April.

On September the fourth, in 476, the Roman Emperor was forcefully abdicated from his position and home by a cruel Germanic invader. He believed, and convinced his people to believe, that they were collectively better than the Romans, and deserved hearty portions of Italy's land. Some say the empire fell on this date -- that without the rule of a proper Roman the empire would cease to exist, and would swiftly deteriorate in prosperity.

The fact remains, however, that even without the presence of a Roman Emperor, the soul of the empire lived on. The empire continues, even if the emperor does not.

Voldemort dies today, but his beliefs will stay alive. It's not what they want, what they fought for, what some died for, but it's the truth all the same. Some will deny it. Some will fight it. Some will run from it, and will spend the remainder of their lives, however long that may be, checking over their shoulders for a glimpse of it in the swirling dust behind them.

But Hermione? She lives it.

May.

She sees a Death Eater on a Tuesday. It took her a month to leave her parent's home, and the first corner she turns she finds him facing her, staring. There's a look in his eye, it's a raw hunger that she can detect because she's seen it before, and she hurries onward before she can watch him for a second longer.

The familiar chill of fear sweeps down her spine, and she treads forward on hurried feet.

June.

Draco Malfoy stands from the other side of the deep mahogany desk, and nods curtly at the Minister. The exotic man reaches the door, but pauses.

"Are you positive this is what you want, Mr. Malfoy? You are about to make a lot of people very angry." His voice is stern, and Malfoy ponders the sincerity behind his words. Despite the sick feeling swirling in his gut, he meets the older man's eyes and gives one precise nod. "Very well," says the Minister, opening the door.

They step past the frame, and angled towards the flash bulbs they clasp hands, smiling for the cameras.

The next day the Prophet runs the story, and Hermione has to read the headline three times before she can understand the words, and twice more before she can believe them.

---

That night is the first time Hermione dreams since the end of the war. Sweaty limbs tangled in scratchy bed sheets, the nightmares devour her brain until only the feeling of pain lingers like the hurt of an old wound. Before her eyes open to welcome the overcast skies of morning, she sees his face, a final parting.

July.

"How much are you paying him?"

She pulls the beaded mask off her face, and god it feels great to breathe properly again. She forsakes her moment of relief to look as menacing as she can while feeling trickles of sweat roll down her exposed back, and she mentally curses whoever thought it was grand inspiration to throw a masquerade ball in the thick of summer. She feels sticky and her dress is sodden, and even if she hates Malfoy she wishes she didn't have to allow him to see her like this.

He turns from the wall he was leaning against and begins to walk away, not acknowledging her question.

She narrows her eyes and hurries forward, as fast as her fancy shoes can take her, because she'll be damned if she lets Malfoy walk away from her.

"Please, shed some light on this for me?" His pace has quickened noticeably, and she is practically jogging to catch up with him. "You miraculously get a full pardon the day your father is thrown in Azkaban, and correct me if I'm wrong here, because this is where it gets interesting, Malfoy -- the last time I checked, you were wanted for the same crimes as your father--"

"--Why do you care?" He explodes suddenly. So suddenly that she blinked and unexpectedly he was in her face, wand pointed at her jugular -- all before she could even think of moving her hand towards her wand holster.

She looks confidently into his eyes, and before his face is completely consumed by fury she sees something else -- worry.

"Why do you?" She prods, holding onto that last flicker of worry and running with it, and she knows she'll regret it later, but she doesn't care now because this is Malfoy, and he is a bad person, and that is the only explanation Hermione needs to continue her pursuits.

He mutters something that sounds vaguely similar to fucking ridiculous and he's already turned away from her, his crumpled mask dropped by her feet. She kicks it lamely and folds her arms petulantly across her chest.

She shivers despite the heat, and on the slow walk home she has a hard time convincing herself that it was just a passing breeze that left her feeling so cold.

---

The past haunts her again tonight.

