Chapter Text
Draco awoke to his body shuddering with a chill. The air around him was warm with the early June temperature, but it was as if something had startled him in his sleep, like a deep-seated thought had suddenly taken root.
Through tired eyes, he looked out across the Black Lake at the horizon. Bright golden hues sparkled over the water, giving the lake the appearance of innocence, though he knew better than to trust it now. The space below him was soft and familiar, smelling of cinnamon and honey and—
Hermione.
He sat up straight, his back suddenly stiff as he recalled everything that had happened before he’d fallen asleep—on her lap, it seemed. His body protested his abrupt movement after being contorted along the rocks for so long. He didn’t even let himself think about how he had somehow used the spirit of the girl he had so desperately longed for as a bloody pillow.
The world came into focus much quicker than he would’ve liked, and with it came the reality of his whispered confession.
Draco was ready to make an excuse for what he’d said. Yes, he’d declared it hundreds of times before her grave, articulated the depth of his feelings for her with his tears and his words. But to say it in front of her… He felt like he was back in school, a pathetic excuse of a wizard who was too cowardly to do what his heart had begged of him.
His mouth was dry, and the words would not come. Why wouldn’t they come? It would be simple, really; tell her that he was just so happy to see her that he wasn’t thinking, that it slipped out, that it didn’t have to mean anything—it didn’t mean anything, period.
But any excuse he could manage to conjure up would be a lie.
He did love her. Painfully, desperately, unequivocally so.
“Draco?”
Her voice was like a magnet on his heart. He felt himself pulled to look at her, though fear of what expression he would see upon her face lingered in the back of his mind.
His gaze landed on her eyes first, and the beating muscle behind his ribs all but shattered. Her irises, the rich, chocolate brown that were once lined with golden threads of vibrant life, were now hollow. Empty. Lifeless.
It hit him then, the reality of Hermione Granger being dead. He couldn’t help but shudder at the word. Even in his thoughts, it felt so foreign and bitter. So wrong. He still didn’t want to believe it, but as he stared at her, the hope he had felt that this might all be nothing more than a bad dream dwindled more and more.
Draco craved to bring her back to life, to reignite the flame that had burned so brightly within her, but it wasn’t possible. Even the most powerful wizards had failed at such attempts. Death was permanent, no matter how badly his heart ached for it to be otherwise.
He was shaken out of his saddened reverie as Hermione tilted her head to study him more closely. Her hand reached up, her fingers trembling slightly, to brush a stand of blond hair from his forehead.
Reality then caught up with him for a second time as he felt the chilled touch of her soul against his skin.
“Do you think I’ll be able to move on?” Hermione whispered.
“Yes…” he began, his voice just as small as hers. “And no.”
The answer was selfish. If he could see her now, it would be easy to perform the ritual to get her to pass into whatever awaited her beyond this world. But there was a large part of him that didn’t think he could do it.
A breathless laugh sounded from beside him, breaking his thoughts from his own egocentric desires, and Draco closed his eyes in an effort to savor the sound of it.
“That’s hardly an answer,” she replied. Her hand lingered near him, though he wished she would touch him again. “Though I suppose I’m not surprised. No one seems to have any explanations these days.”
It was Draco’s turn to tilt his head and study her now. Her words churned in his head, stirring up more questions than anything else. More mystery, more that he didn’t understand. Before his mind could turn to reason, his thoughts were clouded by the same jaded sense of hope he’d felt when he’d first seen her.
“You’ve been able to talk to others?”
Hermione shook her head. “No, not in the way you mean. I have found some company, though, however unpleasant he may be.”
“He?” Draco failed to keep the incredulous tone out of his voice. Some pitiful, pathetic part of him was stung by jealousy at the idea she’d found someone, a wizard better suited for her… circumstances.
“Snape.”
He nearly choked on air. Severus Snape? He’d known that the wavering Death Eater had been killed by Voldemort just before the final moments of the battle, but he hadn’t encountered his spirit during his numerous trips to Hogwarts following the war. In each sweep of the castle that Draco had performed, the number of ghosts that remained lessened until the halls were entirely empty. Snape hadn’t been there. Not once.
Beside him, Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes. “He’s properly insufferable. Even dead, the man is full of nothing but hatred and riddles. He’s so hot and cold; one minute he’s looking at me with pity and like he wishes I hadn’t died, and the next it’s like he wants nothing to do with me. I thought I had convinced him to help me figure out a way to get out of this mess, but then the second we make any sort of progress, he practically disappears.”
“Hermione, slow down,” Draco interrupted. “Snape can’t be here. It’s not possible.”
“Trust me,” she grumbled. “He’s here. Holing up in his old quarters like the recluse he always was.”
All he could think of was that he had missed something. In his many years as the Ministry’s sole SOUL Counsel, Draco had never missed something. Ever.
A moment of silence stretched between them, interrupted only by the soft sound of water lapping at the shore just a few feet in front of the rock where they rested. Draco stared out into the lake, mulling his thoughts over and over. It didn’t make sense. He had been so sure of his successes with the Hogwarts ghosts, ensuring that all of them had crossed over, and had only noticed Hermione’s presence once she had returned.
