Harry Potter and its characters are the exclusive property of JK Rowling. This is just a work of fanfiction and I make no money from this.

Chapter 1

What surprised Draco Malfoy the most about his death was that he'd lived to be twenty-seven. The Order of the Phoenix was gone by then. He himself had stamped out their dying embers the year past, though for six years he had served amongst their ranks in the capacity of a highly placed spy, undertaking for both sides a role that Severus Snape, his sort of mentor, had played in the past before being discovered and boiled alive. But even as that clumsily cobbled together rebellion finally crumbled with Potter's death, and the smattering of dissidents still left, under the leadership of one Hermione Granger, fought on and eventually fell to the omnipotent wand of the all-knowing Dark Lord— who, over the years, had in fact, become a God: turned the skies incarnadine, dried the seas, spattered across the streets, with fitting indignity, the entrails of those that tried fleeing country— even as all that happened, he had found it necessary, by circumstance, for his mother's security, to separate himself from them, the Order; and Hermione Granger died unaided, sent to her death by faulty information Draco divulged, dealt with personally by the Dark Lord. Draco had sympathized; for, over the years, he had come to tolerate her; even had with her, post her husband's death, an intermittent on and off affair— a shallow one, to be sure, that did not go beyond skin; and when each such wretched instance was over, they wrenched away from one another and went their separate ways and were once again strangers... but, there had been something.

He'd been perfectly happy to look past those asinine deaths, to let bygones be bygones. He'd set aside his guilt, soothed his jaded coil, and allowed himself be rewarded for his toil. He'd taken for himself a share of the carved-out spoils in this country of ash. He'd buried in his bosom his secret sympathies and continued functioning as the Dark Lord's right hand. For a year he had been a governor of sorts of this new world carefully constructed in the image of the Dark Lord, over the ruins of a society that had once defied him. Power was readily redistributed amongst those that deified him: even his erstwhile master wasn't immune to flattery. Anyone suspected of any form of treason was summarily executed.

But then the scaffold had snapped off the neck of Narcissa Malfoy, for some sympathy she'd supposedly demonstrated somewhere along the line. Draco had gone half mad with grief. She was all he had, all he'd had since father had died in a raid nine years ago. Rebellion had strung him up, raised his arms, roused his soul; and he, for the first time in his life, had preferred an honest death to a dishonest duty.

So he'd fought a God.

It'd been a short strife, punctuated by a set of iridescent flashes— and though survival had been suffering, he had hoped, even in forsaking that suffering, to drag with him to the drudgery of death's deepest drain the earth corrupting stain of his master's soul. He had failed. A cascade of spell fire; the clatter of his broken wand; the string cut, soul shut riff raff of pain that had broken through to his brain; and it was over, all finally over: he'd successfully exchanged the penury of a miserable life for the perdition granted by permanent death. Mist descended and claimed for itself the last of his laborious breath: it'd burst forth in a bubble of blood. The sickly soul sped away from the casket of its constitution. Death crept up to him and tenderly kissed his bitter brow— like his mother would— before draping in a vermeil, worm woven pall his corpse: a blessedly bloody corpse rent beyond recognition, as insignificant and sore to sight in death as in life.

So, to find in a puff of breath the promise of life; to feel as though he'd been given the chance to relive once again this accursed strife and bring it to a different end was... to the say the least, utterly fucking inconvenient.

Draco had woken the day before school began, and he had been woken up by a bloody elf. He'd screamed bloody murder and lashed out, and the elf had upended upholstery and scurried away. Luckily, no one had come calling. He'd taken thirty minutes to scratchily summon up some semblance of control, courage even, slammed his occlumency barriers into place, and then strode out of the room.

While sitting across his father at the dining table and smearing marmalade over his, Draco's, toast, he had calmly contemplated both the surreality of this situation, and suicide; then his—very alive—mother had swept in and swept him into a hug, and asked, in apparent concern, if he was feeling under the weather, since the elf said he was; and Draco had found himself saying, no, no, mother, it is nothing, nothing at all; just homework, and grades, and that filthy little mudblood, Granger, who beats me at everything, every subject. She'd laughed and patted his head and sauntered off, and he'd sworn— sworn though his father was looking at him oddly, and with the slightest hint of condescension starting off on a lecture on how it was unbecoming to be second best at anything to a mudblood—that he'd do whatsoever he had to, to save his family, keep them all alive.

The issue is, he thought, straightening his tie as he absently occupied a vacant compartment in the Express, I am still at the start of year five.

Still a child, still utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, still supposedly a proud ponce prancing through adolescence. Known to the Dark Lord merely as Lucius Malfoy's son; known to Dumbledore and the order as a non-entity; and only somewhat indulged, with a tolerant sigh, by Severus Snape, who, as it turned out, was in fact a spy for Dumbledore, and who would at some point in the future wish he were a transfigured turnip instead; it would surely be infinitely preferable to his eventual fate at the hands of the Dark Lord.