Fire licks at her defenseless limbs, twisting in brutal agony under a single shred of moonlight. Her body convulses, an aftershock, and suddenly she's limp. The fire has subdued, but it leaves charred remains in its wake. Her heart pounds strongly, fighting for a chance of survival, and if she was strong enough to open her eyes she would find her mother standing in the doorway, a hand pressed to her mouth and a tear rolling down her face.

When she wakes hours later the pain is gone, but the memory remains like a scar, marred and ugly in her creamy flesh. Her eyes close and she sees his face, his perfectly sinister face, and the memory is trigged so fiercely she can feel heat running through her bones.

It's then she makes a decision. Not a particularly wise one, but it's a decision all the same.

August.

She spends each shred of her time consumed in books, pouring over facts, and notes, and hopes that where others have failed she will succeed. She studies after effects so diligently that some nights she swears she can feel the Cruciatus traveling through her veins, a part of her. And while she studies, she waits.

Each night, before the unconscious comes to drag her mind away, she waits. Apprehension, fear, and anticipation swirl as an uneasy ball in the pit of her stomach, hoping that maybe tonight will be the night the curse weaves its way into her body, that maybe tonight is the night it will find her again.

It doesn't come, and her patience has been robbed of her, and she soon finds that she is sick of waiting.

September.

She rents a flat one block away from the pub Ministry workers are known to frequent, and most nights she waits at the bus stop across the street, her gaze strong and steady as Muggles and buses pass by her, completely unnoticed. A locomotive of light and sound, and still her concentration never wavers, for what she lacks in sanity she makes up for in determination.

And then it happens.

On a rainy Thursday evening, the last of the month, she sees the tip of his head bobbing through the throng of people around him, all bathed in the flickering lamp light. Her breath catches in her throat, and something explodes within her, something important, and without thinking she lifts her body on a pair of unsteady legs and makes her way across the street.

The pub emits a hazy gold glow from a dusty window, one Muggles pass by and seem to not notice. She stands with her nose to the glass and peers inside, watching as he leans back in a chair and laughs with a group of young men. She's transfixed, cataloging this memory away so she can pour over it later, when it's only her, when she can dismiss the feeling of intimacy for excitement. When it's safe.

She's gone before he senses he's being watched, but he spends the next hour looking for something on the other side of the window that he wasn't sure he believed had ever been there.

---

He reaches to her in her dreams, his fingers twining with hers as the curse journeys through her body; sharp fragments of fluorescent glass shredding their way into her soul. He leans his head back -- a laugh -- and she chases the pain down as she focuses on the stretching tendons in his neck, the small crinkle of skin that pulls from the corner of his eyes, so beautiful that she swears it's being pulled from up above.

She wakes, and smiles. For though she can remember the pain, she does not feel it, and as she scribbles messily in a leather-bound notebook she feels the first burst of hope explode from inside her chest.

October.

She gets clumsy with her routine, her obsession, and Harry finds her standing outside the pub.

It's awkward at first, he looks between her and the window, back to her with a scrutinizing look, and she wants to sink into the sidewalk until he grabs her by the elbow and pulls her inside, insisting she have a drink with him. Her heart beats one strangled beat as she sits on the barstool next to his, Harry on her other side. Her heart's tempo picks up, and it's almost dizzying sitting this close to him.

And then he stands up, walks away, and the weight of disappointment is crashing over her so intensely it begins to suffocate her, and when Harry turns to greet someone he knows she slips off the stool and breaks free from the open door as if it's her first breath of salvation. The cold air hits her face, and she turns to make the short journey to her flat.

There's someone behind her, however; their hand firmly grabbing her shoulder as they clear their throat at a spot frighteningly close to her ear. Her heart pounds, her body stiffens, and the earth must have twisted beneath her feet because she can't remember telling her body to move to face the person breathing hotly on her neck. It's him, and her eyes widen marginally. A ball of nerves and the sweet trickling of fear turn over in her stomach, and she stares at him for a few moments longer, before snapping her mouth shut. "What?" She asks, because she's afraid of what will happen if she tries to speak further than that.

"You're following me." It's spoken matter-of-factly, and her heart practically wheezes its next beat.

