**Disclaimer:  Everything belongs to JK Rowling, nothing is mine.

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Chapter 24:

Reading it again didn’t help. The spell was right here, even the research that he did which led up to it was here for all the world to see. The methodical mind of a genius spell crafter was displayed in all it’s glory across the antique pages of the dirty little book that Hermione had uncovered. Not that Draco was very concerned with who had or had not created the killing curse. Someone had to eventually, and if hadn’t been O’Leary, then it would have been someone else. No, what Draco found disturbing was the way that the young brown haired girl who looked so much like Hermione sat at the far end of the room. But it wasn’t his Hermione who sat without looking at anything at all, who sat like someone that had been exposed to dementors for a long period of time. Hermione wasn’t empty.

Draco had gone to Azkaban once, back in his third year. It had somehow leaked back to Lucius how frightened Draco had been of the dementors that guarded the school. Lucius had always believed that the best way to surmount a fear, if one allowed himself to have a fear, was to confront it. So over the Christmas holiday, Draco and Lucius had traveled to the wizarding prison to ground out his fear. There had been no pity in him for the prisoners there, and why should there have been? If they were so incompetent that they allowed themselves to be caught then they deserved whatever the Dementors had in store for them. In fact, it was the last time Draco could remember feeling a rush of pride for Lucius. The man had avoided imprisonment and was now a respected member of the community; Draco could appreciate the man’s ability for avoiding trouble.

“Hermione?” Draco asked.

The girl didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge that he had even spoken. Draco scowled; he hated being ignored.

“Oh come on Granger,” he drawled, “it’s not the end of the world. So the old coot created the killing curse. Big deal! But you look like someone just told you your cat died.”

Hermione flinched and Draco took that as a promising sign and continued. “It isn’t as if our old hermit is a super villain. Bloody hell, in the book I’ve been translating all he does is go on and on about repentance this and salvation that. I’ve read pages upon pages of this self-loathing diatribe. If I had created such a powerful spell, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. I would be proud.”

“I’ll bet you would too.”

It was the first time she had spoken in almost an hour and Draco had to fight against the superior smirked that wanted to break across his face. Hermione had turned in her seat now and was glaring at him.

“I’m sure that you’d love to lay claim to a curse that has killed countless thousands.” Her voice was sharp, cutting. And Draco found the pleasure of his success quickly dwindling.

“It’s not the curse itself you know, it’s the wizards who use it.” Draco responded with equal bite.

“Oh of course, the curse itself isn’t to blame. In fact, we shouldn’t even call it the killing curse should we? No, how about we call it the harmless fluffy bunny curse; use it at parties, amaze all your friends!” Hermione stood up and jerked her bag onto her shoulder with a furious flourish. She headed to the door and then stopped to shoot back over her shoulder at him, “I’m sure that Harry would find it very comforting to know that his parents weren’t really murdered by that spell!”

Draco was up and across the room with amazing speed. He slammed the door shut before Hermione could get past him and turned to her, his hand pressed firmly against the door, his face only inches from her own. “First off,” he hissed angrily, “I don’t give a damn about perfect, wonderful, glorious Potter!”

Hermione recoiled and Draco’s tone softened as he continued, “and he would have just found another way. If Voldemort didn’t have Avada Kedavra, he would have just used some other spell. You know that, don’t you? It isn’t as if Tom Riddle would have grown up to be your average, all around nice guy if O’Leary hadn’t created that spell.”

“I know that,” she whispered softly, “but that doesn’t make it any better.” Hermione then placed a pale hand on his shoulder, gently pushed him aside, and left the room.



Draco wandered the halls aimlessly, his mind elsewhere. He chuckled gutturally to himself. “Who would have thought it?” He muttered in the noiseless walkway. He was still reveling over the knowledge that the person whose work he had spent most of the school year interpreting, translating, and transcribing, was the author of such a well-known curse. Draco never would have given old Gregorius so much credit.

