gracelessly allowed Draco on his.

"Hurry before the Fiendfyre reaches the entrance!" Draco ordered.

Fiendfyre! Hermione thought. She looked at the diadem in her hand, trying to ignore the uncomfortable swooping of her stomach. She really hated flying.

The perspiration from her palms had rubbed a spot clean. Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure was etched in fine script beneath the filigree wings of the eagle-shaped crown. A sapphire of deepest blue stared deep into Hermione's broken soul. The tiara seemed so fragile, so precious.

The broom lurched.

She looked to find the sporadic twigs of the tail smoking, licks of orange flame inching their way towards her, dancing with the flapping fabric of her cloak. Behind the broom, she gaped into the open maw of a fiery sphynx. Galloping along next to it were dragons, chimaeras, winged horses, and an erumpent. Their tongues were so hot they were blue and white.

Vaguely, Hermione caught Harry's swear as he too must have inspected their status.

"We're almost there, hold on!" He stressed.

Hermione let the diadem go, feeding it to the beasts on their heels, devouring everything in their way, only fueled bigger and higher.

"What?! No!" The broom faltered as he attempted to turn back for the Horcrux, but it was too late. The tail had all but disintegrated, and they smashed through the door and into the stone wall opposite a second later.

At first, Hermione thought the shaking of the castle walls was her own ever present trembling. After she blinked a few times, though, the ringing dulled to the even stomping of what seemed like the marching of a couple dozen giants.

Sitting up, her head spun. The stones making up the walls around her were the right shape and color, but they were too tall and too flat - they lacked the cornerless curve she'd become accustomed to seeing. As her sight focused, she noticed she was nose to wand with a smooth, elegant wand, not the rugged, hooked one she expected.

Following the length of Draco's wand up to his hand and face, she startled. Instead of pale blond hair, slate grey eyes, and pointed aristocratic features, she was presented with Harry's enraged, emerald eyes and messy, dark hair. If he didn't look like murdering her, she would have smiled at seeing him for the first time in what felt like a long, long year.

But it had been two hundred-and-sixteen days, she recalled, the memory of Draco informing her of that bubbling up in her mind. They had been crawling through the tunnel under the Whomping Willow when he apologized.

And this wasn't the first time she'd seen Harry in those two hundred-and-sixteen days. Just minutes ago, she'd hugged him. She remembered that.

So why was he glaring at her with Draco's old wand clenched in his hand?

"How could you? Who are you?" Harry seethed.

"Harry, it's me, Hermione. That was Fiendfyre - cursed fire - it's one of the substances that destroy Horcruxes! I'd never suggested using it before because it's so dangerous - nearly impossible to control-" Her rambling was choked off with a suffocating embrace. Harry had moved so suddenly she hadn't even had time to respond.

"Merlin, I've missed you. I'm so sorry, Hermione. I didn't want to leave you, but Bellatrix had you and we only had so much time and I had to get Griphook out. And then I was going to come straight back with Dobby to get you, but Bellatrix's blade got him, and by the time the funeral was over and we organized a rescue mission, you had been moved. I kept thinking, 'What if I'd done this different or that.' And it was all my fault for saying Voldemort's name and being so obsessed with the Elder Wand to begin with. And we still had Horcruxes to hunt-" Harry cut himself off with a sudden jerk, turning to glance at Draco, who, Hermione now saw, was wrapped in another Incarcerous and being held by Ron.

Ron's freckled face was drained of all colour. He was perfectly still from shock, and his jaw hung ajar.

"Draco!" Hermione jolted towards him, waving her wand unsteadily to undo the binds.

Fury snapping Ron to attention, he rounded on Hermione.

"What are you doing?" he blustered.

"Draco's on our side now!" She wailed. "He's the one who rescued me. It took awhile, but we escaped, and Bellatrix is trapped in her own tower now! He gave me his wand and came here with me to help!"

Harry and Ron might not have believed her if it hadn't been for the protective way she placed herself between them.

The sound of an explosion followed by the crumbling of stone echoed throughout the castle. A stampede of pearlescent headless horsemen rocketed past them.

"He can't have given you his wand, though," Harry finally said. "I took it from him that day at Malfoy Manor." He demonstrated the authenticity of his statement by showing it to her.

"That's right, Scarhead! I suggest you give it back!" Draco snarled, wriggling against his binds.

"Uh-uh! Winners keepers, losers weepers!" Harry sang childishly, snatching the wand back out of his rival's reach.

Hermione huffed in frustration. "We don't have time for this. We all have wands now, and we need to find Voldemort's snake. That should be the last one, right?" She released Draco and promptly took his hand in equal parts to showcase her stance on his trustworthiness and to hold him back from retaliating himself.

Harry coughed and looked down in reprimand. "Yeah," he muttered.

"Okay. Good. Now that's settled. Where's the sword? And how do we get to the snake? Any plans?"

It turned out Harry did have a plan. And Hermione loathed it.

"But I just got back! You can't go out there alone! We're a team," she cried, clinging to the front of his jumper.

Harry had evidently been present for the last moments of Professor Snape's life, something Draco had stiffened, clenching his fists and jaw, to find out. Snape had gifted him several of his memories which, with his final breaths, he implored Harry to view.

During that eerie calmness when Hermione and Draco had first arrived, Voldemort had called a ceasefire, inviting Harry to martyr himself in the name of surrender and peace. Instead of submitting, Harry had raced to Dumbledore's office to use the Pensieve. The truth of Snape's loyalties was revealed, as well as the truth of Harry's connection to Voldemort.