"I'm not," she whispers, barely audible. She looks to anywhere but his face. "I'm not following you."

He chuckles in a way that makes the hairs on the back of her neck raise, and he's close enough that he can probably see it happen. "If you say it enough do you begin to believe it, Granger?" Her mouth drops open, it closes, and she draws a few shuddering breaths in from her nose, and promptly turns and starts walking, deciding that no, she could not handle this right now. Her pace feels sluggish even though her thighs have already started burning with the force, and she can feel his presence lingering a few paces behind her.

She groans loudly, and turns around, her nostrils flaring. He wasn't making this easy, so she had every right to do the same. "What do you want from me?"

She expects a smirk, but is met with a raised eyebrow and a feigned look of innocence. "I'm walking, Granger."

Hands on hips, "Is this about what I said at the ball? Is that why you're doing this, are you angry--"

"--I don't give a fuck about something you said to me months ago." He begins walking towards her, and she steps away as he advances. He follows her into the side street she stepped into, briefly breaking his gaze with her to glare at the Muggle taxi man who was leaning against his cab further down the alley, smoking a cigarette and looking at them with mild interest. He returns his attentions to Hermione and finds that she's standing against the brick wall, her hands on her hips. He leans close to her, so close she can smell a faint trace of whiskey on his person. "I'm just giving you want you want, Granger."

His voice is like liquid ice, and it washes over her and her skin breaks out in gooseflesh. "What do I want?" She asks dumbly, too busy recording the way his eyes look so she can go over it later, when it will be of use to her.

"Don't play coy," he starts, leaning even closer to her, robbing her of air. "I've seen you -- for an entire bloody month I've watched you, so don't you dare think I'm daft enough to not have caught on."

She panics slightly, even if it's impossible for him to have caught on, but a nervous ball still lumps in her throat. "Caught on?" She asks, and her voice wavers. She winces at the sound, and he hums quietly in front of her.

"Do you think about me, Granger?" His voice is thick, and it's starting to make her head spin in a lazy sort of way.

She blinks quickly, because she does, but not in the way he implies and she realizes this now, and almost wants to laugh. Actually, she does laugh, and he groans and moves his body closer as he grabs her hips with his hands. His hands are hot on her body and there's a violent pounding coursing through her veins and if something doesn't put an end to it she's sure she will implode.

Her breathing has picked up drastically and her vision is lazy as her eyelids begin to feel heavy, and she laughs again, a bit desperate. "It's not that," she tries to reason, but he laughs thickly, one of his hands traveling from her hip, to her waist, around the curve of her breast, until it reaches her jaw, and he plunges his hand into her mass of hair and turns her head to face his.

"I'm sure," he breathes, and his lips ghost ever so lightly across hers. She stands stoic and unmoving, waiting. She's not quite sure what she's waiting for, but as his mouth claims hers once more, this time aggressive, demanding, she thinks it will do just fine.

He nips at her bottom lip and rolls it lightly between his teeth, enough to wake her from her trance, and she's returning his generosity with a stamina that will be sure to make her blush later. Her hands clutch at his face as his roam across her back, pulling her away from the wall and crashing into him, and she's too lost in a hazy fog to care much about where she is, as long as he does not let go.

---

She emerged from the street close to an hour later, and hasn't been able to stop thinking about it since. When she finally falls asleep, with the feeling of him all over her body, she will dream so vividly that she will be able to taste the curse as it flows from the memory of Bellatrix's wand.

November.

She's not standing at the window of the pub for more than a minute before Malfoy's weight is crashing into her, leading her away from the hustle of the city and into the dark, damp side street. She is barely given time to register what's happening before he's kissing her, and although it's only been a few days since she saw him she can't believe how much she has missed this. When his hands travel down her spine to rest boldly on her bottom she forgets her reasoning behind why she's doing this and just decides to go with it. She would be perfectly content with forfeiting her research if this is what she gets in return.

But the thought of it alone leaves a bitter taste of guilt in her mouth as he moves to lave at her nape, and her heart pounds thunderously in regret and confusion. Deft hands push him back, and she wordlessly steps away from him, leaving him left to wonder as she runs to the salvation of her front door.

