His Name was Draco Malfoy

His name was Draco Malfoy, 16 year old Death Eater, and he had a mission.

Her name was Hermione Granger. She was a known supporter and friend of Harry Potter, actively defied the Dark Lord, and a Mudblood. He was to kill her.

It was hypothetically an easy task- find her, draw his wand, utter two words, then remove the body if necessary. However, this was a smart Mudblood-if she saw him, or if his life-ending curse missed, she would defend herself-and she had considerably more skilled with a wand than many other witches and wizards. She could scream, shout, draw attention to herself in any way, and he would have to run, and attempt again later-only without the element of surprise.

He was in the forest near her house, waiting for her to leave her room. He could see her light on up in her room on the second floor, and if he squinted, he could make out her figure on a window seat, writing.

She was always writing, wasn't she?

He almost smiled. Almost.

He could imagine the look of surprise on her face were he to waltz into her house and knock on the door-she would open it unthinkingly, expecting a younger sibling, or one of her parents. She would freeze, wide-eyed and horrified, while he smiled and raised his wand.

Draco would have loved to do just that. Unfortunately, that plan had a low chance of success- what if she screamed, or her parents saw her, or some drooling two-year-old little sister saw him and told all of her two-year-old friends?

No, waiting to get her alone, while less satisfying, was more likely to end with a dead body to help douse the fighting fire of that Harry Potter.

Satisfied that she wasn't about to leave her room any time soon, he ghosted back into the shadows of the trees, black cloak blending in with the growing blackness. Only his pale face failed to disappear into the almost night- his smirking face, pale as bleached bone.

This all would have been very dramatic had he not ghosted backwards to a spot right between a mother bear and her cubs.

He never saw it coming.

A slash from a set of deadly claws, a rip from a set of teeth sharp like the knives he had seen stabbed into victims of the Dark Lord.

Then, a trickle of blood running down his forehead. It reached his eyelashes, then drip-dropped down over his eyes. His vision tainted red.

Then, his world went from red to black.

He may have awoken sometime later, he wasn't sure. Wherever he was, it was light, and warm-summer air trapped somewhere? He thought he saw a girl with a bushy flame for hair, a girl who was somewhat familiar. No, he mustn't be awake-the only girl he knew with hair like that was Hermione Granger, a girl on the opposite side of The War, a girl he had been ordered to kill. Why should she help him, much less move him from the ground where he lay bleeding?

He lapsed back into black.