Day: 1296; Hour: 20
Hermione's eyes are drooping in exhaustion as she struggles to stay awake. She has had too many thoughts that she needed to sort through last night to be able to sleep. Ron had just left yesterday afternoon, and though she knows it is not a time to hold grudges over stupid things, she can't help but keep thinking about the things he said. She is still hurt, and still angry, but she can be those things after the war, and not now -- this is the whole reason she came back after her walk to talk to Ron and ignore the fact that anything was even said.
She needs to get it all off her chest though, for the sake of sleeping. Hermione knows that he will not want to hear it, but she knows he will listen anyway, because he always does.
"I feel like I haven't done my part in the war. I participate, but not like I did in the beginning. I've been feeling like I haven't done as much as I should be. That I should be with Harry and Ron, as I've always been."
She doesn't think he will answer at first, his head still down and reading, and his expression the same as before she started talking. He surprises her though, sighing, and opening his mouth to give in.
"Just because you haven't been with them, doesn't mean you haven't participated. You should know that just by remembering what's happened to you." He scratches his forehead. "Your intelligence really is overrated."
"I know I've participated, but I don't know if it's been enough."
"Granger, you do realize that they were on a Horcrux search team? That they have maybe had a handful of duels with Death Eaters since they left? That the whole reason Potter was pulled out was to keep him safe, and so he couldn't have been in that many dangerous situations? If you look at it for the facts, I'm sure you can deduce that you've likely done more than them in this war."
"Finding the Horcruxes is more important than battles. If we don't find them, we could lose every battle we fight for all that it's worth."
"The battles are just as important, if not more so. If we don't bring them down, and if we don't have our victories, Potter will be out of luck anyway. And who is to say that what you've done isn't enough? No one gets to say that. You're here. That's enough."
"I just... I feel so far from them now. I've always been right with them. Now Ron acts as if I can't relate because I haven't been."
"Then he's obviously the one that can't relate," he drawls. "Maybe, Granger, it's time for you to stop judging your worth by how much other people need you."
She pauses, looking up at him as he continues reading the paper as if he hasn't come upon a revelation about her life and who she is, that no one else seems to have grasped. Perhaps he's just known it all along -- like it is common knowledge when it comes to who she is.
She does need people to need her, and to count on her for things. This is the way she finds acceptance in the world. She depends on other people's dependence -- for her skills, her smarts, her friendship. She has always judged her productivity and her importance by this.
"But that's the world. Our connections with people. That's the measure of our lives. Of who we are and what we leave behind."
"But connection is based on need? A person can walk out of your life forever tomorrow, and that doesn't mean you haven't changed or connected to that person any less. You'll always be a part of their life; they'll always remember you. Just because they don't need you to get yourself killed for them, doesn't mean they won't remember how much they cared or care for you."
"But they need you in the first place in order to build that connection."
"No. They want you around, and that's how a connection begins. Potter and Weasley, or any of your other mates, aren't going to stop wanting you around just because they don't need you anymore."
She shrugs, rubbing her face. "I guess."
"Speaking of need, however," he raises his mug, thrusting it toward the coffee pot and then at her, "coffee?"
"Get it yourself, lazy git." She is trying to build up the energy to walk to bed, let alone to find it within herself to get him coffee.
"Granger," he sounds exasperated, "we're building a connection here. I even sat here politely, and responded to your melodrama. Which is far more taxing than getting me a cup of coffee. Do you really want to ruin it?"
He smirks, cup still extended toward her and his eyebrows raised. He looks smug, as if he has gotten her to do it, but she knows he won't.
"By not getting you a cup of coffee?"
"Yes."
"Then, yes." He glowers now, and she smirks. "Nice try though, using my words against me like that."
"Of course. I was a Slytherin, after all."
"Still are, devious prat."
"Insufferable wench." She shakes her head, standing from the table and leaving for her room. "Hey, coffee?"
"You would have better luck getting a house-elf."
Day: 1303; Hour: 5
There is a rumor going around about her sleeping with Ron during his visit. She had never thought seeking privacy for conversation in a bedroom with him would have amounted to so much gossip. Though she and Ron have always been a rumored item, and spending the entire night behind a closed door is definitely fuel for the fodder.
It isn't until she hears about the rumor herself that she wonders if it's the reason behind Malfoy ignoring her for the past three days.
Day: 1306; Hour: 14
"I think the duel is coming up soon," Mandy Brocklehurst tells her and Lavender over the cup of her butterbeer.
"Why?" Lavender leans in, and Hermione can practically see her ears twitching with excitement of new things to tell other people.
