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Victim of the Fall	By : PrettyDesdemona Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 32762 -:- Recommendations : 5 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe or any of its characters. I do not make any money off this story. Only love!

Chapter List
- 32
- 33
- 34
CHAPTER 33

GREY

“What can I say, I’m wired this way and you’re wired to me. And what can I do but wallow in you unintentionally?”

“Draco?” she couldn’t handle it, couldn’t handle the fact that he was just standing there looking down at her. How could he be so calm? How could he not move? Hermione felt like if she was still for even a moment her heart would burst out of her chest and all over the room.

He didn’t respond to her. His face was flickering between many different emotions too quickly for Hermione to keep up. She stared up at him from her position on the floor, crouching over her beaded bag.

Slowly, he moved forward and knelt down in front of her. Hermione watched him as he dragged her beaded bag towards him and plunged his arm into it. He withdrew the box of the Zeitei Otrava and Bastet’s Line. He slid the box back under the couch before Hermione finally registered what he was doing. She flew forward, her hands closing around his wrists.

“Draco, what are you doing?!” she demanded furiously.

“We’re not going anywhere.” he responded, his voice low.

“What are you talking about?!” Hermione wrenched Bastet’s Line out of his hand, dropping it straight back into her bag. She stood, holding out her wand. “Accio Zeitei Otrava!”

The box zoomed out from under the couch and flew up into her hands where it immediately followed the book into the bag. She rounded on Draco again, slinging the strap over her shoulder.

He held his hands up in a placating gesture and when he spoke, his voice shook slightly. “Look… I know you want to go after the wand… But… Perhaps we could just, you know, forget about the memory. We could just… Just leave it.”

Hermione stared at him with wide eyes, her whole body finally stilling. “I don’t understand… You… You don’t want to do anything? You want to just stay here?”

He nodded.

“How?” she asked softly, her mind whirling in confusion, “How could we just forget about this? Voldemort might be back, Draco. We might be able to prevent another war!”

Hermione noticed him run his hand over the Dark Mark and her stomach began to churn.

“This is the Dark Lord, Hermione. We can’t do anything… We can’t help. You don’t know what he’s like.” he said, a hint of a plea in his voice. “There’s no hope.”

The room span for a moment and she felt like she might topple over. No hope? What did hope have to do with it? She’d never had hope before, but she’d continued to fight all the same, because she would not have been able to live with herself if she didn’t. Her life and the lives of her friends and family depended on it. And she’d do it all again if she had to, of course she would. But Draco was telling her not to, he was refusing to help her and for a moment, she couldn’t understand. But understanding evaded her for only a moment before she understood.

Hermione’s blood boiled and her vision blurred with rage. “WHAT?!” she screamed, raising her wand, “You have the chance to do something now and you’re backing out?! You finally have a chance to prove your loyalty and you’re just going to give in to him again?! Draco, you’re a death eater! You have the mark! He’ll call you and if you don’t come, he’ll kill you! Do you think you can outrun him?!”

He didn’t answer and with a gut wrenching stab of despair, she understood.

“You’d go, wouldn’t you?” she asked in a hollow voice, “If he calls you, you’re going answer the call, aren’t you?”

After a long moment, he nodded.

Hermione let out a howl of rage and flung the coffee table that lay between them out of the way with a catastrophic crash. Draco cringed and she could see the tears in his eyes.

“I TRUSTED YOU!!!” she screamed as she planted her hands on his bare chest and pushed with all her might. He stumbled backwards and fell to the floor. Hermione towered over him. “I THOUGHT YOU’D CHANGED! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!” she dropped to her knees, so that she was straddling his body as her fists lashed out at every exposed part of him. His arms rose to protect his face.

“I’m sorry, Hermione! I’m sorry!” he sobbed from underneath his arms.

“I don’t care! I don’t fucking care!!” with one last crashing blow to the side of his head, Hermione pushed off him and stumbled backwards, her hand resting over her heart.

It was worse than Ron. The pain was astronomical, incomprehensible. This was betrayal. Draco had betrayed her.

