Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She blinked into a bright, white, clear light… shockingly physical in its sheer illumination, yet somehow not painfully bright, despite how it washed out everything around her.

She straightened her spine slowly.

She didn’t feel alarm.

Perhaps oddly, she wasn’t lying down, either, but found herself sitting comfortably on what looked like a wooden bench, only the wood, the metal armrests, the divots, the floor, all of it was a shocking white.

She felt strangely calm, despite the silence of the surrounding space.

She didn’t try particularly hard to determine where she was.

She had no idea how long she sat there, perfectly content.

Eventually, however, something changed.

She heard a strange sound, and stood slowly from the bench, curious.

She walked down a long stretch of platform. Tall columns stood to her right as she walked, luminous and marble-like, yet vaguely insubstantial. That odd, discordant sound slowly grew louder as she walked. As she got closer, it grew strangely more familiar… or more able to be categorized, at least.

It sounded to her like an animal whimpering.

Or perhaps not whimpering exactly, but like something in pain, or perhaps something horribly desolate and alone. It didn’t upset her to hear that, not exactly, but she felt the discordant note with a slight unease, the first twinge of negative anything she’d felt since she arrived here. Whatever creature it came from, it mewled weakly––like it lacked the strength to do anything but that, to make those plaintive gasps that echoed in a much deeper and more immersive silence.

She walked past a last column of brilliant white stone, and saw…

Well, she didn’t really know what it was.

It must be alive, her mind reasoned.

It must have been alive once, at least, and really, it had to be alive in a sense still. It was red, exposed, raw flesh, swollen and cut, with protruding bones. Hair stuck out of parts of it, and what might have been an eyeball, a fingernail, a knuckle or possibly a tooth. It looked like two people fused together grotesquely. Or, her mind mused, perhaps it was one person really… someone who’d been cut up and reassembled wrongly, or with parts missing, or both.

There was no fixing it now.

There was no fixing any part of the thing that remained.

“What d’you suppose it is?” a familiar voice asked calmly.

Hermione turned, and saw her friend standing there, his black hair sticking up strangely all over his head, just like it always did. He pushed his glasses up his nose with a knuckle, a gesture that had always endeared her, maybe because it reminded her of her father. Harry looked at the thing between pillars, his green eyes as serene as a field of new grass.

She thought about his question, then looked back at the writhing and mewling flesh.

It was bleeding now. An emaciated arm flailed weakly.

It looked to be straining itself, even now. Straining for what?

Whatever it wanted, it seemed forever out of reach. The object of its desire had eluded it for a long time… maybe for the last time… but now it felt well and truly gone.

It didn’t bother her.

“Does it matter now?” she asked.

She glanced at her friend when he didn’t answer at first.

After a few beats more, he looked at her.

“No,” he said simply. “I don’t think so.”

She nodded to herself, her lips pursed in thought.

“Are we dead?” she asked next, as if inquiring about the weather outside.

Harry hesitated, then nodded. “I think so, yes.” He frowned back at the thing writhing and gasping on the floor. “It’s strange. I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“Really?” she said. “What did you think it would be like?”

“I don’t know. Not like this.”

For a moment, they just stood there, looking at the writhing, gasping thing.

“Where are we, even?” Harry asked. “I mean… what is this place?”

She looked around, pondered his question. “I don’t know. Heaven?”

“Heaven.” Harry frowned. “This feels more… I don’t know…”

“Temporary?” she suggested.

“I was going to say boring.” He gave her a shrewd look. “But yeah. Temporary is right.” Harry looked at her, his eyes softer. “Draco? Is he here too, d’you think?”

Pain rippled through her, briefly closing her eyes.

After a pause where she could do nothing, she shook her head.

“I hope not,” she said. “Not for me, but… you know…” She hesitated. “I just hope not, is all. I hope he’s all right.”

For the first time, her calm wouldn’t come back.

The pain wouldn’t leave.

“No,” she said, positive now. “No. He’s not here.”

“I’m sorry, Hermione,” Harry said.

He reached out, and she let him take her hand.

She squeezed his fingers, then smiled.

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” she reminded him.

He laughed at that. The sound reverberated up the white columns and walls, the light-filled high-ceilings and the distant echo of ghost-like trains. His laughter sounded so beautiful here. It felt like being enveloped in a warm cloud of her friend.

He felt so much lighter now.

Harry felt so, so much lighter.

She wished she felt as light as him.

