A/N - A one-shot I wrote for a contest.

Disclaimer: HP is not mine, it's JKR's.

Two Spells

Star light, star bright . . .

She heard the pounding footsteps from a distance and knew they were coming to her. She sat, quite still, behind an oak desk that was far too big for her, and stared out the window at the first tiny glimmer of a star.

The first star I see tonight . . .

The desk was littered with piles and piles of parchment, arranged with only a vague hint of organization. Little purple paper airplanes zoomed around her head, sometimes crashing into her forehead or temples to get her attention. She didn't even bother waving them away; her eyes were glued to that single speck of light.

I wish I may, I wish I might . . .

Her eyes were soft and tired, less golden-honey-brown than they had been when she was a child. They were faded, worn, like the fabric of a favourite stuffed animal dragged through innumerable horrors and washed each time. Her light brown hair was a mess of corkscrew curls that coiled around themselves in a messy bun, held in place by an odd assortment of objects: an eagle feather quill, a stick of red, green, and white peppermint, a thin stick of wood, and a large red eraser poked out of her twisted locks.

Have the wish I wish tonight.

She raised a slim hand to her face, pressing her fingers firmly against her lips. It was something she did when she wanted to show emotion, when she wanted to feel. The past ten years had changed her, taken away the enigmatic and passionate girl she'd been in her youth. She wasn't young anymore.

I wish something would change.

The footsteps reached her door, which burst open. A young man came barreling in, his forest green robes flying around him as though a sudden gale had ripped through the building. He was frantic, his eyes wild, gasping for air.

"Madame Minister!" he choked. She ripped her eyes from that lone, imaginary star and turned to stare at the man. "Madame Minister!"

She raised a slim eyebrow a fraction of an inch. Her eyes darted from his face to the plaque on her door. It hadn't changed; it still read Department of Magical Law Enforcement – Head's Office.

"Abercrombie, I think you may have been hit a little too hard on the head." Her voice was calm and cold. She got to her feet. The purple memos fluttered away from her. "I am not the Minister of Magic."

He took a deep, steadying breath, his hands on his knees. "You are now," he told her, his expression terrified. "The Minister was killed moments ago. The Ministry is under attack!" Her hand pressed to her lips again, but other than that there were no outward signs to express her shock. "As his wife and his chosen successor, you are the Minister now."

She remained frozen for a few moments, her mind processing what she'd just been told. She felt no sadness at the news of her husband's death. Her mind was focused solely on how to solve the imminent problem that faced her: the attack on the Ministry.

She strode out from behind her desk and took the now-trembling man's shoulders. "Listen to me, Abercrombie," she hissed, shaking him a little. "You are to get everyone out of the ministry, right now. Floo powder, Apparition, the visitor's entrance . . . every escape route must be utilized. Do you understand me?"

He nodded. And kept nodding. She frowned at him; something in his eyes unsettled her.

"Stop nodding!" she hissed, shaking him again. "I'm going to get on the announcer and let everyone know what's happening. You need to get back to your department and start getting people out."

He nodded again and turned to leave. Then he stopped, his hand on the doorknob, and turned back to her. His blue eyes looked pained, his smooth features marred in a caricature of indecisive grief.

"But what about you?" She could have hugged him. The poor Senior Assistant. He was so good at his job.

"I'm staying," she said, pulling the stick of wood and the peppermint out of her hair. She tossed the latter at Abercrombie, who unwrapped it almost unconsciously and stuck it in his mouth. He looked stricken.

"But . . . why?" he moaned through the candy. She looked at him incredulously.

"Because they're after me," she explained in a kindly voice, pushing the billowing sleeves of her robes up to her elbows and tying them there. A stray curl fell down in front of her eyes and she pushed it away, noting with a twinge of horror that there were far more strands of grey within it than she had expected.

Abercrombie seemed to be steeling himself. His jaw was set, his fists clenched, the muscles in his neck and shoulders as tense as suspension bridge cables. "I'll stay with you," he announced, straightening his posture with a grimace. "It's my job to protect you, and I will."

She shook her head and pushed him gently towards the door. "They're after me," she repeated. "They want the Minister. They won't kill you if you're just running away, but if you try to protect me you iwill/i die. I couldn't live with that."

He looked at her with an expression of mingled disappointment and relief. "But –" he began, but she silenced him with a glare that made him snap his mouth shut.

"That's an order, Abercrombie. Now leave!"

He left, yelling at the top of his lungs: "The Ministry's being attacked, run, run!"

She paused, very briefly, to glance at the nameplate on her desk. Hermione MacMillan, Department Head. Then she ran, too.

- -

"Attention, all staff of the Ministry of Magic. This is your Minister, Hermione MacMillan. My husband has been killed and the Ministry is under attack. Please vacate the premises immediately. To our attackers, please allow my staff to evacuate the building unharmed. They are innocent. I am the one you're after."

He looked down at the body at his feet. "How the hell did you end up with a woman like that, Ernie?" he asked the corpse. It didn't answer. He glared at it. "Still think you're too morally aware to talk to me, do you?" He snorted and stepped over his erstwhile classmate. "I never liked you, MacMillan."

The man's eyes were a pale, grayish blue that shone with ill-disguised excitement. He held his wand tightly in his pale hand, pointing it threateningly at anyone who came near him. He never once had to attack --- they all scattered the moment they saw him --- but that had been the plan. His wand was only to cast two spells that night.