---

She does not dream tonight, and when she wakes she throws her leather notebook across the room, where it will lay forgotten.

December.

It's freezing outside, and Hermione wishes that she decided to wear more than a light jacket. She pulls the fabric closer to herself and tightens the scarf around her neck. She's pacing the street, just one block from the pub, and every step she takes the cool air invades her body a tiny trace more. The tips of her finger tremble, and though it's cold, she's positive the tremors are caused by something else, something heavier than the weather.

She sighs and stops, slumping against a building and doubling over to her knees. It's been a month. One month to the day, and she still can't erase the feel of him from her mind. It's like he burned an imprint onto her body, into her soul, and even the most thorough of cleanses can't remove what he's left behind.

She's close to making her decision -- either up the steps and away from temptation or down the street and into him -- when he makes it for her.

"Long time." It's all he says and it's all he needs to say because when she finally gets the courage to meet his eyes there's something in them that makes her melt, and she can barely mumble a response before she's crashing into him, her hands leaving the frayed edges of her scarf and clutching onto the softness of his sweater. She wants to make a comment about why he's jacketless in this weather, but when his tongue makes a soft sweep at her bottom lip she groans and it's enough to make her forget herself all together.

His hands wind around her back and she falls flush against him, barely standing on steady ground. He pulls his head back slightly, and she begins to moan in displeasure when she catches on.

"I live up there," she says, pointing her head to the building above. His forehead rests against hers and she can feel his hot breath on her face.

"Thank Merlin," he groans, and follows her as she leads. They stumble up the stairs -- "What building has no lift?" -- completely twined together, hands never leaving the others' body. By the time she nudges her door open with her bottom she's pulling the sweater over his head, and she's skipping into her flat wearing only one shoe. She reaches to unwind the deep red scarf from her neck when his hands reach up to stop her.

"No," he whispers, his voice low and rough. "Let me."

She's in no place to refuse, and his long fingers reach to slowly peel the scarf from her neck, agonizing her with his patience. Every second he lingers her heart pounds more wildly than before; the ferocity and passion making her head feel heavy. He tosses the scarf somewhere behind him, and his fingers skim her waistline and plunge under the fabric of her jacket and shirt, brushing against her skin and she can already tell, before it's really even begun, that this was worth waiting a month for.

"Go sit on the bed." He nudges her in the other direction, and she blindly follows the orders. She reaches the mattress and instantly feels cold. Cold, and awkward. Should she sit on the bed, or stand by it? Maybe she should lay, but certainly not with all her clothes still on. Should she take her clothes off, or is that something the man does? Hermione has not had enough experience in this territory, and she's afraid she has no idea what a man like Malfoy expects from a situation like this. Or, from a girl like her. She settles on quickly shedding her coat, and folding it neatly beside where she sits on the bed, anxiously awaiting his footsteps.

She could sob with relief when he slowly pads into the room, his bare chest practically glowing in the dull lamplight, his fingers working the row of buttons on his slacks. He reaches the mattress, and she begins to awkwardly fidget with her shirt, unsure as to if she should take it off or not. He must sense this, because a hand reaches out to stop her, and he grins in a way that no man should be allowed to grin at a woman.

"Lay down, Granger."

Her mind is cloudy, and she can't seem to persuade her body to move how she wants it to. "Lay?"

"On the bed," he hints, and when she begins sliding back he kneels his way onto the mattress and over her. "Good girl." He whispers it, and he's not even as close as he has been, but the sound of it wraps her up and twists her around in a strange wave of intoxication. He bends to kiss her, and just as her mouth is melting into the rhythm of him, he pulls back slightly, only to pebble moist open-mouthed kisses across her jaw and down her neck. Her heart thumps loudly and she's clawing at her cheap bedding, and he must have some idea of the affect he has over her already. But if he does he shows no signs of it, and kisses his way across her collarbone. A hand reaches to skim the dampening skin of her stomach, and pushes her shirt up with it. He slides down her body expertly, and sits enough so that he has use of both his hands.