She hadn’t truly realized before, how much all of it, being the Chosen One, being responsible for killing Voldemort, saving Wizarding kind, had weighed on him. She should’ve known. It had been his whole life, really. His parents’ death. His abusive aunt and uncle. His years in Hogwarts. Every part of Harry’s life had been warped and darkened by a war and a presence that arrived before he’d even been born.

She opened her mouth, about to tell him how sorry she was, how unfair it was that he’d never gotten to live past that shadow looming over every aspect of his childhood and life… when another voice rose from behind them.

“You’re right about it being temporary…” the more melodious, deeper voice said.

Harry and Hermione turned simultaneously, their fingers still entwined.

“…If it helps,” the voice continued cheerily. “And only if you want it to be, of course.”

Dumbledore stood there, wearing the same light-blue robes she remembered from the last time she’d seen him. The moons and stars woven into the cloth glinted with shimmering, iridescent light, winking and flashing as he smiled at them. His beard looked a blinding white, like the columns, the floors, the arched ceilings.

He looked at Harry first.

“You have to be there to apologize, you know,” he added, glancing at her to give her a smiling wink. His pale eyes returned smilingly to Harry’s. “Although it’s up to both of you, certainly, where you go from here.” He glanced around at the platform where the three of them stood. “You’re welcome to board any train you like, now that you’re here.”

Hermione felt that pain grow steadily in her heart. It grew so intense, she released Harry’s hand, and brought that palm to her chest.

She didn’t want to board any trains.

Not by herself. Not even with Harry.

She didn’t want to go anywhere without Draco.

Godric, she missed him.

She missed him so much.

Sympathy reached the old man’s eyes as he turned his gaze on her.

“Anyway,” the old man added gravely, clasping his hands in front of the twinkling stars and crescent moons. “There are a few more things that do need to be taken care of… not necessarily by either of you, of course, but by someone.” A white eyebrow rose. “I’ve always thought it’s far more satisfying to work a problem to completion…”

He smiled at Hermione.

“…Don’t you agree, Mrs. Malfoy?”

She felt something in her chest relax.

It wasn’t just Harry, she realized. She felt lighter too.

She couldn’t begin to parse that out in words or even pictures in her mind, or to explain it, even to herself.

Luckily, she didn’t need to.

“Absolutely,” she said solemnly. “I absolutely agree, Headmaster…”

The white room around her was already flashing brighter.

She was already fading away from the platform where they stood.

She opened her eyes.

Sky shone above her, a streak of rose-colored light, already fading into a deeper, brighter blue. It was summer, she remembered. The beginning of the season, perhaps, but it was summer nonetheless. Even for summer, the sky stretching over her, broken on the edges by what had been several floors of house and eventually a peaked roof, looked so very terrifically blue.

It might’ve taken her a few seconds more to realize where she was, but she didn’t have to wait that long.

“Merlin.” A voice choked over her.

Her gaze and head shifted, and she met bright silver eyes. His irises caught sunlight through the opened ceiling, lit up so that they almost seemed to glow.

His white-blond hair hung down in his face, longer than she’d ever seen it. He had the beginnings of a beard, which was maybe stranger than the hair. She found herself counting the differences in his face after that, noting a silvery scar that cut through his right eyebrow, another that ran along his jaw and neck. Another scar made a winding S-shape alongside his left ear.

A dark, deep burn-like cut ringed his throat.

His cheekbones stood out.

Godric, he was beautiful. He somehow looked even more beautiful now.

Was it wrong to think that, when he’d obviously been hurt and chained?

Maybe it was simply that the truly horrific parts of that felt behind them now. Everything that had just happened… it all felt so long ago, so foreign.

She could smell the lingering smoke and blood in the air. She could smell his burnt and cut and cauterized skin from the collar… and his lack of a recent shower… but somehow, the sunlight in his silver eyes and the blue sky behind him were the only parts of either him or the place that felt significant to her now.

It was the only thing about where they were that felt real.

She heard a groan then, and a gasp, and her eyes flickered past Draco for the first time.

Lupin and Kingsley were helping Harry to his feet.

Harry looked around as they brought him upright, his expression panicked until he found her with his eyes. He instantly relaxed as he looked at her, and saw her looking back. She saw the relief in him so clearly, she couldn’t help but smile.

Harry smiled back.

Really, he grinned at her, and shoved his glasses up with a knuckle.

