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Hermione flipped through the Order's newest propaganda artwork she'd finished, pleased with the results.

It was a comic, a medium she'd argued with Ron had been well-received by Muggle audiences world-wide since the 1930's for its ease of story-telling and its ability to pictorially market moral messages to any age.

As she critiqued her artwork a final time, Hermione thought the short, fifteen page comic had been designed well. Thanks to years of having to hand-draw images of various plants, herbs, runes, and magical creatures for her class assignments, the details she'd included were done with an elegant and refined touch. And, as it would be printed by non-magical means and appear to be targeting children, it wouldn't garner as much attention as a magical criticism aimed at adults might.

-Because that was the flawed belief of Voldemort's cult that she was exploiting: dismissing children as irrelevant. It's what cost the Dark Lord the first war, after all, when he'd tried to kill Harry as a baby, not realising he was the receptacle of a powerful, ancient protection spell.

And anyway, children eventually grew up, becoming a second wave of defense against darkness…if correctly conditioned.

Yes, her primary intention with this comic was to combat the propaganda coming out of Umbridge's office at Kingsley's behest, but rather than simply targeting adults with her message, she was going after the impressionable youth for the long game, too, for after the war ended and they'd won.

She added a little highlight to the title's logo with her pencil, giving it a final tweak.

Little Orphan Harry, her piece was called, borrowing its title from a popular Muggle comic of the 1940's. Its premise was simple and equally as imitated: a gentle boy named Harry was orphaned due to a tragic event in his childhood. One day, quite by accident, Harry discovered that he could do magic. Soon after, he was taken in by kind-hearted wizards and witches and shown around their world. Harry was amazed by how much good could be done with magic and how much beauty it created. To him, magic was a thing wondrous and to be shared with all. However, there were many who didn't agree with Harry in the government or in society, and as a result of their scheming, poor Harry became the target of cruel bullies—a skinny man in black and a fat woman in pink—who wanted to silence him because they want to keep magic all to themselves. Harry decided to stand-up against these oppressors and face them down, though. He donned a white cloak and wore a golden badge that featured a phoenix, and utilizing the incredible magic he had learned, he captured the skinny, dark man and the fat, pink woman, saving people in the process. The last page featured Harry breaking the fourth wall and asking his readers to help him in his fight to save magic from bad people.

The story was very cliché and obvious, but its message was uplifting; it was intended to give hope to flagging spirits in the face of Voldemort's regime and its crushing policies.

The short comic would be mass printed—a hundred copies this time, at least—and sneaked into Hogsmeade by the Weasley twins the first week of January, just in time for Hogwarts to resume from the winter break. The copies would be dropped off at the village Post Office and left on the bench as usual, but with the help of Ambrosius Flume of Honeyduke's and Mr. Scrivenshack of Scrivenshack's Quill Shop, people would be directed there to pick up the latest issue.

Setting the comic aside, she got up from her chair and stretched.

Every joint ached, muscles burned from having hunched over in the same position for hours and days.

She'd begun the comic in November, but it had only been the morning after Christmas day, when Harry and Ron had left to join Kingsley to discuss the Malfoy Manor break-out and Severus had returned to collect the Restricted Section books (and she'd sent along a list for more reading materials with him) that she'd finally decided to finish it. For two days, she'd rarely stopped to rest, eat, or for bathroom breaks, but she'd gotten it done in time.

It was nearing ten o'clock at night, and Hermione was in pain and hungry, but more than either of those issues to address, she wanted a shower and her soft bed…in that order.

Heading for the bathroom, she tiredly wondered what Draco was doing right then, hoping he was keeping his muzzle low to the ground and out of trouble.

Later, as she threw herself down in the bed, her exhausted brain wouldn't shut down. It repeated over and over again the fact that there was only three more days until the Order enacted Draco's plan for rescuing the prisoners at his home.

Three days…she had to come up with a way to get him out by then.

~.~.~.~.~

His fingers slid across her bare shoulder, the touch reverent and slow.

"Why are you here, Granger?"

Hermione stirred, having been lulled nearly into sleep by his sweet touches. He was always so lazy and affectionate after the lust had been sated between them, and it seemed impossible that this was the same Draco Malfoy who had been so horrid to her throughout her younger years.

"Because…I'm too exhausted to get redressed right now-"

"No," he interrupted and pulled away, sitting up in the bed he'd earlier required the Room of Requirement to provide them. "I mean, here. With me, like this. You could be with anyone else in the world, if you wanted, but you chose me. Why?"

Turning her head, she stared up at him. His gaze was far away, his grey eyes troubled, his jaw tensed with the need to speak his mind, to unburden his heart. Yet he held his tongue, waiting for her answer. Slytherin patient, preparing his defenses.

What could she say, really?

