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Draco looked at the girl sitting on the chair in front of him. Large brown eyes glared at him through a mess of frizzy curls. Her wrists and ankles were bound with magical ropes. Even in such a wretched state, her eyes burned with startling brightness.
He had successfully captured Hermione Granger—the brightest witch of all time, the Order’s most formidable weapon, and the principal inventor of the time machine that could change the course of the war and complicate it further.
Killing several of her Order guards had not been easy, but it was worth the risk.
“Let me go,” she seethed through clenched teeth, staring up at him. “You’ll regret this.”
“Why should I?” Draco almost laughed at that. He took a few steps closer. “Why on earth would you think I went through all this to capture you just to let you walk out again? That damned time machine of yours does nothing but drag this bloody war on forever. When both sides have one, Granger, what do you imagine happens?”
The time machine had to be stopped.
He would kill her, then feed the Dark Lord the fragments of a broken equation—enough to satisfy his hunger, but too little to ever build a functioning machine.
This war needed to end. He didn’t care who won anymore. There was already too much blood on his hands. Whether the world grew darker or not made no difference to him.
“It’s meant to end the war before the damned arms race!” she snapped. “To erase the mistake at the very beginning! We’ll save Merope Gaunt, so Tom Riddle never becomes Voldemort!"
“I wouldn’t say that name.”
“He’ll be Tom. A boy with a mother. Not Voldemort!”
She held her ground, meeting his gaze head-on, her chest heaving with emotions.
“They’ll come for me. And they will kill you, and your men outside of that door. You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Draco lifted an eyebrow. She was perceptive. Though she’d been knocked unconscious and brought here, she still concluded there were multiple Death Eaters guarding the door outside.
“Of course, I know what I’ve done.” He tapped the tip of his wand rhythmically against his palm. “The Dark Lord’s command was simple: take you, pry the information out of that stubborn mouth of yours, and then kill you.”
She flinched slightly at the words kill you, then glared at him with even greater fury.
“You killed Moody and Robards.”
The tapping of his wand against his palm paused for a heartbeat. If she hadn’t been bound to the chair by spells, she’d have already launched herself at him.
“Clearly,” he admitted flatly, his gaze not wavering in the slightest. “The first time I killed someone, I thought I’d lose my mind. But now it’s just another chore to be dealt with.”
“You weren’t like this,” she said, her eyes now full of tears. Grief for her guards, no doubt. “Why would you do this? When did you become a cold-blooded killer? In sixth year, you couldn’t even kill Dumbledore.”
“People change, Granger.”
“Why… what happened, was it because of your mother—”
Red light. A scream tore through marble halls. His mother’s. Then his own.
Blood on white stone. On his hands.
His mother’s empty blue eyes.
Draco’s breath hitched as the memory fragments clawed their way up. With sheer will, he forced himself back into reality.
“…the Order can protect you—”
“Shut up!” he snarled, lunging forward and clamping a hand over her mouth, his fingers digging into her cheeks.
A voice shrieked in his mind, desperate to shut out those brown eyes full of pity and question.
Damn it, just go to sleep. Better yet, never wake up.
What right had she to look at him that way? They would be enemies as long as they both breathe.
Draco raised his wand.
“I’m the one asking the questions. Legilimens!”
He forced his way into her consciousness, sifting through the previous day’s memories.
The dim lamplight flickered. Hermione Granger was hunched over the table in front of him, the entire surface buried beneath yellowed parchments covered in dense equations and design sketches.
She was calculating something, brow drawn tight, teeth worrying her lower lip.
“Hermione, perhaps we should stop for tonight. Your thoughts are starting to buzz.”
Draco turned his head only then, noticing Luna Lovegood seated at the far end of the table, parchments spread before her as well.
“We’re very close, Luna,” Hermione said, jotting a note onto the parchment. “I’m going with Robards and Moody tomorrow to collect data at Wool’s Orphanage, so I need this equation finished before then. The sooner we complete this, the sooner the war ends.”
Draco tried to move closer to read the equations on her parchments, but the room blurred—she was fighting his invasion.
“Be careful of Draco Malfoy, Hermione. He’s the one Voldemort sends when he wants things to go quiet. If they find out what we’re doing, he will come for you.”
“Don’t worry, Luna. Kingsley and Moody both confirmed the site is clear. I’ll be fine. Besides, I don’t think they know what we’re working on.”
Draco scoffed. Reckless Gryffindor. She didn’t realise they had already planted a spy in the Order and had learned what they were working on.
“And no matter what the rumours say, I don’t believe Malfoy’s become that,” Hermione said, infuriatingly calm. “He couldn’t kill Dumbledore. I saw him shaking… He never wanted that mission.”
Draco wanted to shout at her to shut up, to drop the Gryffindor saviour act.
What did she know?
Go to sleep. Why was she still alive?
The answer was simple. He hadn’t got the information out of her yet. His failure.
Once he had it, he would kill her.
Ignoring the scene wavering under her mental resistance, he pushed forward another step, squinting to read the notes and diagrams on her parchments.
The scene shook violently, then suddenly shattered. He plummeted through the dark. Draco cursed under his breath, and before he could pull himself out, he hit solid ground in her memory again.