He takes handfuls of her shirt and yanks upward with them, and she has to ineptly shake the garment from her arms before she's free of it. He's back at it again, and she can't remember him even moving, but as he places a kiss over the thin cotton of her bra her entire body shudders, and if he had been blind to her reactions before he certainly couldn't be any longer. Her nipples pebble and peak under his ministrations, and it's that particular reaction that seems to push him over the edge. He wraps an arm around her back and quickly hauls her forward, enough so that he can snake his other arm around her and unclasp her bra, and as she falls back down against the pillows she sees it fly to the floor. His mouth is on her, and oh, she never knew this could feel so good. He nips softly, and she can't help but let a small moan escape, and her hips rock forward against him. He groans and does the same to her other nipple, and she pushes her hips toward him once more, but there's too much in the way, and it's slowly wearing her down.

"Pants," she manages between deep, shallow breaths. He doesn't cease his actions, just hums his approval, and she understands, though in quite a fog herself, that he might not be in the position to listen. "Pants," she says, stronger now, her hands sliding down to unbuckle her own pair.

He releases her nipple with a very faint smack, and realization slowly dawns on his face. "Mm," he nods, and rolls off her body and lands standing at the side of the mattress. She's not sure what he's doing, but it's definitely not what she had been intending. He crosses to the foot of the bed, the predator watching the prey, and leans forward to grab her just below her behind. He grabs her, and pulls her to the end of the bed, her tight grasp on the blanket below her causing it to bunch underneath her. He takes his time with her zipper, but swiftly removes her pants, and before she can even realize what happened, he had removed her panties and threw them on a heap on the floor. She was sprawled before him, in every sense of the word, with her modesty tossed carelessly on the floor. She tried to turn her legs inward, but it was no use -- he held her ankles and made soft tsk, tsk sounds with his tongue in objection.

And then he released her legs, finished the last button on his own trousers, kicked them to the floor, and left the bedroom. She lay there, horrified that her nudity had sent him running off, agonizing over the few dim details she could recall, but came up empty. She was about ready to wrap herself in a blanket and sink into the floorboards when he returned, naked and aroused, with her scarlet scarf in his hands.

"What are you doing with--"

"Shh, Granger." He extinguishes the light so they were bathed in darkness, and she slowly blinks her eyes to try to adjust. Her eyes sweep the room, and her ears strain to hear movement, and her traitorous heart beats with fervor.

And then she felt it. She couldn't be sure what it was she felt, until she felt the soft cashmere fabric sweep across her chest, so lightly, but so intensely that it weighed like an anchor over her body, keeping her from drowning in the sea of complete abandon.

"Open your legs." A whisper, a wet whisper right against her ear, and she can't help but to be startled by it. She breathes out from her nose and obliges, her face burning at the action. She expected his skin, his hand, anything of his, but her back arches clear off the bed after the scarf made quick, sweeping contact across her slit. She brings a hand from clenching into the sheets at her side, and presses it into her mouth, stifling the loud moan that passes through her lips. He repeats the action, and she nearly whines into her hand. Her breathing grows more frantic as he drags the fabric across different parts of her body, until it was spinning her in a web of lust and passion that she needed to break free of.

"Please, Malfoy." It came out softly, and she was afraid he hadn't heard it, but suddenly she feels him there, all over her body, his skin on her skin, exactly where she needed him to be. A hand pressed to her cheek, and he laid a kiss clumsily to the corner of her mouth as he positioned his hardness at her entrance.

"Hey," he says, speaking directly over her face. "Open your eyes."

She waits a few moments to steady her breathing, to calm her nerves. She takes a deep breath, and opens her eyes, and he swiftly enters her as she does, his eyes staring straight back into hers, through hers.