Their sexual chemistry was a firestorm that seemed impossible to quench, and they rumbled the castle with the thunder of their arguments. And when their magic met, it was intense and sensual, two forks of lightning clashing and melting together. But there were quiet times, too, like tonight. After the passion had burned down and the touches were tempered, recklessness was replaced with deliberation, and it was in these moments she felt it, their elemental, soul-deep connection.

She'd never anticipated it—was in far over her head, in love, a prisoner of her own making.

There was no going back now.

"Because you asked me to be," she told him simply, honestly.

He glanced at her, head tilted in consideration.

"And that's enough for you?"

Hermione sat up, letting the soft white sheet fall to her waist, baring her breasts to him. His gaze dropped automatically to take them in, his reignited lust melting the cold debate that had previously held him under its sway. The first time she'd stood unclothed before him she'd been self-conscious of how wantonly she'd reacted to the smallest, provocative glance he sent her way. Now she relished the heaviness and ache a simple look could breed deep within her body.

She slid back into his arms, pressing her naked core to his rigid erection, hoping to entice him out of those silken briefs he was wearing.

"It is," she admitted as she leaned into him, running her tongue over his lips in a silent plea for them to part. When they didn't, she nipped little kisses upon them. "You asked to love me when all you've ever been taught is to hate me. That's everything, Draco. Don't you see?"

He groaned and gave in, as he always did, as helpless to her pull as she was to his push.

Rolling them, he had her under him in a flash once more.

"I swear, you'll be the death of me, witch," he whispered as he held her tight and rocked against her, letting the solid length of him, surrounded by silk, rub her just right once more…

Hermione woke up, body trembling and hot, her flesh wet and slick with need…but there was fear, also, enough to keep her from seeking any sort of satisfaction.

As she calmed, working to get her breathing back under her control, she stared up at the ceiling far over her head and fought to keep her teeth from chattering.

"I swear, you'll be the death of me, witch."

He hadn't said any such thing to her that night, or any other since. In fact, he'd told her he'd loved her back then and had proceeded to prove it by driving her into another climax with such exacting attention that she'd ended up begging him to come into her.

His capacity to resist had been unearthly, in her opinion.

"…the death of me…"

"Just a dream," she murmured, gripping the blankets hard and pulling them up to her chin.

Dreams were designed to help an individual work through their worst fears, that's all. They were reflections of one's psychological distress, manifested in such a way as to allow a person a safe place to resolve them: in the mind. There was no such thing as Divination.

Then again, she'd initially thought the same thing of soul mates, hadn't she?

~.~.~.~.~

"You can't go," Harry argued. "You're too invested this time."

Hermione gaped at her best friend as she realised he knew the truth about her and Draco. The set of his chin, the anger in his green gaze told her enough to know someone had squealed.

There was only one logical possibility.

"Ginny told you, didn't she?"

His lids narrowed. "You should have told me."

"How could I when I knew you'd act like-" She waved up and down at him, noting the barely restrained violence. "-this? You've always been easily riled anytime Draco enters the equation, and mistrustful to the point of paranoia regarding anyone in his acquaintance."

"So you just shagged Malfoy in secret and hoped I wouldn't notice?"

"We never-" She paused, took a deep breath, refusing to reveal the level of intimacy she'd shared with another to justify that relationship, regardless of his name or pedigree. "What Draco and I did privately is really none of your business, just like what you and Ron refuse to acknowledge is between you is really none of mine, no matter how insanely curious I am on the matter."

There was satisfaction in watching Harry's cheeks take on a dusky hue and catching the way his throat bobbed, knowing she'd knocked him as off-kilter as he'd done to her regarding Draco. Now they were on even footing.

"The point is I'd trust your judgment, regardless of your personal relationships, Harry. Draco-"

"-was responsible for Dumbledore's death!"

She frowned.

"You said he wasn't," she reminded him. "You defended him even when put to the question, as I recall. He'd lowered his wand, refused to kill the Headmaster—who was already dying by then, anyway. Snape confirmed it."

Harry ran a trembling hand through his messy, dark hair. Funny how it was the same coal-black as Sirius' had been…as Draco's was now.

"That doesn't change the fact that he'd set the whole thing up," he argued. "He'd let Death Eaters into the school, Hermione!"

Yes, Hermione had considered that problem over and over since Draco had confronted her just before Christmas. Something he'd said then had resonated in her mind, made her consider things from a different angle.

"It's possible he did it because his mother's life was threatened."

Her best friend glanced askance at her. "Possible?" He didn't sound very convinced.

"Look, we all know Lucius Malfoy had been incarcerated at Azkaban after the fight in the Department of Mysteries," she attempted to make her case. "Narcissa and her son were alone that summer at their Manor house. The Dark Lord moved in at that time, according to Draco, and he's been terrorizing Narcissa ever since. What if Draco thought to draw that attention away from her, and so he offered up his services-"

"I knew he was a Death Eater!" Harry crowed, triumphant.