He found himself in a familiar place—the Hogwarts library.
Draco saw himself—the sixteen-year-old boy, pale to the point of translucence, curled up in the most secluded corner of the library, trembling. His nails dug deep into the flesh of his arm, attempting to drown out the searing pulse of the Dark Mark with the grounding sting of physical pain.
This was her memory, so she must be nearby.
Draco spun around and saw her.
She stood behind a bookshelf, fingers clutching a copy of Advanced Potion-Making, her entire body held still.
She didn’t mock him. She didn’t confront him.
She merely watched him in silence, her eyes filled with sorrow.
He hadn’t noticed her there at all. His younger self, overwhelmed by the agony both physical and mental, simply didn’t pay attention to his surroundings.
She knew. She had always known.
But she never told Potter. She must regret it now. If she had reported him then, if he had been caught and sent to Azkaban, perhaps he wouldn’t have become the killing machine he is today.
Yet, what was the point of thinking about this?
Nothing could change his situation now. He had to take the information from her memories and then kill her, just as he had done with the other prisoners.
She shouldn’t be the exception.
He fought against her consciousness and finally forced his way back into the dim room.
“He’s been killing without hesitation since his mother died, Hermione.”
It was Luna Lovegood.
“Even if he is, Luna. I’ll return to the very beginning and correct everything. There will be no Voldemort. Neville won’t die. Narcissa won’t die.”
Hermione’s voice rang through the small room, laced with absolute resolve.
The name of his mother, spoken with such determined protection by his enemy, felt like a blade at his throat.
Hermione lowered her gaze.
“And… he wouldn’t have taken on that damned task from Voldemort,” she whispered, almost to herself.
For a moment, Draco couldn’t breathe.
So she meant to save everyone. His mother. Even him.
How noble. How naive.
She really thought that would absolve his sins?
Perhaps she was simply trying to survive. Showing him that library memory only to buy her life.
Of course she was. Any prisoner he encountered did.
And yet, she was the only person who had ever reached for him instead of recoiling.
The same warm brown eyes, lit in the dim light, dragged him back to sixteen. Shaking and crying. Refusing to become a murderer.
The constant metallic tang of blood in the air, the endless screams haunting his sleep. He wanted it all to stop.
He wanted to trust her. Just once. Against all sense.
Release her and let the confident Gryffindor try out her reckless plan.
If she succeeded, the monster he had turned into would disappear.
He withdrew from her mind.
He looked at her in the chair, his hand still tight over her mouth. She was shaking from the pain of Legilimency, but her glassy eyes remained clear and certain.
Whether she succeeded or not, once he let her go, the Dark Lord would kill him. He wasn’t afraid of death anymore. Death might even be a mercy to him.
He released his hand from her mouth. She slumped forward, gasping for air and choking. With a flick of his wand, the magical ropes restraining her loosened and vanished.
He hauled her up from the chair by her arm, and she sagged against him, her legs nearly giving way. A sheen of cold sweat coated her forehead, her eyes wide with disbelief.
A sudden blast shook the floor beneath their feet.
Draco dragged her across the room and pulled her into the cover of the wall beside the window. He peered down and spotted the familiar mess of black hair and that irritatingly bright red.
“Your friends are here,” he sneered, pulling her over to the fireplace. He tapped the carving above it with his wand, and the fireplace vanished, revealing a hidden door.
“Draco! They’re here! We’ve got to move her now!” a voice barked from the corridor, followed by a violent thumping against the door.
“Shut the bloody hell up! I’m handling it!” Draco roared back.
He turned to her. “Come with me. Potter’s in the courtyard.” He flung open the hidden door and hauled her after him as they bolted down the steep, dark stairs.
The clash of spells and the sound of explosions echoed nearby. Granger’s arm trembled noticeably in his grip, her breathing quick and shaky.
They reached the exit in seconds.
Draco booted the door open, and sunlight flooded in, almost blinding.
He let go of her arm as if it burned him. “Now go. Before I change my bloody mind. Get out there, and you’ll find Potter and Weasley. You also have a spy in the Order. One of the Carrows is under Polyjuice.”
“You should come with me,” she pleaded, her voice trembling. “The Order can keep you safe. We can hide you.”
“Playing the saint, are we, Granger?” He spat through gritted teeth. “Do you have any idea how many people I’ve murdered? Go back to your clean little world and pretend you never saw me.”
“He’ll torture you! He’ll kill you for this!”
“You think I don’t know that?! I’ve been living in this hell for years. A few more hours won’t make a bloody difference. Now shut the fuck up and go! Finish that damned time machine.”
He shoved her toward the light. She stumbled into the courtyard, the sunlight gilding her frizzy hair. She snapped her head up, tears welling in her eyes.
Stop looking at him like that.
Shut those warm brown eyes.
Just let him sleep.
“Hermione!” Potter shouted in relief.
“We found her! Retreat!”
Draco stepped back into the shadows, watching as Potter and Weasley flanked Granger on either side, members of the Order forming a circle around her with their wands raised in protection.
Before they left by Portkey, she turned to look at him, tears trailing down her cheeks, her hands clenching white at her sides.
Go, Granger. Change this messed-up world.
Now he could finally go to sleep.