Draco wasn’t thrilled over how upset Hermione had gotten when she discovered it, but then, she was a bit on the self-righteous side. And Draco didn’t doubt that she would be able to get past it.

He grinned at nothing in particular, now that he was away from Hermione and not being biased by her obvious distaste for anything having to do with the dark arts, Draco was finding the whole thing rather amusing. And O’Leary had suddenly become much more interesting.

Footsteps could now be heard coming up the corridor from behind and Draco turned to look back, thinking for a minute that maybe Hermione had calmed down a bit. But it turned out to only be Goyle. Draco stopped and waited for the other boy, telling himself firmly that he wasn’t disappointed that it was Goyle and not Hermione. But the lie became more flimsy every time he used it, which seemed to be an awful lot now a days.

“Draco,” Goyle said after taking a moment to catch his breath, “Draco, a letter’s come, from your father. Pansy said that you’d want to know.”

Draco nodded mutely and headed back the way Goyle had appeared, not waiting for the other Slytherin who was clutching a pain in his side, exhausted from the obvious exertion of climbing a nearby flight of stairs.

So Lucius had responded to Draco’s letter. Not that Draco had really doubted that the older man wouldn’t, but it surely wouldn’t have been out of character for Lucius to bait him with news of his mother and then deny him any further knowledge.

The common room was, as usual, dark. Even though a fire burned heartily in the great, the light did little to brighten the corners where most people were sitting talking quietly amongst themselves. It wasn’t that all Slytherins were up to dark deeds. But they were picked for this house due to their zeal for ambition and their ability to succeed under almost any circumstances. To the other houses Slytherins put up quite a united front, but in their own common room, most of them fell to in fighting. Draco had always enjoyed it. The furtive glances and whispered secrets. A good ear for listening and the ability to hold one’s tongue until the proper opportunity arrived were great skills to have. And Draco had been trained well for it.

The letter lay, unopened, on the table next to his bed. He knew that it hadn’t been tampered with. Draco didn’t even need to look closely to know this. No one would ever attempt to pry into a letter from Lucius. Some one else, an old friend, another relative, even his mother’s letters wouldn’t have been entirely safe from the untrustworthy curiousness of his fellow housemates; but never, ever Lucius’ letters.

Draco,

I’m glad that you have finally come to your senses. Your mother did not even want to tell you of her poor health knowing that you would probably leave school to come see her. And she was always so determined that you would attend Hogwarts just like we did. I have been unable to tell her of your disgrace of us though. I do not think she could handle such painful news as that of her son and only child abandoning his family to follow the idiotic ideals of some unimportant Headmaster.



But the point of this letter is not to berate you for your shortcomings as tempting as it may be. I have recently spoken to the doctors at St. Mungo’s. They believe that your mother has a rare case of Tiberian influenza that she must have picked up while she was abroad over the summer. There isn’t any known magical treatment because in almost all cases, this disease is only a minor ailment and the wizard in question is able to recover easily on their own. Your mother, however, has contracted a very virulent case and her frail constitution does not bode well for her recovery.



I do not want you coming to see her. In her condition, a visit from you might deplete her remaining bastion of strength, and I will not allow that. If I feel that she is soon to be leaving us, I will send for you.



Father



Draco read the letter again, his brow furrowing in an expression that

seemed torn between anger and anguish. Lucius had to be toying with him, didn’t he? Draco didn’t think that Lucius would lie about his mother, but then Draco wasn’t entirely sure. Slipping the letter into his pocket, Draco left his room. He decided to prowl the school in hopes that something would click together in his mind, that something would suddenly leap out of the letter as he read it again and again in the dark halls that would tell him once and for all whether Lucius was lying or not. But as with the last letter, there was nothing out of place.



He had just passed over the great hall for the second time in his rounds about the school when a voice called out his name. Turning, he saw Hermione walking quickly to him, slipping through a group of first and second year Hufflepuffs who were looking between Hermione and him with undisguised interest.