Draco was gripping her hand then, and helping her up, too. She sucked in a breath as she worked her muscles and moved her bruised bones. She gasped and groaned a little, too, before she got all the way upright. It was strange to feel her body again so tangibly, the good and the bad of it. Right now, it was mostly bad. Her hand hurt so badly she sucked in a breath and looked at it. It was clearly broken, which is why Draco only took her good one. Her cut arm hurt. Her knees hurt. Her throat hurt so badly she struggled to swallow.

Her chest hurt, presumably from the rebounded killing curse.

Her head hurt, probably from where it smacked into the stone floor.

Her legs felt bruised and like they’d been bent in all the wrong ways.

Then she was standing, and Draco had both arms wrapped firmly around her. He held her tightly to his chest, gripping her shoulder in one hand, her opposite hip in the other. He held her like he expected someone or something to try and pry her out of his arms.

He pressed his face to hers from behind and she closed her eyes.

She wrapped her good hand around his arm and squeezed until she might have bruised him. If she had, he didn’t seem to mind.

The other three just looked at them, silent.

Hermione found herself looking back at them warily.

Did they know now? Did all of them know? Did all of them know what he was?

Harry seemed to see some portion of her thoughts in her face.

He let out a sigh.

“We’re not going to hurt him, Hermione.” He glanced warningly at Lupin and Kingsley. “No one’s going to hurt him.” Harry looked back at her. “We came here to bring you both out of here… despite how I reacted when I first got here.”

A quiet apology lived in the last part of what he said.

His eyes shifted above hers then, and over her shoulder. He clearly locked gazes with Draco, and once he had, his green eyes looked uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry…” He hesitated, glanced at Hermione, then back at Draco. “…I’m sorry for a lot of things, Malfoy. I really am. I’ll give you a proper apology later, but I wanted to at least say that much. And to say thank you. I know she wouldn’t be alive without you.”

Draco didn’t loosen his hold on her, but she could feel his surprise whisper around and through her. She felt confusion on him, too, uncertainty––

“I’m all right,” she assured him. She looked up, her head resting on his shoulder. “I promise. I’m all right. It’s gone. He’s gone.”

“How?” Draco blurted.

He looked at Harry almost accusingly. “How are either of you even alive?” He gripped her tighter. “You died. Both of you died.”

Harry blinked, like it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone else might be confused about what just happened. He glanced at Lupin, then at Kingsley.

Lupin raised an eyebrow, too.

“He’s right,” he said flatly. “We checked you. Both of you. You were both dead… or it certainly appeared that way.”

“How long?” Hermione asked. She remembered that long, white expanse, the red, bleeding, flailing thing they’d found. “How long were we dead?”

Lupin and Kingsley exchanged looks.

Lupin looked back at her.

“Only a few minutes,” he conceded gently. “But you have to realize… that doesn’t happen. Not from a killing curse. Not ever.”

“Well, it sometimes does,” Draco muttered.

Hermione looked up at him and saw him staring at Harry, a faint frown on his cut lips.

Lupin heard him, and his smile widened a touch. “True. And touché.”

“That still doesn’t explain it, though,” Draco added curtly.

He was still looking at Harry.

Hermione could feel emotions roiling through Draco’s magic around her.

He clearly struggled to believe she was really okay. He’d obviously thought she was dead. He was trying to come back from thinking they’d both been dead. Maybe Harry even understood that, because his expression grew cautious as he studied Draco’s.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Harry jumped.

From his expression, he’d just remembered something.

He gripped and tugged the satchel he wore around to the front of him and flipped open the top of it. Hermione saw his invisibility cloak inside the satchel, and from on top of it, Harry pulled out a knotty-looking wand, one that looked familiar, but that Hermione couldn’t exactly place who or from where. Harry continued to root around in the bag, this time, going into a smaller pocket inside.

Seconds later, he held a cut black stone in his other hand.

He showed both to Draco and Hermione, as if those two things somehow explained everything Draco wanted to know.

There was a long silence where he just held them out, one in each hand.

“What the fuck are you showing me, Potter?” Draco asked finally.

Hermione burst out in a laugh.

Draco’s voice was hard, nearly hoarse, probably from the injuries to his neck. He sounded annoyed, possibly even angry, but something about the exchange made her laugh anyway. Once she started, she struggled to stop, even though her throat hurt badly, too.

Harry blinked again, and Hermione laughed harder.

Draco squeezed her tighter against him, and she felt so much from him, so much relief and emotion and longing, she gripped his arm tighter in her good hand. She tried to send as much of that feeling and relief back to him as she could. From the heat that bloomed out of his chest, the faint gasp at her neck, at least some of it must have gotten through.

Harry gave them both a sheepish grin.