He could feel Hermione’s gaze upon him, but he found himself so struck by his misstep that he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes again.
“What is it, Draco?” she finally asked. “I can tell your mind is spinning. Something's wrong, isn’t it?”
“I cleared the castle,” he said softly, his voice laced with the disbelief he felt. “I know I did. Minerva asked me to check three bloody times to be sure. Snape… I never saw him.”
“Just like you never saw me until this morning?”
Draco sighed, a new type of common sense creeping back into his mind. He knew there was still a lot he didn’t understand about the afterlife, but he still had yet to understand how this new piece of knowledge fit into the puzzle of it all. It was likely he hadn’t encountered Snape because, just like Hermione, he hadn’t been able to see him.
“Right. I haven’t been to the boathouse since I went with Potter to collect his body,” he explained before he blew a labored exhale from between his lips and slunk back against the rock. “It’s a place I tend to avoid, much like this one. The memories are bad enough without the visual aid.”
Hermione broke her shimmering gaze from him to stare out into the vast waters of the Black Lake and let the silence return. The weight of his words seemed to settle heavily in the space between them, and he couldn’t help but wonder on what terms Hermione and Snape had come to in their shared experiences. Though her words about him had been anything but gracious, the reminder of the former Potion Master’s own demise seemed to affect her more than he would have expected.
“You said Snape has been helping you?” Draco asked hesitantly. “Does he know anything of use?”
She scoffed. “‘Help’ is a bit of a stretch, I’d say. He claims to know nothing more than what he’s told me, but…”
When she trailed off into silence, he leaned closer to her, urging her on with a raise of his brow. Her gaze darted to him, and she seemed to inhale a bit sharply at his proximity to her. Her eyes shot down quickly to his lips, so fast it was almost imperceptible, before moving back to his own stare. Draco didn’t let himself believe that it was something more than a trick of his own mind as she shook her head and refocused her thoughts.
“But,” she continued, “I’m not sure. Something is different about him, and I don’t think death is what’s changed the man.”
Draco thought back to the wizard’s gruesome end. Potter and Weasley had witnessed it with their own eyes, and it had changed them both for the worse. He’d known that they’d never particularly cared for the Potions Master, but the memories he’d shared with them, captured in his final breaths and a single, desperate tear, changed everything. Since that night, after Harry had viewed the memories in the Headmaster’s Pensieve, Snape was viewed as a martyr. Everyone understood that the war would have had a very different end without him.
Images flashed through his mind—the bite on his neck, the venom spreading into his veins and blackening every living cell of his body, the way his face finally looked so… peaceful. It was no secret that Snape had been prepared—even willing—to die, but the horror of his fate still had Draco’s stomach churning with both nausea and regret.
“Snape lived a complicated life,” he said after a moment. “His death was perhaps the worst of the entire war. I can’t imagine being the same, even in the afterlife, after suffering the way he had.”
He couldn’t help but think back to the countless meetings held in his family’s home and the way the Dark Lord had asked and expected more from Snape than from anyone else. By the end, before he was aware of his deception, Snape was Voldemort’s most trusted follower.
“No,” Hermione said firmly, interrupting Draco’s mind from its replay of his worst memories. “I know how he died, Draco. He… He’s come to terms with it. He’s practically said he expected it.”
Draco looked at her with a new type of sadness then. The idea that she had been blindsided by hers, as most had, hit him hard in his chest. Worst of all, she hadn’t known. He couldn’t imagine a more jarring thing to go through.
But did she truly know? Was she aware of the actual reason for her death? The abandoned book outside the library had seemed like a sign, a clue from fate itself, but he still wasn’t sure if she had been the one to leave it for him to find.
“Earlier this evening,” he began, although upon looking at the rising sun, he chuckled lightly. “Or last night, I suppose, I… I found something.”
Hermione leaned closer, listening to him intently. Her eyes seemed to shine with hope, and it broke his heart that the information he would deliver to her was the complete opposite of the emotion that read so plainly on her face.
“Hermione,” he rasped. His eyes welled with tears, and his throat seemed to constrict again. For the second time that morning, the words would not come. How could he tell her what had actually happened? Though in truth, a majority of the mystery was still left unsolved. Could he give her such a blow of despair without also having the answer to who was responsible?
“Draco,” Hermione whispered. “Do you know what happened to me?”
He swore under his breath. He could not delay the inevitable any longer. Maybe it would help her to move on. Perhaps it would lead them closer to a real, viable answer.
Slowly, so hesitantly, he nodded.
Hermione’s breath hitched in her throat, and tears began to well in her own eyes. They shimmered under the sunlight, almost diamond-like against her apparition. Draco wanted to kiss each one away, as if his love was enough to take away her pain.
“You know I didn’t drown,” she said.
Again, he nodded.
Her words came out choked, as though she was seconds away from breaking alongside him. “I’d hoped someone would find the book, though I think I was wanting it to be you more than anyone else.”
A single tear tracked down his cheek. The salty streak was scorching against his face, like a true reminder of the source of his pain.