Hermione sighed in irritation. "He doesn't wear the Mark on his arm, Harry."

Again, her best friend glared at her, but her stumping him only lasted a millisecond before he had a comeback that made her want to snort at his grasping of straws.

"It could be somewhere else on him! There's no law that says it has to be on his forearms."

"I can guarantee it isn't," she said, very matter of fact and refused to look away this time, despite the fact her cheeks felt on fire with her embarrassment. "There is no Dark Mark anywhere on his body."

Lip curling with disgust as he understood her implication, Harry looked away and kept his mouth shut, as if he didn't trust himself not to say the wrong thing just then and cause all-out war between them.

"As I was saying, what if Draco only took on the Dark Lord's task to kill Dumbledore as a way to buy time for him and his mother to come up with a better plan to escape?"

Harry made a noise of disbelief.

"Think about it," she pressed him. "Draco's Slytherin, and as we've seen with Snape and Moody and Kingsley, their lot doesn't exactly announce their intentions to do the right thing, do they? They're the opposite of us, Harry, in that they always find ways to hide their good intentions, rather than trumpeting them to the moon."

"You mean 'good things' like hiring you to 'tutor' them to act as a cover for fixing a Vanishing Cabinet?"

She pressed her lips together in annoyance.

That Draco had chosen the Room of Requirement for their rendezvous and she'd never guessed why had bothered her for the last six months, ever since Dumbledore's death when she'd begun to suspect her lover of having used her. Had he been sneaking through it into the Room of Hidden Things whenever she'd slept after one of their rather 'athletic' sessions? It was a question she was going to put to him the minute they had an opportunity to talk about those months together, because it was a dark doubt shadowing her mind even now.

"My point is he's not who you think he is, Harry," she told him. "He's been sneaking around in the form of the Grim to keep the prisoners in his house safe from being abused, and he's brought us covert messages about their identities for months, hasn't he? And at great risk to himself and his mother, I might add."

He looked away once more, his gaze trained on the Muggle street below the living room window.

"Guilt can be a powerful motivator, Hermione."

He sounded as if he was speaking from experience, which she knew was the truth of the matter. Harry heaped a great deal of responsibility upon his own shoulders. Ever since he'd found out about Luna and Dean and Mr. Ollivander being held captive and tortured by the enemy, he'd been determined to free them.

It was why he was going along with Draco's plan in two days—the one she'd conveyed to them all in the hopes they would storm Malfoy Manor and bust out their friends.

"So can love," she told him, bringing the conversation back full circle, "which is why I'm going with you on New Year's Eve."

Slapping a hand over his eyes, Harry looked ready to scream at her stubbornness. Instead, he took a deep breath and sighed as he let it out. "You really love that arsehole?" He shook his head. "I don't even know how such a thing is possible, honestly. He's…pointy and cruel."

"And a stuck-up little bitch," Ron stated, sauntering into the room and heading for the chess table they'd set-up in the corner, near the hearth. "Harry's right, 'Mione. Not much to recommend the git."

Hermione's back went up. She was well-aware of Draco's numerous flaws, but what these two refused to see was his change of heart. After all, how could she and her slippery Slytherin lover be soul mates if there wasn't something worthy within him to make her heart believe in such a thing? "You're wrong. There's me," she said, and Ron and Harry both stopped what they were doing to watch as she took out her wand and summoned her Patronus. "He's mine, and if you trust in me, you'll someday see why I want him."

Her best friends stared at her as if her hair had sprouted snakes and her righteous gaze had the power to petrify.

"You're bloody serious," Ron said in an awed whisper and sat back slowly in his chair to consider her.

"Shit," Harry added and began swearing under his breath.

Banishing her ghostly Grim reflection with a wave, she pointed her wand between her two boys. "So, I'm going to Malfoy Manor when the others go, and you can't stop me," she told them both, meaning it, "and not just to save Luna and the others, but to find a way to get Draco out as well. I have never asked either of you for anything, but now I am asking: will you help me?"

The two shared a quick look, but their capitulation was there in their faces. They didn't seem happy with it, but they were clearly not going to leave her in the lurch. They owed her many times over, and now that she was calling in the debt, they weren't going to back away from that obligation.

"Okay, well, now that's settled," Ron said, resuming setting up the chess board before him, "who's up for a game? Harry?"

Hermione watched as her best friend's cheeks reddened again, and took that as her cue to go.

Clearly, as he watched Ron putting down the pieces with a meticulous eye to centering them on each square, Harry had something a bit more than a game of chess on his mind.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Some major foreshadowing here in this chapter. Hope you caught it all!

XOXO,

- RZZMG