“Dumbledore gave them to me,” he explained apologetically. “He gave me his wand so I could apparate us both back to Hogsmeade that night, after we went looking for the horcrux. I forgot to give it back to him when he left me there in the village. And he’d given me the stone earlier that night, before we left.”

Harry stuffed the strange wand and the stone back in his bag.

He gave Kingsley and Lupin a brief glance, as if remembering they were there, then looked back at Hermione and Draco, his mouth quirked in a faint grin.

“It makes sense,” Harry said, a touch defensively. “I’m just too damned knackered to explain it all right now. But it does make sense… I think it does, at least.”

“Sure it does, Potter,” Draco scoffed. “I don’t suppose you drank out of any of the bottles of firewhisky or mead you’ve seen lying around since you got here?”

Hermione giggled again.

Lupin frowned and exchanged another loaded, meaningful look with Kingsley.

Hermione didn’t try to decipher that, either.

“Don’t drink anything you do find,” she advised the two adult Order members and Harry. “Joking aside. Don’t. You’ll end up in St. Mungo’s for sure if you do.”

Kingsley frowned at that. “What is in the bottles?”

“A muggle drug––” she began.

“You’re not going to explain that right now, either,” Draco growled, cutting her off. “It’s enough for them to know not to drink from any of the bottles or glasses they find here. They can take a sample back to the Ministry if they’re really that curious. Or ask the elf.”

He glared around harder at Harry, Kingsley, and Lupin.

“She needs medical attention,” he said, his voice harder. “You can see that, right? So whatever you want from either of us, it’ll have to wait.”

There was another silence.

Hermione didn’t argue. She knew he was right.

Draco hesitated a last time, and looked at Harry.

“My mum…” he began, then hesitated. “She might be around here, Potter. She’s likely long gone, but if she got injured, and you stumble across her…”

Hermione felt his neck move in a swallow by her face.

“Don’t kill her,” Draco said stiffly. “She was forced into taking the Mark, just like I was.” He gave a cold look to Kingsley, then to Lupin. “Don’t let them kill her, either. You do that, and I don’t need a bloody apology.”

Kingsley frowned.

Lupin looked bewildered.

Harry’s jaw only hardened. He nodded, once.

“No one’s going to hurt your mum,” he vowed.

“She might be dead, anyway.” Draco’s jaw tightened. “More likely, she took off as soon the wards dropped… if not before.” His voice came out flat, close to indifferent, despite what Hermione felt surging through his magic. “I haven’t seen her up here since I got out of the dungeons, so she could be dead.” His words grew more cynical. “Or she might be far away from here. But if you do see her… don’t kill her, Potter. Don’t just leave her to die, either. Take her… somewhere. She’s not really one of them.”

Again, Kingsley looked skeptical.

“No one will touch your mum,” Harry repeated, vehement. “If we find her and she’s hurt, I’ll make sure she’s seen to. You can go. Take care of Hermione. It’s all right.”

Draco hesitated again, then nodded.

He twisted on his heel and Hermione watched Nott Manor vanish around her.

It didn’t occur to her to worry he might’ve done that without a wand, and in full view of Lupin and Kinglsey. It didn’t occur to her to ask where he was taking her.

It was a strange thought… the second thing, at least… but only afterwards.

He might have taken her to Malfoy Manor.

He might have taken her to London, or to St. Mungo’s, or to Hogwarts.

He didn’t do any of those things.

She barely saw the stops between apparitions.

He jumped between them so quickly, she could scarcely catch her breath.

She glimpsed trees, a lake, a valley…

She glimpsed the bare edges of a distant town…

She glimpsed high, craggy mountains and white clouds…

She glimpsed a field…

…then they were there.

He didn’t take them right to the door.

She could see the white stone house where it perched on the edge of the cliff, but he’d apparated them into a small wood that stood maybe thirty feet from the cottage’s front gate. Hermione found herself roughly ten yards from where the wards began on that side of the house. The gate formed the center point of a low, stone wall that wrapped around Dumbledore’s front garden, and was painted a cheerful blue color that now matched the sky.

“Where is it?” Draco muttered.

Hermione frowned. She cocked her head, puzzled, as she looked at him.

Then she remembered.

Of course. The fidelius charm.

Draco hadn’t been here since the summer house got charmed by Dumbledore and Lupin to make it safe for her and Nott. Draco hadn’t been given the location by the secret-keeper in the time since, either, so he couldn’t even see the house, much less get inside the wards. He’d known where to go, likely from Pansy, but now he was locked out.