He had never really been inside the ministry before, but he had studied the schematics over and over. He knew them backwards, forwards, sideways, and in any direction you care to name. He could have drawn them with his feet, blindfolded, and tied to the back of a bucking, angry Hippogriff. He had spent the past five months preparing for this day.

The golden lift clattered down to meet him and he jumped in, scaring all of the other passengers out into the atrium. He then pressed the number 1 button and sat down, closing his eyes as he waited for the lift to finish its long, noisy ride up to where the top offices were.

The halls were deserted, posters and art hanging haphazardly from their hooks. Desks and cubicles were filled with half-written scrolls, the quills still dripping ink. He smirks; they had all run like fools when they discovered he was there. Cowards.

The door to the Minister's office was ajar, as he'd known it would be. He pushed it open and stepped in, boldly, though it was entirely possible that he'd misjudged the situation and was about to get slaughtered where he stood.

He hadn't misjudged it; the room was empty save for her. She'd let her hair tumble in spastic waves down to the small of her back. She stood with her back to the door staring out the fake window at the starry, cloudless night that magical maintenance had designed.

She'd known he was coming. She knew who it was who had attacked her Ministry. She was waiting for him.

He crossed the room in five great strides and pressed the tip of his wand to the back of her head.

- -

"Nice of you to join me, Malfoy," she said, unfazed by the wand he was threatening her with. She didn't even turn to face him. "I assume it was you who sent this letter?"

She held up a piece of parchment. The writing was spiky, harried, almost illegible. The green ink glittered like mandrake leaves in the faint light emanating from the fireplace on the wall to their right.

Minister,

Protect yourself and your wife. I have two spells just waiting to be cast tonight.

To their left was a massive mahogany desk, even larger than her own and far less cluttered. The nameplate on this desk read Ernie MacMillan, Minister of Magic. There were no flapping memos in this room; other than the gentle crackling of the fire there was no sound at all. It was almost unbearably pristine, every ink bottle in place, every scroll and book perfectly aligned.

"I heard that you'd married MacMillan," he sneered, flipping his head so that his platinum blond hair would fall into his eyes. "I always thought you were marked to be with that idiot Weasley."

She shrugged, dropping the note onto the floor. She felt a surge of delight at the fact that she'd just dirtied her husband's horrifically clean office. It was a liberating experience. "I was," she deadpanned, looking away from the parchment. "But it's rather hard to stay with someone after they've died on you. Wouldn't you agree?"

His grip on his wand tightened and he drew in a shaking breath. "You just had to bring that up, didn't you, Granger?" he snarled. "Just had to mention my misfortunes, didn't you? Had to rub it in my face that you're sitting here, with a cushy job in the Ministry and a rich, weak husband, while I've lost everything, had to rebuild everything?" He was shouting now. "I've gone through horrors you could never dream of, you ---"

She spun around and started yelling right back. "Horrors I could never dream of, eh?" she shrieked. "Who do you think you are? I lost my whole family in that same accident, if you'll remember! Ron, Rose, and Hugo . all gone! Leaving me to marry an abusive, career-obsessed maniac who never once thought of how I felt, never once cared! And you say I have no idea? That's rich, Malfoy. That's really rich."

They were facing each other now, their wands pointing into each other's faces. Hermione was breathing hard; Draco's eyes had tightened. But slowly, slowly, she lowered her wand.

"I'm sorry," Draco said quietly, his wand still trained on her. "I keep forgetting that we've lost the same things."

"Why are you here, Malfoy?" she asked him tiredly. She was exhausted by that amount of emotion; she had been trained by her second husband to speak when spoken to, to be austere and unemotional at all times. "Surely you didn't break into the Ministry and kill my husband just so that we could get into a who's-suffered-more contest."

He still hadn't lowered his wand. "You read the note. You know why I'm here."

She rolled her eyes. "You killed Ernie," she said, raising one slim finger. "And you Confunded poor Ewen Abercrombie so that he would think there were more people attacking the Ministry than just you." She held up another finger. "That's two spells. You filled your quota."

He smirked. "Smart little Minister, aren't you?"

Her lips twitched into ghost of a smile. "I try to be." She moved away from him, over to the desk, trailing her fingers lightly over the smooth, polished surface. "I also try to be knowledgeable." She shook her head and looked up at him. He noticed for the first time how much she had aged. "But I can't for the life of me figure out why you've come. You aren't part of any Dark Force anymore, you have no relatives in the Ministry to save from Ernie's tyrannical ways, and you never seemed to harbour any particular grudge against my husband. Not one that would make you want him dead, anyway," she amended, a real smile breaking over her features. "We're forty-five years old now, Mafoy. We're getting too old for stupid, impulsive actions."

He shrugged away her final comment. "Of all of those, you were closest on the second one." He finally dropped his wand down to his side. He moved so quickly that she didn't have time to react; in moments he was in front of her, pinning her to the desk with one arm on each side of her. "You and I are far more alike than you realize. We've lost the same things, we've been abused the same ways."

She looked up at him, confusion written all over her smooth face. "I don't understand."

He smiled and stepped away from her. "I came," he explained, his voice silken and quiet. "To save you." He held out his hand.

She slid her hand into his.

Star light, star bright . . .

Thank you.

A/N - And that's the end!