Draco swiftly stowed his letter away again and feeling like she had caught him doing something nasty and went on the defensive. “What do you want Granger?”

Hermione looked taken aback by his drawl but still proceeded up to him. “Well you’re in a sour mood,” she said lightly as if forgetting how moody she had been only a few hours earlier.

Draco ignored this and turned to the small collective of Hufflepuffs who were still waiting, obviously fishing for an interesting piece of gossip to spread around. “Can I help you with something?” He asked them in a low, dangerous voice.

Hermione rolled her eyes and crossed her arms disapprovingly but the younger students all seemed to take Draco’s underlying threat for face value and immediately dispersed in different directions, leaving Hermione and Draco alone in the hall.

“Like I asked before,” Draco said icily to Hermione once again, “what do you want?”

“Oh really Draco, stop being a prat.” Hermione replied primly. “I’ve been looking all over for you, to tell you the truth.”

“Oh?” Draco asked smartly, “are my charms really that hard to resist? Honestly, I had no idea.”

Draco had begun walking once the other students had left and Hermione hurried to keep up with him. She was obviously not to be put off.

“There was something that you said in the library, something that has got me thinking.”

“You? Thinking? Never.” Draco smirked as Hermione glared at him.

“It was what you said, about the book you’re working on now in your dorm.” Hermione pressed doggedly on despite Draco’s apparent ill mood. “You said something about salvation, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Draco quickened his gait, as a few more students appeared around the corner of one corridor.

“Well what if he was serious about it?”

“Serious about what?” Draco was becoming incredibly annoyed with Hermione, she was persistently tailing him and there were people watching.

In exasperation Hermione grabbed the sleeve of his robe and pulled him backward. Draco stumbled and then turned to glare at her.

“He felt guilty about creating that curse,” Hermione spoke quickly now that she had his full, if somewhat furious attention. “What if he did something about?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not sure, maybe a counter curse?” Hermione’s voice had dropped remarkably and Draco could barely hear her.

“There isn’t a counter curse. Everyone knows that.” Draco crossed his arms in a manner that mirrored her favorite look of disapproval.

“But what if there is?” Hermione whispered breathlessly, “what if he was so guilt-ridden over what he had done that he created some sort of defense, something to stop…”

“There isn’t a counter-curse Granger. It’s impossible, the curse itself it too strong. And O’Leary is too much an enfeebled old man to make one even if it was possible.” Draco interrupted.

“You didn’t seem to think he was that he was so enfeebled a few hours ago when you virtually praising him for creating Avada Kedavra!” Her voice had risen sharply.

Several passing students gasped and defensively cringed backwards when she said the infamous curse. Draco grabbed her arm furiously and pulled her along with him down a flight of stairs, through a deserted corridor, before roughly pushing her into a dark alcove.

“Are you trying to get into trouble?” His angry hiss was low.

“It can’t hurt to look, can it? We know that he had the capability to do it.”

“We wouldn’t even know where to begin.” He muttered trying to dissuade Hermione.

“Well we would have an idea as to where to look.” She said quickly, making Draco regret that he had given her a window.

He slouched against the wall of the alcove and surveyed the empty hallway. “And where would we looking?”

“He kept everything organized and dated. And the journal with the spell in it is one of the last ones, there are only a few more after that. So we know that if he had made a counter curse, then it would be in one of the few remaining books.” Hermione had begun pacing back and forth from the nook to the opposite wall and back again. “I think that starting with the volume you have would be the best one to start with.”

“This is ridiculous.” Draco grumbled darkly.

Hermione turned and looked back at him. He wanted nothing more right now than to turn and walk away, to leave her and her insane hopes there in that hallway. He didn’t want to spend any more time trapped in that room with her, thinking those thoughts that he always thought when she was near him. But Draco met her eyes, those soft cinnamon eyes had caught him again and Draco knew he would do what she asked.