For the first time, it struck her to wonder who the secret-keeper was.

She’d never asked, but always assumed it had been Dumbledore before his death. They were probably using a note system now that he’d died, similar to what they’d done at Grimmauld Place when the Headmaster couldn’t be there in person for whatever reason.

Then she remembered something else.

Voldemort had stationed Death Eaters outside the wards.

“Draco,” she whispered tautly. “We might not be alone––”

But he’d already heard her.

He rested her side carefully up against the nearest big tree, right before his arm released her, and uncoiled from around her waist. He motioned for her to stay behind, to stay protected under the trees, then began walking away from her, intensity radiating off his tall form. She practically felt his magic ignite, starting with his chest and hands.

She couldn’t help noticing he’d somehow both lost weight and gained muscle during his time in the Nott dungeons.

He looked lean, feral, like a wolf that just made it through the winter.

He hadn’t yet hit the sunlight when he released his first spell.

“Finite incantatem!” he hissed.

She jumped as his spell slammed out of his hand and slightly to the right of where he loped over the tree-shadowed grass. The sheer power of it sucked in her breath, raised the hair on her arms, even from a distance. The path of the spell was wide; it illuminated then stripped the disillusionment spells from three forms who’d clustered only a few feet from the house’s wards.

The spell licked over them like fire stripping paint from old pieces of wood.

All three of them appeared at once.

They looked shockingly dark in the sunlight, like ghosts coming out of one of the walls of the Hogwarts castle.

They only hesitated a few seconds, but it was long enough.

“Incarcerous!” Draco snapped. “Expelliarmus!”

Ropes appeared and wrapped shockingly tight and fast around the big blond wizard in front. The bindings forced the wizard roughly to his knees, right before he fell to his side. His wand flew into Draco’s hand before he’d finished letting out a groan.

A curse left a different wand in a purple and white streak.

Draco parried it, using the new wand to send it sideways into the wards.

It sent up a shower of sparks where it hit.

The third wizard had seen Hermione.

“Avada kedavra!” he snarled.

He aimed the hard stream of flashing, green light in her direction.

Luckily, she’d seen him looking at her.

Hermione threw herself completely behind the thick trunk, right as a chunk of bark and green wood got torn out of one side of it, right where she’d just been standing. She moved so frantically and so fast, she slammed her broken hand against the bark and sucked in a hiss of pain.

“Fuck,” she gasped.

“Stupefy!” Draco snarled.

The spell left his hand so violently, the wizard who’d shot the curse at Hermione got thrown backwards over twenty feet. He reached the end of that arc and plowed hard into the surface of the field. His head and body threw up rocks, earth, sod. Given the relative ordinariness of the spell Draco used, it shocked her, the sheer power behind that burst of magic.

Hermione almost wondered if Draco had killed him, stupefy or no.

Honestly, she didn’t care all that much if he had.

Draco blocked two more spells from the third one, the only wizard left.

Hermione felt it, the instant Draco got out the spell that would end it.

“Ascendo velocite,” he snarled.

His spell shot past the other’s too-slow protego.

Combined with Draco’s hard flick of the wand, it lifted the wizard up and threw him straight into the wards around Dumbledore’s oceanside house. Hermione had never seen a wizard hit into full-strength wards before, but the effects were immediate and decisive. The wards basically disintegrated him. Blood splattered over the grass and part of the low, stone wall and the gate at the house’s front.

It looked like he’d been fed through a muggle wood-chipper.

There was absolutely no doubt he’d killed that one.

Then Draco was back at her side, wrapping his arm around her waist, gently pulling her good hand around him so she could better hold on.

“Fidelius, you said?” he grunted.

She nodded, sucking in another breath.

Godric, her hand hurt so badly she could barely stand it.

Draco winced, almost like he could feel it, too.

He looked her over, then cast a murmured scourgify on her face and neck. It made her skin feel a bit raw afterwards, but better, too. She no longer felt like parts of her would crack if she smiled, so he must have removed most of the blood from her face.

He touched her lip gently with his thumb.

“You’ve still got a cut on your mouth,” he murmured. He kissed her cheek so gently, it blanked her mind. “I’ll fix you up when we get inside. All right?”

She looked up at him, and before she’d thought about it, her fingers lightly traced the burn line around his throat.

“Snape should have something for that,” she said, just as quiet.

He nodded, but from his expression, he wasn’t really listening.

His eyes continued to study hers, his expression difficult to read, yet somehow intense. Or maybe she could simply feel that intensity behind the carefully neutral stare. Either way, she wanted so badly to talk to him now. Maybe after a few days of solid sleep.