“I’m so sorry, Draco.”
Those four words did him in. The weight of his grief came crashing down on him like a tidal wave. She was so… benevolent. She had been murdered, and yet she had apologized for the grief it had caused him.
He ached to touch her. He wanted nothing more than to take her spirit into his arms and hold her as she cried and let out her anger and did whatever else she needed to in order to ease the horror of the reality she faced.
He wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that she knew of her murder, but he knew the worst part was that he couldn’t fix it. Neither of them could. What was done was done. He cursed himself for not finding her sooner, for not searching harder and finding her and loving her harder.
“Please don’t blame yourself,” she choked. “I can see the guilt written on your face.”
He looked away from her, his body reverting back to the way he would hide himself from the Dark Lord and his father when they’d ruled over his life. It was dangerous to be so readable then, and he’d suffered countless Crucios at the hands of both for failing to hide behind his well-practiced Occlumency. He shuddered at the memories of the torture he’d endured for so much of his life.
“Draco.” Her voice was erring on the side of a plea. “Look at me.”
He’d never been able to school his features into a mask of neutrality around her, not even in their youth. She’d always affected him in such a way, and now, he found that he would rather do anything than hide from her. He knew that his eyes were filled with tears, each drop of his grief like a truth he couldn’t bring himself to voice. And he knew that she understood every single one.
“Your eyes tell stories, Draco. Everything you’ve been through… I can see how long you’ve tortured yourself over this, over my death. Please don’t punish yourself any longer. Not for me. Not for this.”
He stood suddenly, ignoring the cracks of his bones and the ache in his muscles. There was also a tug on his soul as it fought the distance he had put between himself and Hermione. He chose to ignore that, too. Instead, he paced the shoreline, the wheels of his mind resuming their chaotically rhythmic turning as he resigned himself to fucking do something.
“I’m going to find who did this, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
From the look she gave him, he knew that she didn’t doubt that he would.
⏆⏆⏆
After a good deal of convincing, Hermione had persuaded Draco to return to the castle. It had come with a lot of self-control on his part not to make her stay at the rocky shores of the Black Lake forever, his thoughts racing with the idea that he would never see her again. It wasn’t until they had created a plan to see each other next that Draco let himself retreat from the lake and climb the two hundred and ninety-three steps back to Hogwarts.
When he entered the Gryffindor common room through the destroyed portrait—he’d have to apologize to Minerva later for that one—he was utterly and completely exhausted. Still, he resigned himself to keeping his meeting with Hermione a secret. Selflessly, he knew it wouldn’t do anyone any good to know that she was there if he was just going to help her move on eventually, and selfishly, he wasn’t ready to share her.
He plopped down rather gracelessly onto the plush settee before aiming his wand at the fireplace and sending a hefty amount of flames at the barren hearth. After what felt like years, he finally felt himself relax. His shoulders lowered from the hunched position, his fists unclenched, his jaw loosened. Finally, Draco at least had a small spark of hope in his heart. After what felt like forever, he had a plan to—
Footsteps echoed down the dormitory steps as his friends filed into the common room. He could hear their voices—light and easy, a far cry from how they’d been when he’d left them the night before.
“Oi, Malfoy!” Ron shouted from across the room, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.
Draco threw his head back on the couch with a sigh before he stood from the settee. There was mischief dancing in the redhead’s eyes. Normally, Draco would have joined whatever game Weasley wanted to play; it had been their form of friendship for years now—teasing jabs, a few harmless hexes, insults that didn’t really hurt the way they would have before—but Draco felt he simply didn’t have the stamina after the night he’d had.
“Ronald,” he deadpanned.
He heard the collective gasps around the room and tried to downplay the smirk that etched into the corner of his mouth at the shocked reaction of his friends.
“Oof,” Ginny grimaced from behind him. “Full government name, Ron. You’ve either made it on his good side, or you’re about to meet Merlin himself.”
“D-Draco,” Ron tried, though his tone was far less dangerous than Draco’s had been, as if his vocal cords rejected the informality and friendliness of calling the wizard by his first name.
Draco nearly shivered at the sound. It was… odd.
“Nope,” Harry cut in. “Too weird. Don’t do that ever again, either of you.”
Draco couldn’t help but laugh, the sound full and rich and real like it hadn’t been in a long, long time. He wondered how long it had truly been since he’d had such a moment of innocent, childlike peace. Certainly not before or during the war, and after all that had happened since, he didn’t think he’d felt it since his early years in school.
He looked around to his friends, his heart clenching with both the ache of grief and a swell of love. They were such an unlikely group, and though they were bonded by the horrors they’d lived through, they had come out together.
After a few hours of simple, lighthearted conversation around multiple pots of coffee and steaming mugs of tea, Draco finally excused himself. He still had far too many questions to answer, and there was only one place that could house such information.
He had exhausted the countless books within the Hogwarts library more times than he could count, but the prior night’s revelations changed so much about what he thought he knew. He picked up the discarded book from where he’d dropped it in shock and carried it with him through the double doors of the library, vowing to stay there as long as it took.