"What a waste," he murmured, tucking his trunk into the top most rack. Draco dusted a dirty seat with a dainty dab and settled down; then let the chameleonic arm of behaviour reach behind carefully crafted barriers of occlumency and borrow from his mind the dusty tome of personal memory: this he then (metaphorically)sheaved through, eager eyed, mostly in an attempt to gather data on, and put up a façade of, 'what the fuck Draco Malfoy was like in year five'.

There wasn't much to go on. His memory was constrained to a modest selection of misinterpreted highs that at one time had brought with them a rush of blood, a flush of ambition. But now each event when considered singularly felt altogether colourless and entirely bloodless: as though his life at that time were a slow burn tragicomedy played out in black and white; as though each memory had degenerated to ash and been stuffed into an urn and left to atrophy; as though, after all these years, he had turned back the clocks and clumsily clutched at that urn, that crumbling relic, and discovered that it wasn't just a spool of memory that had been subsumed, but himself too, his very person— a persona that he had, moving beyond lost experience, or perhaps drawing from it, constructed anew in a different mould.

But that Draco Malfoy: that Malfoy from year five who had been made prefect and used that power to antagonize Harry Potter; who'd revelled in the society of Dolores Umbridge and was reviled throughout school; who'd sneered at Dumbledore's silly pronouncements and supposed that the Slytherin Gryffindor school dynamic was a steeple of the real world, an adequate approximation of it; that Draco Malfoy had died over a decade ago, died when he had turned his wand on Dumbledore and said those wretched words, Avada Ked—

At some point, he'd shut his eyes, so when the compartment door slid open he was caught by surprise.

He turned, expecting it to be Crabbe or Goyle. What he got, instead, was Hermione Granger.

Draco Malfoy froze. His mind short circuited, and the memory of their last ever interaction rushed back: I am telling you the truth. Hogwarts hides a horcrux. And anyway, what alternative do you have, Granger, other than to trust me? She hadn't believed him. She had suspected she was being set up to die. She'd probably seen something in his eyes, yet she'd scampered off with the hair brained guts of a Gryffindor and the steel of someone who died by proxy with each friend cut down, and only held contempt for the real thing...

For the briefest of moments, he felt horrible guilt. Then he schooled his face into a sneer and stared at her...only to be somewhat unsettled by the glimmer of recognition, the smouldering rage, the abortive attempt at drawing a wand that the phantom twitch of her clenched right hand gave away. She'd disliked him in school, but, if memory served, never been actively antagonistic in her attitude.

Then he suddenly knew. And, going by her expression, so did she.

She was, however, quicker than him on the draw.

In an instant he found himself disarmed and plastered against the compartment window, mentally cursing fate, luck, and the muggle Gods he'd seen his odd would be victim worship. The compartment door slammed shut, and he heard the tell-tale click of a latch and the whisper of an advanced locking charm.

Fuck.

He sighed. Pressed to a window; subject, like a dissected insect set up on a slide for inspection, to the predatory gaze of an unflattering face; witness to the shockingly barren scenery outside—treetops that looked like inverted beards of an imagined Dumbledore.

What a fucking shit way to die a second time.

"I suspected, you know, that you were sending me to die," Hermione said flatly.

He rotated his head and risked a glance; then shrugged and said, "The Dark Lord can be very persuasive."

He'd expected the jab of her wand against a vein in his neck. Then a few bitten out bitter words, followed by the finality of the blood boiling curse. Then to be transfigured into a twig and thrown under the train. She'd been a healer when Saint Potter—set up by Dumbledore, slain by the Dark Lord— passed away. She'd been twenty-two and hovering in the background. After his death, however, she had been thrust to the forefront by circumstance. Hermione Granger had coped well with prominence and infamy. Over the next four years she cultivated a reputation for ruthlessness and creative curses, for a liberal application of the dark arts. She had fought the Dark Lord thrice, in three different raids, and made it out alive each time, albeit with a slice of good fortune on each instance. Desperation had twisted her, turned her into what he thought was a watered-down version of his aunt. But where Bellatrix Lestrange's intelligence was more the function of a reptilian brain and a base desire to break everything she set her eyes on, Hermione Granger, to the very end, had been more calculated and controlled. Nor was she entirely devoid of finer human sentiment, or the ability to occasionally rise above the monotony of mere murder, and surprise through spontaneity.

It was this ability she now demonstrated by flippantly occupying the seat across instead of straight away flaying him alive. He sent a prayer to the gods for small graces.

"I trusted you, Draco" she said, tilting her head. She'd regained her composure. "Even at the end. Even when I said I didn't. And it cost me my life. But, let's leave that be." She sighed and stared out of the window.