Maybe after a few days of other things, too.

He leaned down and kissed her mouth, again, so lightly it felt like a warm breath. He did it compulsively, like he couldn’t help it.

“You stink,” she informed him, smiling.

He grunted as he looked her over. “I’m aware.” He smirked then, and for the first time, he looked almost like himself again. “Maybe someone responsible will have to bathe me.”

Her nose wrinkled more. “You’ll need at least two showers before I get into a bath with you. Maybe three.”

He let out a low, surprising chuckle. It still came out gravelly, probably because of his hurt throat and neck, but that sounded like him, too.

He took a step back, but still gripped her arm tightly in his hand.

“Think you can get us in?” he asked, gruff.

“I don’t know.” She exhaled, thinking, but already doubtful. “I’m not the secret keeper, so…” She remembered something and tilted her right hip towards him. “Wait. Check my pocket. If the coin is still in there, you should be able to reach Pansy, or Nott… or even Snape, assuming at least one of them still has theirs––”

“That won’t be necessary,” another voice cut in.

The new voice sounded bored, and clearly irritated.

Hermione knew it at once.

Draco turned his head sharply.

Hermione turned with him, peering past his shoulder in the direction of the house.

Snape stood there, just outside the edge of the wood where they both stood.

The cold, North Sea wind rippled his black hair and robes. He glared down his nose at the two of them, his lip curled like he’d just caught a whiff of a particularly bad smell on the wind. His arm appeared to be bandaged and rested in a black cloth sling. He also leaned most of his weight on a cane. He looked exhausted, beat up, gaunt, and deathly pale, maybe paler than she’d ever seen him. Despite those things, he still managed to stare down his nose at both of them like they were unruly first-years he’d just caught skivving.

Snape sniffed, and tilted his head back even more.

“Do you plan to come out from behind that tree?” he asked sourly. “Or shall I just go back inside now and finish my breakfast?”

Hermione bit her tongue.

For the second time that day, she had to fight not to laugh, and she couldn’t even have explained exactly why. She didn’t want to explain it, really, or to think too much about how morbid that made her, laughing darkly at a clearly injured Snape after watching Draco systematically take out three dark wizards without breaking a sweat.

The truth was, she was relieved.

She was so relieved to see him there, alive and reasonably healthy, she was smiling, even past her bit tongue and cut lips.

She was definitely more relieved than she ever would have believed possible for Snape’s wellbeing, even just a few months before.

“I’d like a tea,” she said, a touch swottily in return. “If it’s not too terrible of a bother. Given we likely just saved the entire wizarding world.”

Snape harumphed. He didn’t answer beyond that, but only turned with his cane, and started limping back towards the edge of the wards.

Snape handed Draco a small piece of parchment with a description of the house’s location on it in lieu of an address, clearly written in his own precise hand. The instant Draco read the script in its entirety, it burned up in a flash of blue-green flames.

The magical fire left nothing behind but a scattering of white ashes.

Draco had led Hermione out from behind the trees and now all three of them stood just outside the house wards, only a few steps from the sky-blue wooden gate. She couldn’t help noticing that caution radiated off Draco still, as he looked at his godfather.

Draco tightened his arm around her waist, and tugged her closer to him.

“Is Pansy here?” he asked.

Hermione stiffened the slightest amount, but Draco didn’t glance at her.

Snape nodded as if bored by the question. “Yes.”

“Nott?” Draco raised next.

“Yes.”

“What happened to the two of you?” Draco asked, a touch sharper. “Pansy said you were supposed to meet her down in the dungeons. You were supposed to help Hermione, not ditch her the instant she got fucking captured––”

“I’m not discussing it out here,” Snape cut in, annoyed.

He didn’t wait for Draco to respond, but turned on his heel and walked directly up to the low wooden gate.

Hermione couldn’t help wincing when she saw the blood splatters and chunks of viscera peppered across the front of the painted wood. After Draco brought her through the opening in the wall, Snape grabbed a relatively clean part of the wood with his good hand and yanked the gate firmly closed.

“Are you all right?” Hermione asked him.

The question came out gentler than she’d meant it to.

The tall wizard stiffened as if she’d just insulted him, and turned to glare at her.

“I’m perfectly fine,” he snapped coldly. “I certainly look better than you do, so I wouldn’t start sniveling on my behalf until you’ve had access to a decent mirror.” He glared at Draco, then his eyes shifted back to hers. “…Mrs. Malfoy.”