"Ron. There was just something about him while he was here."
"What?" Hermione asks this time.
"It kept feeling like... like he was here to say goodbye."
Day: 1308; Hour: 17
She confronts Malfoy when she finally gets him alone, and there is a lot of yelling on her part, and a lot of walking away by him. When she finally has him riled up enough about it, she is still somehow unprepared for the way in which he takes it out on her, though she can't say she's unhappy about it.
I haven't been with Ron, you dolt. I haven't even kissed him in years! And this seems to be all he had to know, because he was on her then.
He takes her against the wall, his palm braced beside her head, and his hips snapping as he sinks into her again, and again. She tries to tell him that something like this always happens when he ignores her, and so he should just stop. He seems to make out enough of what she means to say through her constant moaning and panting, because he tells her that if this is what happens when he ignores her, he really sees no reason to stop.
Day: 1312; Hour: 15
Hermione has dinner at the Burrow with most the Weasleys' present, and a handful of friends. Lupin looks strained, but relaxes when Tonks finally shows up, breaking a vase five seconds after she walks in. Fred tries to make biscuits, failing miserably with the trash bin full of burnt bread -- he does emerge with four survivors, though no one eats them out of trepidation. Bill and Charlie pick on him relentlessly, and Hermione finds it funny watching Fred being teased by his older brothers, when it is usually Fred and George doing it to Ron and Ginny. McGonagall is more relaxed than Hermione has ever seen her, and the house is warm, and the food pleasant.
She sleeps beside Ginny in her bed that night, and confesses everything. Ginny understands, it seems, albeit in a distant way that comes with being removed from the situation and not knowing much about the Malfoy that Hermione knows. She asks her if it's just a temporary thing, if it's just something that helps for now, and when Hermione cannot find a truthful answer, it scares them both.
Day: 1316; Hour: 9
She spends two and a half days alone with Malfoy, and the lack of television and books is cause for more conversation than he probably likes. He concedes though, likely from her persistence and his own boredom. She learns small things about his childhood that she tries not to think of in a negative light, and she tells him about hers. They talk about everything that seems safe, and then things that they shouldn't if they don't want to anger the other -- so they argue a lot as well.
But it feels productive, once she leaves the house, because she is no longer unsure of topics she should broach, and she no longer minds the silence around him anymore either. That slight awkwardness that was always set into her whenever she was around him is gone now, and his presence is comforting in a complete way that she hasn't ever felt with anyone but her parents and her two best friends. It should scare her a little that she is getting so close to someone who she should be cautionary with her heart around, but she thinks it's too much of a good thing for that.
Day: 1319; Hour: 8
She delivers a package to what looks like a small hut in the middle of the countryside, but is magically enlarged to hold nearly fifty children and a staff of caretakers. She spends a week playing with the kids and doing what she can to help the sick and injured ones. There is a strain of sadness but a pull of hope both, and it is in these days that she comes to the decision on what she wants to do with her life once the war is over.
Madame Pomfrey, an old and comforting face at the orphanage, offers her an internship when she is able, and Hermione readily accepts. It is what she is meant to do, she thinks -- help people.
"Come back when you can."
"I will. Thank you." Hermione grins, hugging the Healer, and leaves with a purpose.
Day: 1333; Hour: 11
"I thought you were dead."
His face pulls down in confusion and something else - which could be anything, considering who he is. "Why?"
She thinks of the piece of paper, like a picture in her mind, and the date and town scrawled across it. About how she was at Grimmauld yesterday when she found out how badly the mission went, and how McGonagall said that all the survivors were there -- and she had not seen Draco. She also thinks of how he is about privacy, and trust, and how very much he would hate it if he knew she had looked at his personal things. Even if they had been all out in the open.
"I don't know." She shrugs, lowers her head and looks up at him, and it's a horrible lie.
Even if it were a better one, he would probably still see right through it. He looks at her now like she has seen him look at Pansy when even Hermione knew she had been lying. He gives her that look for a good five seconds before he looks away all together. He drops all the questions he could bother asking her about it, but she figures he knows it's pointless. After all, he's alive, isn't he? And that is the point. Is the only thing that matters.
Day: 1333; Hour: 23
He rolls them over, and she sits up in confusion, meeting his eyes as he looks up at her. He licks his lips, reaching to grab her hips and pull her up, pushing her back down. She presses a hand to his chest, moaning, her confusion lost under the pull of sensation. She moves with him, and once he is done showing her the rhythm that he wants, he leaves her hips for her breasts.