He raised an eyebrow.

"You won't kill me, then?"

"Not for that, no," Hermione said. "Unlike you, I possess a modicum of maturity. And, at some level I instinctively knew ...betrayal was more than a remote possibility."

"How generous," he bit out, attempting and failing to move his arms. "And how befitting the glory and the mercy of light. Yet, I observe that I am in a partial body bind."

She looked at him for a long moment. "I haven't decided what to do with you yet," she settled for eventually saying.

He looked at her in disbelief.

"You came here looking for me—" he began, a flush of fury dusting his cheek.

She cut him off.

"For Harry," she said, and her tone that till then had been flat acquired the lustre of some implacable emotion.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I was looking for Harry and Ron."

"It isn't them plastered to a wall and held hostage at wand point, is it?"

A hint of hostility crept into Hermione's eyes, but when she spoke her tone was level.

"You're a death eater. You ended a flagging revolution through deception. This is me exercising caution."

He couldn't fault that logic.

"So why am I not dead, then?"

"Because," Hermione said softly, "I am trying to determine whether or not you could be of some use to me."

"I am, as you succinctly summed up, a death eater, and thus not to be trusted."

"And also best placed to once more be a spy," she said. There was a crafty glimmer in her eye; one entirely at odds with freckled teenage face that she now wore at the behest of fate. He suppressed a shudder. There was something grotesque about that gleam on this feckless face; Hermione Granger at this time was supposed to be moral and upright, a steadfast defender of the light who readily bowed to the whims and megrims of authority, far removed from the callous bitch she would be in ten years' time.

"This time, I have no intention to take up that vocation," Draco said pleasantly. "But even if I were to..." he grinned, "I sent you to your death once. What stops me from doing it again?"

"And there lies the rub," she agreed, as though they were earnestly discussing parliamentary proficiency over tea and toast, and not Draco being potentially murdered in cold blood. "You are worth something as a spy, but unworthy of the hassle otherwise."

Oh, she'd do it too. He'd seen her handiwork in the past. War had eroded her morality and imposed its own makeshift set of principles.

"Then deem me unworthy and do away with me," he spat out. "I'd rather die than be indoctrinated into the Dark Lord's service again; and I will not be your spy, Granger."

"I see," she said contemplatively. A speck of sympathy smoothed out her countenance."He killed you too, didn't he? No, don't try hiding it; I can see from your face that I am right. You were always easy to read, Draco, at least to me. But I am sorry to discover that you too met that fate." Infuriatingly, she was being genuine. She'd known and respected how jealously he treasured his family, and she was smart enough to put two and two together.

"Spare me your faux sympathy." Draco ground his teeth and avoided her eyes.

"Very well." She pursed her lips and steepled her fingers. "I thought I was the only one here, in this time, and I intended to take all my information to Dumbledore, but—"

"To that doddering fool?" He was astonished. She'd been a huge advocate of his till they discovered a day before Potter's death that he'd been set up to die all along, and that Dumbledore had known; Dumbledore had always known. After that, she'd treated his memory with indifference.

"He is a scholar and an able leader, and above all else a good man. And I... was, and still am, desperate." A candid admission.

"Desperate enough to go to Dumbledore? After everything he's done? His masterplan to beat the strongest Dark Wizard of all time was to send off three children on a wild goose chase. We saw Snape's memories. Dumbledore spent half his final year trying to redeem the boy that would go on to kill him. He left the fate of the world in the hands of a poorly funded, inadequately armed, thoroughly ill-equipped militia of the incompetent kind, and—"

Hermione interrupted him just as he was working up steam, starting to froth at the mouth, revelling at this opportunity to take out the frustrations of his current situation on that feckless fop of a mouldering fool.

"I'd do anything," she said quietly, "to spare the people I love their prior fate."

And he found himself at a loss for words.

They sat like that for a minute. Then she flicked her wand and he felt the body bind fall off. She tossed him his wand and stood.

"I must leave now. Prefect duties to attend to. If I remember right, then you have them too." Her words were clipped, her tone curt. "I initially intended that I either kill you, or make you swear an unbreakable vow. But I knew back then that you were lying to me, and I know now that you are telling me the truth. You don't intend to interfere, and you don't intend to side with Voldemort. I can respect that. For now."

Hermione Granger straightened her robes and offered him a neutral nod.

"Stay out of my way, Draco," she said. "I'd rather not see you around. And if I hear that you are indulging your Death Eater cronies again, I will kill you."

Then she left the compartment, not once looking back, leaving in her wake a very, very puzzled Draco Malfoy.

A/N: Suggestions and queries are welcome. Please consider taking a minute and leaving a review. It really makes my day when I receive any. Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!