“Please,” Hermione stepped to him and lightly touched his shoulder, “please help me Draco.”

Draco sighed, unable to look away from her desperately pleading eyes. “I’ll go get the book.”



“This is pointless, you realize this, right?” Draco snapped the book closed and turned to glower at Hermione.

“It is not pointless if we find something useful.” She responded primly.

“Right, like after five hundred years or so, a couple of rival Hogwarts’ students are going to stumble across the key to saving the world from the great evil threat. I’ve never been one for fairy tales.” Draco stretched languidly and smirked as he suddenly thought of how he’d really like to be spending his time with Hermione at the moment.

“Have you always been this optimistic or is it just the weather?” Hermione glowered at him.

Draco opened his book again and picked up where he had left off. Hermione continued to glare at him a moment longer as if to make sure that he really was going to help before returning to her own text.

He had been reading for a while now, the sun had set long ago and the library was going to be closed soon. Hermione was still sitting across from him; the pile of books that surrounded her had grown. He had fallen to watching her read. It was amusing to him how she always bite her lip when she came upon something interesting. Or absentmindedly pull on a strand of dark brown hair that framed her face. She was resting her chin in the palm of one hand and then, as he watched, she sighed and switched to her other hand. Draco observed as she flinched slightly as her chin settled into the palm of her other hand. She began to flex the fingers of the now unused hand. He felt a strange gentleness overcome as he remembered the accident earlier that day.

Hermione glanced up and smiled slightly. But having her look at him so trustingly reminded him of how close he had allowed himself to get to her. He remembered in Potions, how he had been so quick to defend her. How he had joined, of all people, the blasted Gryffindors in trying to get her out of trouble. As if the rumor mill wasn’t bad enough already. He had to go and add more fuel. And for what purpose? For some brown haired girl that made him lose his breath? Draco couldn’t believe that he had allowed lust to control him so much. But even as he thought about it, lust didn’t seem like the culprit.

“Something wrong?” She asked, breaking his train of thought.

Draco refocused on Hermione and was almost surprised to realize that he was scowling at her.

“I’m just sick to death of sitting in here.” He snapped.

“Well if that’s the way you feel, why don’t you just leave already?” She was as quick to temper as he was.

Draco didn’t say another word to her. He gathered his things and left the library, not in a storming rage, which seemed to be her favorite exit, but with a calm stroll. As if he had nothing better to do with his time than make sure that everyone he passed had proper time in which to admire him.

He made his way back to the Slytherin dungeons slowly. He didn’t know why he had been so disagreeable with her. They hadn’t even been fighting. Draco supposed it was just nerves. There was his mother and Lucius, the school and it’s gossip, his Malfoy image, and of course there was her. Hermione who was still in the library trying to find a spell that wasn’t there, trying to find some ancient miracle that had somehow gone unnoticed for centuries.

The dorm room was vacant. Draco threw himself into a deep armchair that sat next to the fire. He had borrowed it from the common room one evening.

She was so naïve, Draco could barely stand it sometimes. Hermione would look for the best in everything. She was out of touch with reality. The poor girl actually thought that good would always vanquish evil, that Potter would always win, and that Voldemort would get what he deserved. But Draco knew better. Draco knew that the world didn’t revolve around the hopes of some innocent young girl. Voldemort was too powerful to be stopped, and good rarely won.

Draco pulled a book from his bag and carelessly jerked it open. She would sit up there long into the night studying till her eyes hurt just because some idealistic fool created one of the most powerful spells ever known. He started to flip through the creaking pages as he thought. And what was she expecting anyway? To just open any old book and find it? Even if there was a spell, which Draco highly doubted there was, the likely hood of them stumbling upon was highly unlikely.

And then Draco looked down. He looked at the book in his hands, at the page he had stopped at. And then he really looked at it. His mouth fell open and he mouthed wordlessly for a moment or two.

“Oh bloody hell,” he muttered finally, “how coincidental is that?”