Draco’s jaw clenched. She felt it near her face, but she didn’t look back at him.

Hermione herself had to fight not to laugh.

“Well, I died,” she informed her professor haughtily. “I expect I look quite good, given that… if you’re so bloody intent on keeping score… Severus.”

Snape visibly tensed.

He narrowed his gaze at her, as if about to speak, then seemed to think better of it and turned his back on her deliberately. He began limping his way slowly but purposefully through the front garden towards the house’s arched door. He leaned hard on the cane as he steered his way up the path, and she’d never seen him move so slow.

Despite her lingering amusement, and Snape’s usual dismissive rudeness, she found herself watching him closely, noting where he appeared to be injured and how badly.

Godric, they’d been here for hours.

Snape had an unbelievable store of healing potions in Dumbledore’s home lab; he’d added to it significantly in the lead-up to their attempt.

He’d taught her and Nott a ranging number and type of healing spells.

What could have happened to him? And why hadn’t Theo fixed him up better than this? Was Theo in even worse shape?

Godric, was Theo still in danger? Was that why he hadn’t come out with Snape?

She pushed her worries out of her mind as she walked through the garden and up to the front door. Really, Snape was right. She hardly had room to be weird about his injuries, when she was still being held up largely by Draco’s arm.

She stepped over the threshold and made her way down the corridor to the opening that led into the house’s main sitting room, the one with the large fireplace where she’d met Lupin and Dumbledore all those months ago. As soon as she and Draco rounded that corner, both of them came to a dead stop.

Draco froze, his hand tightening on her arm.

“Do you mind?” Snape asked in annoyance behind them, rolling his letters.

Draco brought her further into the room to let him pass, and Snape thunked his way inside with his limp and cane. Neither of them stopped staring around at the room as Snape made his way around them, and then around the outside of the room before heading down a second corridor that led in the direction of the kitchen, the dining room, and Dumbledoor’s windowless study. Hermione didn’t listen to determine which place was his final destination.

She barely spared him a thought as she stared around the room he’d left behind.

The sitting room was shockingly full of people.

Every one of them had turned to stare at her and Draco, silent.

For those few seconds, no one spoke. Nothing broke the silence apart from the crackle of the fireplace, and the thunk of Snape’s cane as he limped down the hall.

It was just enough time for Hermione’s eyes to scan the length of the entire room, and to take in the faces of every person who sat on the sofa or one of the armchairs, or who stood awkwardly around either the fireplace or by the long table under the window facing the front garden. The curtains over that window were closed, which explained why everyone looked surprised to see them, and why the room remained relatively dim.

Hermione couldn’t hide her shock.

She didn’t even try to hide it.

She stared at them and they stared at her and she saw shock on their faces as well.

Harry and Lupin hadn’t made it back yet, of course, but Nott was there, sitting on the long couch with Pansy and Blaise. The three of them sat squished together on one end, a blanket thrown over Nott’s legs and Pansy next to him with her own legs neatly crossed. From how they looked, they were slightly uncomfortable with all the new houseguests, as well.

Hermione also got the impression that she and Draco had interrupted them in the middle of a tense, if whispered, conversation.

Those three were probably the least surprising of the faces she saw.

Inexplicably, Fred and George Weasley were also there, standing with Neville and Ginny by the fireplace. Ginny sat curled up in one of the armchairs, Neville in the other.

That’s when she saw the other four people in the room.

Oh, God.

Her parents were here.

How on Earth were her parents here?

Other questions quickly eclipsed that one, however. She blinked, trying to make sense of their appearance. Her shock deepened to a near panic the longer she stared.

They looked exhausted, gaunt, dirty, somehow overly serious… and nothing at all like she would have imagined them looking, or how they’d looked when she’d last seen them. Despite that almost grim seriousness she saw on them, they both looked a bit dazed, like they couldn’t quite comprehend where they were

That, or possibly they didn’t fully believe where they were, at least not yet.

Her father wore one of his nice suits, but she barely recognized it. Dirt scuffed all parts of it; the suit looked like he’d been wearing it for weeks, and he looked overly thin inside it. Her mother had holes in the knees of her own pants, and bruised hands, and a swelling along her cheek and jaw, and––

“They’re okay,” Draco murmured. “They’re fine, Hermione. I promise.”

She couldn’t tear her eyes off them to answer him.