She experiments, any embarrassment she would normally feel replaced with just her need and curiosity, and she switches angles and speed until she has found all the ones he likes and that she likes as well. She arches her back, grinding into him and biting her lip.
"Yes, Granger," he breathes. "Yes, just like that."
And she finds that she likes this, being above him. Being the one in the position of power and control. He must see it by the look on her face because he smiles, raising his hips, and she runs her hands up his chest and sinks down onto him again.
Day: 1340; Hour: 10
Hermione slams the frying pan down on the burner, gripping the knob hard to turn it on. She would rip the entire thing off if the fact that all the others were already off didn't make her frustrated all the time.
"Did I do something?" Anthony questions tentatively, and Hermione's laugh is fake and aggravated.
"What? You? No. No. It was this... this arrogant, snarky asshole--"
"Talking about me then, Granger?"
She growls, though later she will think of the adjectives that made him think so, and laugh about it. "Does everyone have a complex today? Think the world revolves around them?"
"So, I take it something is pretty wrong." Anthony hesitates.
"No. No, nothing is wrong. Everything is perfectly alright, because I'm going to die soon. That's why everything is fine. I'm in the hands of a professional, you know, so I'm sure I will die in a very professional sort of way!"
She yanks open the refrigerator door, letting it smack against the counter, and Anthony winces before he speaks again. "Is this about a mission?"
"It's about Dooms Day, is what it's about."
"Why don't you rewrite it, like we've been doing?" She spins to face Anthony, his hand gesturing toward Malfoy.
Malfoy usually gets the duty of planning every mission he is on, but lately he has become the unofficial strategist of nearly everyone else's missions as well. It is a little known fact among them that if they want a good strategy, they only need to come to him. He usually does it when asked, as long as he isn't busy and depending on who is asking. Hermione has a feeling it isn't just because he's one of the best out of those who don't mind changing the mission plan, but people ask him more for the reason that if one of them were to get busted for it, they would prefer for it to be him. Anyone who asked him had the honor of owing him a favor, which in the Malfoy universe could turn out to be absolutely anything, but somehow dying was harder than owing Malfoy after Hogwarts.
The notebook he carries with him is down to just a couple dozen pages, because he rips them out when he is done with them. She remembers seeing him in the backyard once, balls of paper lit on fire and flying around in the grass like fairies, and dark grey smoke and ash rising with the wind and staining his clothes and skin.
"Because I can't. Because this damn Auror made sure we all left when he did, and told us quite clearly that there would be no other plans made. And I have no way of getting a hold of everyone to let them know what the plan is, even if I did come up with one! So, we're screwed. We're all just... ah!"
Hermione is too angry to stay in one spot, so she storms from the kitchen, leaving Anthony to stare after her and slowly turn the burner off.
Later, when she is less hostile but far from calm, a tremble in her chest from her trepidation, she is startled from her thoughts by a loud sigh and a flash of blond hair. He grunts and curses under his breath, muttering complaints about furniture and the people who created it as he lugs the other couch up to the coffee table. He lets out a pent up breath, slightly flushed, and plops back into the couch.
He eyes her as he reclines back, shifting for a comfortable spot, with all the air of a king. She blinks and looks back down to the book she has been pretending to read for the past hour.
"Do you know what drives a revolution, Granger?"
"Heart."
"I guess that's another way to put it. I would say willingness. The willingness to risk and sacrifice everything in hopes of gaining something you feel you cannot live without. Your life, your rights, your possessions, family -- whatever. The willingness to deal with the repercussions of your revolt that come with both the failure of it and the success of it."
She closes her book and sets it down on the couch beside her, looking across at him, unsure what if this is a speech or a conversation. She doesn't know what to reply with, accept to agree perhaps, but that feels lame on her tongue.
"It takes a lot of strength and a lot of bravery to be willing to deal with the fallout. But to take the risk, means the risk is worth it. Are you willing to deal with the fallout, Granger?"
"What fallout?"
"Your mission."
"I-- What exactly are you getting at?"
"Are you willing to come up with another plan for the possible sake of your lives?"
"I... can't. Even if I was, there's no way to come up with a plan."
"You."
"Me?"
"Yes," he answers slowly. "You can think, can't you?"
"Malfoy, I can't plan this sort of mission. I'm... There's better people for the job. And I can't just come up with something, and expect the rest of the team to go with it. I also have no way of getting in contact with them."
"Yes you do."
"Is that so?"
"You're going to see them before the mission, aren't you? You'll have to discuss it in front of the Auror of course, but there's nothing he can do about it."