He clambered to his feet and she was filled with a fierce satisfaction at seeing the blood pouring from a cut over his eye. His hands were held out pleadingly but all she wanted to do was break every single one of his fingers.

“I’m sorry!” he sobbed again, “I don’t want to! I don’t want to do it! But you don’t know what he’s like! You don’t know what he’s capable of!”

She backed away from him, towards the door, “What do you think he'll do, Draco?! You think he’ll spare me? Think he’ll look kindly on our relationship? I AM A MUDBLOOD! I’d be better off walking of the astronomy tower!”

“I could… I could talk to him… I could try…”

Hermione gave a loud, hysterical laugh, “And you think he’ll listen?!” she said incredulously but then, her voice lowered suddenly, all the fight dying from her body as the pain crushed against her diaphragm, “You are unrescuable. I can’t help you. And I won’t stand here and wait to be murdered just because of your cowardice.”

He didn’t respond but his face crumpled and fell into his hands. For a few moments, the room was overtaken by a soul crushing silence as the two of them stood, facing one another, yet again on opposite sides. Only this time, that fact tore Hermione’s heart into tiny, sharp little pieces.

Them lying in bed together, intertwined and in love felt like years ago. All their problems felt like nothing compared to this. The war felt far more real than it had in almost a year and Hermione knew that she was now the only one that could stop the third coming, only she had the information that might save the wizarding world. The only person holding her back was the man she thought she’d loved, the man she’d thought she could trust.

“I’m leaving.” she said finally, her voice shaking, “I don’t want you to be here when I come back. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

“Hermione, please…” he begged.

She cut him off. “Don’t forget who I am, Draco. Don’t forget what I mean to the wizarding world, what I will mean after I have defeated Voldemort again. If I ever spy you, even out of the corner of my eye, I will make sure you are put straight into Azkaban with your worthless, death eater parents.”

And with that, she turned around, laid her hand on the doorknob, opened the door and walked through it. With a crash and an air of finality, it closed behind her. She didn’t stop to listen, to see what Draco would do, didn’t wait to see if he followed her.

She had more important things to worry about now.

Hermione tore down the spiral staircase and left Flourish and Blotts at a sprint. The faces of the shops in Diagon Alley flew past her as the night air whipped away the tears that cascaded down her face.

For some reason, she didn’t feel shocked. She kind of thought she should have been but the feeling just wasn’t present in her mind. She knew now that she’d been right about him from the beginning and being the better person, following everyone else’s advice had only allowed her to get her heart stomped on. She hadn’t trusted him when she’d arrived at Hogwarts. She’d said she would never be friends with a Death Eater.

That was until she stopped classifying him in her mind as a Death Eater.

Oh, what a stupidly catastrophic mistake.

As usual, he could talk the talk, but he couldn’t walk the walk. Like a typical Slytherin, he was willing to do just about anything to keep himself safe. She’d thought he was better than that. She’d been able to understand his cowardice before, Voldemort had the might of the ministry behind him before, not to mention his hordes of death eaters, werewolves, giants and Dementors. But now it was just Harry. Just Harry. One person. And still Draco’s fear prevailed and stopped him from doing the right thing.

Hermione reached the Leaky Cauldron. For a moment, she could only stand there and stare at the faded brick wall of the pub.

She decided then, when her mind was on the brink of collapse, that she would allow herself three minutes, only three, to feel her hurt.

Her hands curled around her stomach as her mouth opened in a silent scream. She doubled over, her head dipped towards the ground. She felt like she wanted to die and not just because of what Draco had done, of what he’d said, but because a tiny part of her wanted to go back home and get back into bed with him. She wanted to try his plan, to see if it worked. Maybe she could die for him if the Dark Lord didn’t listen to his pleas… Maybe she’d be happy with that. At least she’d have him. She wanted to be able to forget about the memory. She wanted it desperately.

But she knew she wasn’t capable of that, because she wouldn’t be the only one to die. What would happen to the rest of the tovarasi? To Harry? To Ron? What would happen to Draco? He’d be back to murdering, torturing, controlling, and bowing down. He’d be broken as surely as Harry was.

Suddenly, Hermione was confronted by a stunningly vivid premonition of what her future might look like at the feet of Voldemort. Draco would become Lucius; Voldemort would make sure of that. And if he did listen to Draco’s pleas and spared her, she would have to spend every day staring into the face of someone who’d once been her best friend, knowing that he was gone. She’d be used to breed more death eaters. She and Draco would have to be obedient, complacent. They’d have to do whatever the dark lord told them to do. Draco would be destroyed. She could almost see the tattered shreds of his soul if she entered his mind then, from all the killing he’d be forced to do, to watch. Perhaps he’d even have to murder her in the end…

Hermione took a deep breath and straightened. In a way, she knew Draco was lost to her. She’d known it the moment he’d told her to stay behind. But she could still save him. She could still make sure he didn’t have to live the kind of life he’d resigned himself too. Even if it meant that she’d never touch him again, or talk with him again. She could still insure his happiness.

Hermione turned on the spot.

When she arrived at Hogsmeade station moments later, she was not in the least bit shocked to see them running down the road when she apparated into Hogsmeade station.

Of course, the tovarasi would have felt it. All of it. And there they all were, with startlingly reliability, sprinting towards her, a dark mass against the road. Hermione jogged past the Hogwarts boundaries to meet them. When she converged with the group, she noticed most of them had tear tracks running down their faces.

She found for a minute, that she could not say anything at all. They were all looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to drop the bombshell but the words continued to stick in her throat.

Eventually, Juliet spoke up, her voice low and urgent. “Is Draco ok?”

Hermione nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again. “He’s… He’s…” she stuttered as her voice faltered over and over again. She couldn’t tell them about Draco. She just couldn’t say it.

“What? What is it, Hermione?” asked Ginny.

Hermione decided that there was more important news to impart. She looked her right in Ginny’s eyes and said, in one breath, “I know what’s wrong with Harry.”

The younger girl visibly started, all the fire in her aura seemed to go out and Hermione caught Blaise throwing her a sharp look.

Ginny moved forwards until she was right in front of Hermione, the look in her eyes sheer desperation. “How?” she asked quietly.

Hermione took a deep breath and stared around at her friends through the darkness. She realised then that she would have to share her secret with the tovarasi now, there was no avoiding it. They needed to know. They needed to hear it from the beginning. Her hands shook and her throat felt like it was about to close up but she pushed all those feelings away. Finally, after all that time, she found her determination, her resilience.

“Last year, Draco and I began experimenting with Dividing Line magic.” she said, her voice firm and authoritative. Many of the group gasped while the others merely looked confused. Hermione did not waste time filling them in as to what the magic involved and continued after only a short pause. “We managed to acquire the recipe for a very rare potion called the Zeitei Otrava, a potion that would allow us to physically see our own magic. We brewed it on New Year’s Eve and a few days later, we took it. But after that… After a while we stopped our research. We got distracted.” She shifted uncomfortably, knowing what that distraction had been, knowing what it had felt like… She pressed on, “Last night, we took it again. And we discovered that we were able to move into each other’s minds, we could see each other’s thoughts. When I entered Draco’s I found a blockage that I knew to be a memory charm and when the effects of the potion wore off, I undid it. We… We discovered it had been cast by Bellatrix Lestrange in order to prevent Draco from remembering a conversation he had overhead between her and Voldemort. It was a conversation about the Horcruxes.” again, she did not elaborate, trusting that the group would understand, “As you know, the diary, the locket, the cup, the snake, the diadem, the ring, and the piece of soul inside Harry were all destroyed. But Voldemort had one more Horcrux that we did not know about. His wand.”

At this, Ginny let out a small groan and brought her hands up to her face. Hermione looked at her and said, “Harry has been using Voldemort’s wand.”

It wasn’t a question but Ginny nodded and Hermione wanted to hit her just for neglecting to pass on that one piece of vital information. After a moment, she tore her eyes away from her young friend and looked around at the rest of the group.

“Harry must be found. The wand must be destroyed. I don’t think I need to tell you what might happen if it isn’t. Harry hasn’t murdered anyone yet, for all we know the worst he has done has been to kidnap me. This leads me to believe that there may be a small part of him still rebelling. But who knows how long that will last, who knows how long he will be able to fight off Voldemort’s strength.” she stared down at her hands then, the firmness falling away from her voice. “I… I don’t expect any of you to come with me. I know it will be dangerous. I don’t want to put any of you in danger. But I have to do it. I have to find him.”

She looked around at her friends and felt her heart ache just a little. Every single one of them looked shocked and scared, of course, but underneath that was a glowing determination.

“What do we need to do?” asked Isobel, resolutely.

“Find Harry but… But first,” she looked at Ginny again, “We have to find Ron. He needs to know. He’ll want to help.”

And though Hermione had felt for a long time that she no longer knew Ron, that he was someone foreign to her, she felt in her heart that he would help, that he wouldn’t sit by and let his best friend’s do battle against one another.

“Alright.” said Luna, “Let’s go then.”

“To the Burrow?” asked Susan.

Hermione nodded. “To the Burrow.” she turned around to walk back towards the Hogwarts boundaries, noting the footsteps that followed her.

“Wait!” said Padma suddenly. “Where’s Draco?”

Hermione turned back towards them again, her heart hurting more than ever because she knew that she couldn’t lie to them, that she had to tell them what had become of their comrade. That he was lost.

“He chose the other side.” she said, and for the first time, her voice cracked painfully.

The faces of the group all paled visibly as they stared at her in silence, the backdrop of Hogwarts hanging behind them.

“Oh, Hermione…” said Ginny softly, her voice laced with pain.

“Don’t.” Hermione bit out. “It’s my fault really. I should have… I should have known. I should never have trusted him.” Her fists clenched tightly as she tried to swallow the hurt, the memory. “Come on…”

She made to continue walking back towards Hogsmeade station but Isobel spoke and stopped her, Hermione could see the shadow of tears in her eyes.

“No.” she said firmly.

“What?” Hermione demanded, beginning to become frustrated by these persistent delays, “We don’t have time for this! If we’re going to do this, we must go now!”

“No!” said Isobel again. “I don't believe it! I don’t believe Draco would do that!”

“Well he did, alright!” shouted Hermione, barely aware that her voice had risen. “I asked him if he’d return to him should Voldemort call and he confirmed it! He’d leave us for him!”

Isobel fell silent and Hermione stared around at the rest of the tovarasi, bathed in the moonlight, as if daring them to defy her.

“But… Maybe he didn’t mean it…” said Juliet slowly.

Hermione scoffed, “Didn’t mean it?! Is that how gullible you all are?!”

“He’s probably just scared, Hermione.” said Blaise lowly.

“Yeah! Like he’s always been! The poor, scared little Death Eater! Notice how he never really owned the things he did, Blaise?! It was always Voldemort who made him, his parents who indoctrinated him! He never said he did those things because he believed in it, did he? Did he?!” she demanded, her voice shrill and hysterical. “I gave him the chance to prove his loyalty! I asked him to come and he said NO!”

None of them said anything to this.

Hermione continued, her voice savage and unforgiving, “If he had any faith in us, any faith in me, he would have come! But instead, he let me leave to face Voldemort on my own! Knowing that I might be tortured, knowing that I might be killed and knowing that the same fate might befall all of you! He betrayed us! After everything he’s said, everything he’s done, we can now say with absolute confidence that he would rather kneel at the feet of that mass murderer than save any one of us!”

She stared around at her friends blindly, knowing that every single thing she’d said had been true, even if she didn’t want to believe it. Even if it crushed her under its weight.

After a long moment, Luna sighed as if in resignation and said, “So where do we go from here?”

Hermione was about to speak but Isobel interrupted her, “I’d like to go and speak to Draco and I think Blaise should come with me.” she said, staring at Hermione in open defiance.

“Fine.” Hermione responded coldly, a tiny whisper of fear lacing through her blood. What if Isobel chose the other side too? What if Blaise did?

“Should we tell McGonagall and Teodora?” asked Susan, interrupting her thoughts.

Hermione nodded reluctantly, tearing her eyes away from Isobel. “Absolutely. Susan, you and Juliet tell McGonagall. Padma, Eli and Luna, you can tell Teodora. Try not to go into too much detail about the Dividing Line magic with McGonagall if you can avoid it. But Teodora knows. All of you return to my flat once you’re done. If they wish to come, let them. Ginny, you and I can go to the Burrow.”

Ginny nodded meekly and the group split in two without another word, Susan, Juliet, Eli, Padma and Luna all running back up towards the castle while Hermione, Isobel, Ginny and Blaise set off towards Hogsmeade station at a jog.

They skidded to a halt on the platform and gave each other curt nods of farewell, but just as they were about to apparate to their separate destinations, Hermione seized Isobel’s arm and forced the younger girl to look at her.

“If he’s there when I get back, I’ll fucking blind him.” she snarled viciously, the fear of what she felt was Isobel’s imminent betrayal seeping through her mind agonisingly.

Both Isobel and Blaise looked stricken and truly scared at this statement and Ginny gasped but Hermione ignored them. She released Isobel and grasped Ginny’s hand, turning them both into darkness.

It was the smell that undid her. One second she was standing on a windy hilltop looking down at the darkened Burrow, the next, she was one her hands and knees. The scent of the grass, the earth, the fresh air… it was as if she’d never left, as if the darkness and grief in her mind had never gone away. Her heart hurt.

“Hermione?! Are you ok?” asked Ginny urgently, kneeling down beside her and resting a hand on her back.

Hermione nodded stiffly. “Yeah… I just… I hate this. I hate all of it.” suddenly, she was sobbing, and Ginny was hugging her, sinking down to sit beside her on the ground. They sat together in the grass, arms wrapped tightly around each other, the familiar scent burning throughout Hermione’s body along with the heartbreaking grief. All the urgency of her mission seemed to bleed out of her.

“I know…” said Ginny softly, staring down at the house. “It’s strange isn’t it? There were those few weeks after the final battle and it all just felt… like it was going to be ok. Like we were going to be alright. Now… It feels almost stupid that we ever thought that…”

Hermione nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.” she said thickly and she did, she’d felt that way for months and months. She suddenly realised then, that Ginny probably had too, if there were anyone who knew almost exactly how she’d been feeling since she left the Burrow, it probably would have been Ginny. Perhaps that’s why they never really talked, not because there was too much history, but because they knew exactly what the other was going through, and couldn’t hide behind any of the pretence because they knew each other well enough to see through it.

Hermione sighed through her tears, “I don’t want to do this again, Ginny. I want it to be up to… Someone else…”

“Me too.” said Ginny sadly, “But this is what we are, Hermione. The war made us the best people to deal with this stuff. Why do you think McGonagall and Teodora spearheaded the concept of the tovarasi? Because we’re the best people for it. All of us.”

“But Harry and Ron should have been there too. They should have been part of the tovarasi too.” Hermione said with a sniff.

“I know.” Ginny responded quietly.

They sat like that for a while. Hermione knew that they should have been running down to the Burrow, she knew that every moment they spent sitting on the hill was a moment wasted, that with every passing second, Harry might be getting further and further beyond their help but she just could not bring herself to move. She needed that. She needed to just sit and be hugged by the one person who understood what she was feeling.

After few long minutes, Hermione pulled her head off Ginny’s shoulder and wiped the tears off her cheeks with the sleeve of her jumper.

“Ginny, how are we going to find Ron?” she asked thickly. The question had been playing on her mind ever since she’d seen the memory.

To her surprise, the younger woman shifted uncomfortably. “We don’t need to find him. He’s here.”

“What?!” Hermione hissed, “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“Because I thought if I did you wouldn’t come!” Ginny hissed back. “He sent me an owl a few days ago. Don’t ask me why he came back, he didn’t tell me.”

Hermione’s head dropped into her arms and she groaned, her heart beating a taboo on her diaphragm. “Oh god… I’m so not ready for this…”

“Just remember why we’re here, Hermione.” said Ginny firmly and, to Hermione’s alarm, she stood up, brushing the grass off her ass and legs. “Wait here. I’ll go and get Ron. I don’t want to wake mum. She’ll freak out if she cottons on to any of this…”

Hermione nodded and Ginny strode away, down the hill, leaving her alone.

From the moment the younger woman disappeared into the house, Hermione could not take her eyes off the back door, waiting for the tall, familiar silhouette to emerge from the depths of the house.

She spent many minutes lost in her own thoughts as she stared down at the Burrow. She felt strangely calmed by the slight wind shifting the grass around her; it was stilling her frayed nerves. The sound of it, the feel of it on her skin all served to sooth her only slightly. But any soothing was welcome to her at that point.

It was like her emotions had compartmentalised themselves, divided equally between what she felt for Draco, what she felt for Ron, and what she felt for Harry. Each and every one of them included fear and sadness, but each had its own specific brand of the feeling. She was surprised to note that, all in all, she felt remarkably calm. Her Gryffindor courage was certainly showing its strength that night. For the first time in quite a while, she did not feel out of control or on the brink of a panic attack. Sure, her hands were shaking and her heart was beating like she’d just run to London and back, but she felt like all of this was ok, like it was normal. She was running on adrenalin.

It was like her whole body was poised for a fight, like she was ready for war.

And it must have been this instinct alone that had kicked in at that moment, torn her eyes away from the Burrow and caused her to leap to her feet. In one movement she whipped out her wand and swiftly cast a powerful shield charm around where she was standing.

She could have sworn she heard the sound of grass crunching under someone’s foot right behind her. The wind might have been blowing in her ears but the sound was unmistakable.

Hermione wheeled around on the spot, her eyes boring through the darkness for any sign of a shadow, her ears straining to hear any further sound to confirm she was not alone on the dark hilltop. She needed that confirmation. She craved it.

But there was nothing, no sign of anyone and all she could think of right then was that Harry had an invisibility cloak. The thought of him standing there, watching her turn on the spot, made her blood run cold.

“Harry?” she called out on a whim. She couldn’t just stand there and wait.

It was almost more chilling that she received no reply. For some reason, she was absolutely convinced that she wasn’t alone.

“Harry, if you can hear me, we’re going to fix this ok? We love you…” the wind whipped her words away.

“Hermione?” a voice called from behind her and she wheeled around to see Ron and Ginny approaching her at a run.

Suddenly a bright stream of light cracked and screamed against her shield charm, causing Hermione to start jarringly. She turned in the direction the spell had come from but she could not see anything.

Ron and Ginny thundered to a halt beside her and all three of them turned around and around, wands out, trying to see into the night. Another spell hit the shield, now from the opposite direction and all Hermione could think about was why Harry wasn’t trying to kill them. He could have disintegrated the shield charm in moments if he’d wanted to and he knew as well as she did that it wouldn’t stop any Unforgivables… But he wasn’t doing any of that. Briefly, that thought that perhaps it wasn’t Harry filtered through her mind, but she dashed it instantly. She felt in her guts that it was him. Suddenly, an idea occurred to her.

“Wait!” called Hermione to the other two, “It’s a warning! He’s trying to get us to leave!”

She didn’t know where the thought had come from but for some reason, she knew she was right. He’d had ample opportunity to kill them, to hurt them, and he hadn’t done it. It was the only other option…

But whatever control he had, he wouldn’t keep it for long. She knew they had to get away.

“What about Mum and Dad and…?” cried Ron.

“He won’t go near them!” Hermione cut across him.

“How do you know?!” he demanded.

“I just do!” she snapped, shrieking as another spell smacked into the shield, “Come on! We have to go!”

Ron seemed reluctant to move until Ginny cried, “We’ll send the Aurors back to check on them, alright? Trust me, Ron! Please!”

After a tense moment, he nodded.

“Hold on to me!” said Hermione, offering him her hand. After a brief look that lasted about a tenth of a second, he complied. She felt Ginny grasp onto her shoulder.

Hermione dispersed the shield charm and disapparated.

The still silence that greeted them when they apparated into the courtyard out the back of the Leaky Cauldron seemed almost alien compared to the fizzing of spells and the whipping wind back at the Burrow.

Hermione immediately dropped Ron’s hand and set off down the street at a sprint. She could hear the pounding footsteps of the other two following behind her.

As they approached Flourish and Blotts, Hermione was relieved to see light flooding out onto her balcony from her living room and a sizeable group of people moving around inside. The tovarasi had done their job.

She burst through the doors to the shop, raced into the storage room and pounding up the stairs with Ron and Ginny in tow. The front door of her flat opened before they reached it and Hermione flew into her living room.

She did not waste time looking around the room to see who was present, though at first glance it appeared to be not only the tovarasi but also an entire battalion of Aurors. Her eyes found McGonagall.

“Harry was at the Burrow. The Weasleys might be in danger.” she said breathlessly.

McGonagall looked to her left and Hermione almost gave a cry of shock to see Kingsley Shacklebolt emerge from the group. He nodded gruffly at the congregation of Aurors. Four broke ranks and raced out of her flat, no doubt headed for the Burrow.

“Would someone please tell me what the bloody hell is going on?” exclaimed Ron from behind her and Hermione turned to finally look at him.

If it were possible, he seemed almost taller than she remembered. His hair had grown out a little and he had the half shaven, grubby look of someone who had just returned from a very long holiday. She was so unbelievably grateful for his presence in that moment that all she wanted to do was hug him.

“There’s an eighth Horcrux.” said Hermione instead, “Voldemort’s wand. Harry has it. It’s possessing him.”

“How do you know?” asked Ron and Hermione cringed. She’d been hoping to avoid that question.

“That would be because of me.” said a voice from behind her and Hermione wheeled around. She hadn’t noticed him before, but there he was, leaning in the doorway of her bedroom with Auror Watson hovering behind him.

Hermione’s vision quite literally blurred with rage. She couldn’t believe that Isobel had done that to her, that she’d allowed him to stay. The younger girl was standing a little to his left, looking at Hermione defiantly.

She knew that she should have been more mature in the moment, that there were more important matters at hand, but she quite simply could not hold onto her fury. Her hand found her wand and several members of the room gasped in shock.

“What did I say?” she snarled at Isobel. “Why is he here?!”

Isobel looked warily at Hermione’s wand and crossed her arms. “I think you should listen to him, Hermione.”

“Fuck that.” said Hermione bluntly. Her wand arm rose, pointing directly at Draco but Ron grasped her arm and wrenched it back down, stepping in front of her and obscuring her view.

“Hermione, what are you doing?” he asked quietly, looking at her as if he’d never met her before.

“I’m going to torture that little death eater shit until he squeals.” she growled.

Ron visibly balked. “Ok, you and I need to have a talk. Come on.”

He grasped her arm and, ignoring the protests of the rest of the room’s inhabitants, dragged her past Draco and into the bedroom.

The door slammed closed behind them.

A/N Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter to you lovelies! I went on a coast trip that was supposed to be two days and ended up being a week. All the same is was... Breathtaking. Mind blowing. Expect better writing from here on out!! And I'll be back to posting regularly from now on. Only 7 chapters left!! Eep!

Much love and light,

Desdemona.

tabitoo - Wow, go you! Nail on the head with that review! Nice work! Thanks so much :)

Kain - Hehe well, I'm glad you liked the twist!! Love to you, as always, and I hope you liked this one just as much!!

DionysianDust - Thank you so much, what a beautiful review! I hope you like where it goes :D

Aranel - Oh my god, I love that song! Brilliant. Really. It made me cry. xx

Vrrtak - Thanks so much! Hope you like where it's going :)

Cat - I can't think of much to say to your review honestly lol. You pretty much got it all in one! Thanks, as always, for the love :D

Green_Eyed_Mist - Lol that's the idea! Hopefully, I'll have my own books out there soon too! Thanks so much, lovely.

DeliriousMuse - Wow. Your review was beautiful. I actually read it aloud to a group of my friends and I got all teary. For now, I'm going to keep writing fanfiction, but I hope that one day you'll be able to read some of my original work!! xx

The quote at the beginning of this chapter is from Ani Difranco's song Grey. Her music has served as a huge inspiration for this piece. I own nothing. Thanks Ani!
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Victim of the Fall