"Oh," she gasps, as he pulls out and snaps back into her. "My god." The last syllable ends on a gurgle of air, and she's trashing in the bed beneath him, her legs wrapping around him. The room is filled with rhythmic slapping noises as he buries himself to the hilt, and her intermittent cries and moans and pants to Merlin and Jesus and the Apostles, and oh yes, and before she knows what's happening light explodes before her eyes and he's biting at the sensitive skin of her neck and her toes curl and her legs twitch around him and the molecules in the air burst and she's floating, floating, floating, and she never wants to come back down.

January.

He usually leaves after she's fallen asleep, but one night when the snow is freshly fallen and the fire is just too warm, he stays. He lies somberly beside her, until something happens. Her body begins to jerk, and small pants of pain escape her lips. He turns over to face her, and is met with her face, sheet-white, and lips clamped tightly shut, a small trickle of blood rolling down her face. Sweat has broken out along her chest and brow, and he doesn't know how he didn't realize it earlier, but she is heaving and jerking, and then it's over.

Her eyes jolt open, and his image was already in her mind, and now she's seeing double. Except how his eyes are worried, not cruel, and he looks slightly panicked and out of place. Her breathing escalates and she begins to wheeze, and it's then when he wraps his arms around her, not knowing what else to do.

February.

"What the fuck is this?"

Hermione opens a groggy eye and pulls the blanket to cover her naked form, and she would blush at the sight of Malfoy standing stark before her if he wasn't waving something angrily in her face. She blinks, adjusts, and then stares in horror.

"Where did you find that?" She asks, because really she has the right to know, and she's staring at the open pages like him seeing them is her worst nightmare come to life. If she thought about it she'd suppose it was, but there's no time for thinking when your world is falling apart.

"I'm asking the questions." He's blunt, and she wants to bury herself under the blankets if it meant she would be able to avoid this conversation. But she can't, and when she realizes this she decides she's angry, because that was hers, it wasn't his, and he has no right.

"How dare you," she seethes, her eyes narrowing to slits as she pulls herself into a seated position. "How dare you go through my personal belongings."

"Not very personal, Granger, when it's lying open on the floor."

"Oh, so that justifies it? It's open, so you just think it's yours for the taking? When will you grow up, and stop being such a pampered little--"

"I saw my name, so I read it. I reserve every right to read what's been written about me. And don't even try to turn this around on me. This is about you and your fucking--"

"--rich boy, thinking you can read people's personal writings and get away with it. You're something else, Malfoy."

"I'm something else?" He shakes the journal closer to her face, and the pages -- a month's worth of research, time, stress, pain -- rip from the binding and fan out across the bed. "What the fuck is this, then?"

She momentarily forgets her modesty and scrambles forward to collect the pages, wild desperation pumping through her veins in the place of blood. Her eyes water involuntarily and she drags the loose papers and crushes them to her chest. He's staring at her like he can't believe what he's seeing, and he slowly begins to shake his head in disgust.

"You're sick."

"I'm--"

"Fucking sick." He's silent, and all she can hear is the pathetic crinkle of paper under the weight of her arms. "Is this some sort of masochistic bullshit? Do you get off on pain, Granger?"

"No." She whispers it, staring numbly across the room.

"Then what?" He yells this, and it's louder than she expects, and thinks it was more than what he expected too, because after the air has settled his mouth snaps shut and he grabs his crumpled clothing off the floor and slips through the door without a word.

March.

Odoacer is known as a villain in most pages of history books, although everything is relative. To those who believe his banishing the Roman Emperor caused the fall of the empire, he will forever be nothing more than a Germanic invader with no right to Italian land.

But to those who remained under his rule, when he kept the empire running and established, he was something much, much more. He was the King of Italy, the beginner of a new era.

Hermione receives a package late one night, one that contains a small leather journal with an even smaller passage scrawled on the front page. It reads, "Fear is a greater life-force than blood. To fear is to believe, and to believe is to exist."

She hasn't seen Malfoy since the day he left, but the lingering feeling of fear, the one that followed her in the streets and into her thoughts left along with him. She's not sure what it means, other than the justified hope that maybe it's actually over, and that when she closes her eyes at night she is no longer a victim of the past, but a survivor. A fighter.