"He can report me. I've already been suspended once, but if Moody hears about it? He'll put me behind a desk or in hiding for the rest of the war."
"Not willing then." He makes to stand, but this move is calculated, because she can swear she sees him move to sit back down before she even calls for him to wait.
"If it can help people, then I'll do it. But I don't have a plan. I have no idea where to start."
"That's why I'm going to teach you." He pulls a box off the floor and sets it on the table, pulling a chess board out and laying it down.
"Chess?"
"Chess."
He pulls out the pieces, setting them up in their proper places, and Hermione watches his concentrated expression as he thinks about something, and the length of his fingers as he picks the carved marble from the box.
"Alright, Granger. I'm the man who made a different decision at the top of a tower, and joined Voldemort's ranks to help him commit Muggle and Muggle-born genocide with the rest of the Dark. You are the girl who met the Boy-Who-Lived and never stopped fighting beside him with the Light."
She pauses. "Couldn't you have just said that you're the black and I'm the white? That was a bit dramatic."
He scowls at her. "I need for you to get the point. Every move you make is a move against the Dark, and every move I make puts you in that much danger. Life or death. Understood?"
"Yes. Yes, alright."
He reaches over, knocking her entire back row out and onto the floor around her feet. "That's better."
"Better? You just eliminated half my pieces."
"How many team members do you have?" He raises an eyebrow.
"Fine. But there won't be that many Death Eaters." She nods her chin at his side.
"How do you know there won't be?"
"I... Fine. Voldemort won't be there at least, so you can take your king out, too."
"How do you know?" He asks softly, and she looks up in surprise.
"Oh. Well... Well, yes, I suppose he could be."
"He very well can."
"Alright. So whose move?"
"Don't rush things, Granger. Every detail needs to be thought over and sorted out until each move is the most proficient it can be in defeating the other side. How are you going in?"
"I don't know. It's a building, so..."
"How many floors?"
"Three. Four with the basement."
"Right, so let's try it from the first level. There's at least four when you enter." He moves these pieces dangerously close to her own. He sets up the remainder of his pieces with distance according to floor, with Voldemort and two Death Eaters on the back line for the third floor. "The second floor here, as well as the basement, since both are a floor away. Then the third..."
"Why are they all spread out like that? It's not like they are definitely going to be in these positions, so why does it matter? How does this help?"
"Because if you have a plan on how to win with them spread out all over, it's just a bonus to find them all in one spot and take them out then. This is your worst case scenario Granger. Find a way to beat it, and you'll have the master plan. Anything that interrupts what you expect will simply be making it easier."
"Alright."
He looks up at her, adjusting a pawn. "You're nervous. Granger. Why are you already nervous? You're absolutely fucked if you can't pull yourself together before you even cross into enemy territory."
She gives him a withering look. "I can't help it. It's nerve-wracking."
"Why? It's just pieces on a board, isn't it? All you have to do is move your pieces in the best way you can, and then take down the King. That's all."
"It's not just pieces on a board. It's lives."
"No, it's not. They are marble game pieces on a chessboard. Just move them, and win the game. Corner the King, Granger, and win the game."
"Win the game?" She swallows, examining the board.
He puts his finger to the King's crown, wiggling the piece. "Corner the King."
Day: 1342; Hour: 2
She would have liked to drag him in bodily if she could, just like she has seen in the movies. But she is too small and too tired, but the satisfaction is there anyway when the Ministry guards tell her to lower Crabbe Senior to the floor, placing Azkaban issued binds on him.
Pieces on a board, still repeats in her head, as it has all mission to keep her calm. Corner the King. And while Voldemort was not there, her plan worked beautifully, and she brought the highest rank of Death Eater there in herself.
Day: 1345; Hour: 12
Moody does not suspend her again as she had feared, because the mission went too smoothly. They had all walked out with only minor scrapes, and most the Death Eaters found were brought in as prisoners. He does not congratulate her, but he does clasp a hand around her shoulder after he chews her out about her decision, and this tells her all she needs to know.
She doesn't see Malfoy to thank him, and her desire to doesn't fade with the power and elation of a win. On the third day after the battle, she gives a woman a small package to give to Malfoy for her, after learning the woman had a meeting with him later.
It is the white King playing piece, the note under it a simple 'Thank you'. Hermione does not expect anything in reply, but when the woman returns, she hands her a note and smiles.
I could dedicate my life to teaching you, but you will never be more than half a Slytherin. No matter how drunk from victory, Granger, you never give up your bloody King.
She laughs, and tucks it into her pocket, hearing it slide against the parchment of letters from Harry and Ron.