Her parents stood by the long table shoved under the window facing the front of the house. The old, farmhouse-style wooden table looked exactly as she remembered it, covered in candles, crystal balls, odd kinetic sculptures made of brass and gold, magical instruments she still didn’t know the purpose of, bundles of sage and bottles of potion ingredients. Closer to the window, in one corner, stood Fawke’s old iron perch.

They were standing with Molly and Arthur Weasley.

Hermione met her mother’s gaze first.

She felt her throat close when her mother sucked in a breath.

She couldn’t clear her mind or her lungs enough to speak while both of her parents practically ran at her over the thick carpet on Dumbledore’s wooden floor.

Both of them caught hold of her, and gripped her in a hug, seemingly uncaring that Draco stood there as they held her.

They both felt so thin.

Godric, she’d never felt either of them so thin, or so hard, somehow.

Her mother, especially, felt so much smaller than Hermione remembered, she worried about hurting her when she clasped at her back with her good hand. Her father was thinner than she’d ever seen him. Hugging him was like hugging half of what she remembered him being, yet both of them felt stronger and sturdier somehow, too.

Her mother’s face––

“Oh, God, what happened to you, darling?” Her mother pulled back finally and sniffed, tears running down her cheeks. She reached out tentatively to touch Hermione’s throat, then leaned closer and looked at her face, and Hermione remembered she probably had bruises and cuts all over her, too, more than she’d had time to catalogue or even look at.

Draco seemed to realize the same.

“Her hand is broken,” he said, quietly. “Her knees are hurt, too, from a spell. One of us will fix her up, but you need to be a bit careful until––”

“Careful,” her father scoffed. “Are you honestly telling me to be careful right now? When you bring my daughter in looking like she got run over by a truck?”

Hermione looked up at him in surprise, then between them when she saw her father glaring at Draco. She knew her father, though, and it shocked her more to realize he was less angry than relieved, and not only to see her.

“There were a lot of them,” Draco deadpanned back.

“Oh, I’m certain there were,” her father retorted. “But God forbid you accept any help!”

“Help?” Now Draco scoffed. “Adding a whole fuck-ton of worry to my head that I’m going to get my in-laws killed isn’t my idea of ‘help,’ Mr. Granger. If you weren’t so bloody stubborn––”

“I’m stubborn?” Henry Granger said, outraged. “And now it’s ‘Mr. Granger’ again, is it? You think that’s going to make up for you leaving us there with that elf, dumping us off like we’re useless rubbish, like we didn’t have any stake in––”

“They were all crazy,” Draco cut in, a touch defensive now. “A bunch of crazy, dark wizards, high on muggle drugs your daughter fed them… and you wanted me to try and protect you in the middle of that? They were attacking one another! Throwing spells all over. There were werewolves! I was right to send you back, and you won’t get me to say I wasn’t!”

Hermione’s jaw loosened even more.

Henry folded his arms, but because she knew her father, she could tell he wasn’t really all that angry, even now. The lack of anger on him stunned her far more than the two of them yelling at one another. He looked instead like he was struggling between the impulse to hug both of them again, and maybe yell at Draco some more, just to make his point.

“Well, you’re alive at least, and so is she, so I suppose there’s that,” Henry said, as if that settled the matter. “You’re still an arrogant, stubborn, impossibly difficult young man––”

“Well, absolutely no one’s going to argue with you there,” Ginny drawled lightly, speaking up from her squashy armchair by the fireplace.

Hermione turned at Ginny’s smiling voice, and found what she should have expected to find––every single wizard and witch in the room staring at Draco and her father and listening to them argue with dumbfounded expressions on their faces. Every one of them wore the same expression she guessed she wore, as well––blank astonishment, their jaws loose, their expressions teetering between amusement and disbelief.

Only Ginny, Fred, and George… and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Neville… had given over to the humor side of things after their initial shock.

“I told you they’d be all right,” Nott offered, a little nervously.

Hermione blinked, then looked back at her parents.

The reality of what all of this meant slowly sank into her mind, and she realized how exhausted she must be that it took so long for her to get it.

“You were there… with him… all three of you… together…” Her words trailed, and her eyes stung as she looked between their three faces. All three of them looked uncomfortable now, Draco as much as her parents. They all look vaguely apologetic, too, and worried, in a way that made Hermione want to shake them.

She fought to clear her throat, and realized she still clung tightly to Draco’s arm, and had been, even while her father and him were nearly shouting.

“You were in the dungeons together?” she tried again. “Mum? Dad? You’ve been in Nott Manor… all this time? How…” she managed. “…How did that even happen?”

There was another silence after she spoke.

For a long-feeling few seconds, no one seemed willing to break it.