After defeating the diadem Horcrux, he intended to sacrifice himself to leave them the chance to truly overcome Voldemort.

Hermione was inconsolable.

"But what will I do without you?"

Harry's arms surrounded her in his comfortingly awkward embrace. "You're a survivor," he said, his chin tucked on her shoulder where he used to avoid her mane of curls. "You'll survive." He sounded so confident in her that she felt her soul shatter.

No one had believed in her like Harry. He saw only the best of her, and he always reminded her of her strength and courage. To think that would just be… gone. Forever.

Hermione bit her lip to clamp down on the whimper that threatened to escape.

"Malfoy," Harry spoke up, his voice thick, "if you hurt her-"

"I'll be no better than you, Potter." The sneer in his tone softened, though. "I've already made that mistake, and I'll take care of her for you."

Hermione finally pulled away, sniffing, wiping her nose, and scowling.

"I can take care of myself. No need to be chauvinistic about it all."

A brief moment of levity surrounded the four like a bubble.

And then it popped with the explosion of the wall at their side.

As wrapped up as they'd been, they'd forgotten a battle was waging in the castle.

They were scattered with shrapnel and rubble, protecting their heads and their wands as they were flung out and away from each other. The sound was deafening, leaving Hermione's ears ringing and disoriented.

As she hefted herself back to her feet, shakily rolling a heavy stone off her legs, Draco rushed back to her. Using magic, he cleared a way to her.

Separated, Hermione barely heard Harry's shout.

"Don't forget! You have to kill Nagini!"

As the dust settled, bright coloured flashes of curses and spells strobed through the gaping opening in the wall. Draco and Hermione were pulled into the fray of battle.

Hermione had lost track of time. Her world had narrowed to dodge, Protego, stun, run. She'd faced countless Death Eaters. Giant spiders had carried Hagrid off into the Forbidden Forest. Actual giants, three times the size of Grawp stomped on the lawns of Hogwarts. The despondent chill of Dementors ringed the edge of battle, feasting on the despair and pain and fear of the soldiers indiscriminately.

Slowly, the haze of fighting lifted as she realized their opponents were retreating. Draco pulled her quaking body against his, comforting her in the reprieve. During the battle, they had stuck together but somehow made it out the front doors.

Draco found a still intact section of the main stairs leading up to the castle's entrance and led them there to sit and recover. He transfigured them cups out of debris and filled them with water. Hermione was hungry, but there was nothing for it at the moment.

They were disturbed a short while later by a familiar face.

"Hermione, Malfoy." Neville nodded to them, plopping next to the witch exhaustedly. "Glad to see you've finally pulled your head out of your arse and joined the right side."

Draco grimaced at the dry dig but didn't retaliate. They were all too bone tired to squabble amongst themselves. Instead, Draco refilled his cup and passed it over Hermione to Neville, who took it with an astonished lift of his eyebrows.

They sat in silence, merely taking comfort from each other's presence, an odd sense of peace blanketing them in a setting of such destruction and chaos.

Then a mob appeared out of the forest. Hagrid walked in the center, weeping, next to Voldemort and carrying a strange bundle in his arms. Dread seeped down Hermione's spine, and she stood, taking a nervous step forward, towards the crowd.

"Harry?" She choked, denial swelling her throat until she couldn't swallow. She knew this had been his plan, but her mind warred against it. Cotton filled her ears, and she didn't notice the gathering that flocked around her, drawn by the commotion.

A warm hand anchored her in place, but grief rose like the tide, drowning her as she struggled to tread water.

Neville was suddenly before Voldemort, and then the Sorting Hat was wrenched over his head and lit up with flames.

Pandemonium erupted at that display. Too many bodies moved and bumped until she lost sight of her best friend's body. Somehow Neville retrieved the Sword of Gryffindor, and then, with a great strike, he cleaved Nagini's head from her body. The snake's body writhed and coiled until, at last, it grew still in death.

Voldemort's wrath was unbearable. His scream of fury pierced Hermione's heart and froze her blood in her veins.

Then, Harry appeared out of thin air, flinging his Invisibility Cloak off his shoulders. There was a standoff between him and Voldemort.

As they stood facing each other, Hermione counted her heartbeats. They were coming way too fast, but she couldn't slow them against the intensity that left her rooted to her spot. Suddenly, Harry and Voldemort raised their wands at the same time. A jet of glowing red smashed against a stream of bright green. When the magicks collided, the green curse bounced back at Voldemort and his wand flew gracefully up and into Harry's hand.

Voldemort's body collapsed to the ground. He was dead. And it was over. And Hermione and Harry and Ron and Draco were all alive.

Draco gathered her up into his arms and kissed her. He pulled her face to his and pressed his lips to hers and held her to him like he couldn't bear to be parted from her. He slanted his lips and brushed his tongue against the seam of her mouth. When she let him in, he delved deeper desperately. Hermione could hardly keep up, but the relief and joy she felt poured out of her and into his open mouth. She tasted his love and devotion and contentment and passion.

When Draco broke away, chest heaving against hers as he gasped for breath, he ran his fingers from her shoulders up her neck to her sheared hair.

"I like your hair like this," he murmured. "You look… free."

After their wedding, they closed off the drawing room and the largest dining hall and planted rampion along the long drive from the gates to the front door of Malfoy Manor. And they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented.