The Brightest Black - A Dramione Fanfic

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He was currently halfway through the paper.

She quickly flipped her Daily Prophet to where Creevy was and began reading.

Dark Mark Discovered!

By Shawn Woo

Aurors arrived at former Undersecretary Umbridge's house this afternoon to find a Dark Mark floating above her small retirement cottage. The inside of the cottage was only mussed by a half-eaten lunch in the kitchen. Aurors found no evidence of foul play outside of the Mark. Madam Umbridge appears to have disappeared without a trace.

Auror Shacklebolt gave an official statement declaring that the Ministry suspects He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as a likely culprit as the man has returned from the dead.

Something that former Minister Fudge desperately tried to deny, but current Minister Scrimgeour completely believes.

Please contact the Department of Magical Law Enforcement regarding any information on Madam Umbridge or Death Eaters.

That article, combined with the letter from Narcissa gave Hermione a strong sense of satisfaction, even if she was still put out at being robbed of true revenge on the nasty woman.

Some things were just not to be. Besides, she rather suspected Narcissa hadn't let the toad slip off to the next world too easily. And if Padfoot had helped at all it wouldn't have been a pretty sight.

Not that Hermione had wanted to kill her. Not in cold blood. She didn't want to become Bellatrix. But punishment? Leaving Umbridge to a terrible fate?

Entirely doable.

XXX

The changes at the Ministry were all anyone at Hogwarts talked about for the next week. That and Umbridge being gone. At first everyone seemed to give Hermione all the credit for ridding them of the toad, but she did her best to push credit off on Mclaggen and Creevy. They were the ones that had captured the evidence and brought it to Mcgonagall.

Harry kept his part in it entirely quiet, as did Draco. Harry felt as if he didn't deserve the spotlight and technically Draco had been wrong to stun Umbridge, though she suspected that no court would find him guilty of a crime. Not when Umbridge was accused of using an unforgivable at the time.

Still, it was better to stay quiet and be safe.

They were getting very good at staying quiet.

Outside of their short conversation about being 'More' they had said nothing about their change in relationship. No one else commented on it either.

She had been sure that when they walked into the Great Hall holding hands there would be questions, but the news from the Ministry had taken over everyone's minds. By the time people stopped talking about the Ministry they had all gotten so used to Hermione and Draco being inseparable that it was no more a topic of conversation than Ginny and Harry were.

It was rather relaxing, to tell the truth.

And she needed relaxing, because figuring out her own feelings was stressful enough without everyone else weighing on them.

She sighed and then jumped when a callused finger reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"A knut for your thoughts."

She gave Draco a smile and captured his hand, giving his fingers a light kiss even as she took comfort in the rough calluses he had from years of handling racing brooms. She didn't quite know why they were comforting, but she suspected it was due to Padfoot and Harry having similar calluses.