March 2003

It's a trap. It's a trap. It's a trap.

It was the only thing Hermione could think as Harry vanished under his cloak of Invisibility to set out across the field toward the house.

They watched the door open, and there were quiet flashes of spellwork before Harry's head appeared, and he beckoned them forward.

They moved toward the house under heavy disillusionment.

Hermione watched the ripples of Fred and Charlie move soundlessly up the stairs while Harry signaled toward a door that led down to the basement.

She could feel Tonks behind her as they descended the narrow stairs and heard muffled spells and falling bodies as Harry and Remus reached the bottom. They had been in the house for less than a minute.

Hermione heard a door blast open.

"Clear," Harry's disembodied voice called softly.

They worked down the basement hallway, forcing the doors open. The quiet felt deadly... it was broken only by the faintest shuffling of feet. Her heart was beating in her ears, louder than the sound of Harry breaking into room after room.

They were halfway down the hallway when the door at the far end flew open. Dozens of spells shot out. Hermione dove to avoid a cruciatus streaking down the hallway. Several curses ricocheted off the walls; the air was filled with magic.

Everything was simultaneously slower and faster. Hermione focused on keeping her shield up and dodging as rapidly as possible. As she spun away from an acid curse that would have caught her in the face, the deadly green of a Killing curse raced toward her.

"You need to have the instincts to just move."

She threw herself to the ground, shot up to her feet on the other side of the hallway and proceeded to machine-gun stunners into the room down the hall.

Nothing lethal. If Ron was there, she might hit him.

Finally, the spells stopped. There was a pause.

"He's in here!" Harry shouted.

Hermione moved forward quickly into the room, removing her disillusionment. Harry was breaking through chains that had Ron hanging from the ceiling of the room. There were eight unconscious Death Eaters on the ground.

Ron had been beaten. His face so swollen it was almost unrecognizable. He was clearly shouting, but no sound emerged. His wrists had deep cuts in them where the shackles had sunk into his skin while he'd been hanging. Harry broke through the chains, and Hermione and Tonks caught Ron before he fell.

"Finite Incantatum." Hermione waved her wand over Ron's face as she whipped out her healing kit.

"Harry, you fucking idiot!" Ron exploded as soon as he was un-silenced. "Get out of here! Why the fuck did you bring Hermione?"

Too easy. It's been too easy. The words repeated themselves in her mind as she started healing Ron. She worked as quickly as she could; not everything, just enough, just enough to get him out of the house and able to fight if necessary.

"Verify it's him," Remus said.

"It's him," Harry said.

"Verify it," Remus snapped.

"How did Quirrell get past Fluffy?"

"With a bloody harp." Ron tried to push Hermione away and stand. "We have to get out of here."

"Swallow this," Hermione forced a potion to counter his internal organ damage down his throat, followed by a restorative and then a strengthening potion.

"We need to go now," Ron said as Hermione smeared bruise paste down his face to reduce the swelling so he could see.

"Let me fix your wand hand," she said, pushing back the shackle still encircling his wrist in order to drip Essence of Dittany into the deep laceration that cut to the bone. She repaired the fractures as fast as she could.

As she was performing the spells, the ring on her hand suddenly burned red hot. She gave a choked gasp as she kept working. The sensation had barely faded before it burned again.

"That's enough," Ron ripped his hand away from Hermione with a wince. "We have to get out. Did you bring me a wand?"

Harry pulled one out, and Ron gripped it limply and made to stand. He got halfway up and then sank back to the ground.

Hermione pulled his arm over her shoulder. "You're with me," she said. "My job is to get you out."

"You bloody idiot, why the hell did you let Harry talk you into this?" Ron sagged against her, and she helped him down the hall.

"You keep Harry alive," Hermione said quietly, "and you're my best friend. Of course I came."

She got him up the stairs as her ring burned again. And again. And again.

Fred and Charlie were at the top of the stairs, waiting for them.

"Nine minutes, we need to go." Charlie's voice was practically vibrating with tension.

Charlie, Harry, and Fred went out first, followed by Hermione and Ron, with Remus and Tonks covering the rear.

Hermione's eyes locked on the edge of the anti-apparition ward.

"The wards end in eighty feet, we just have to reach the centre of the field," she told Ron. Her voice was shaking but she tried to sound assured

They were twenty feet away from the house when the air broke with cracking sounds. The field just outside the anti-apparition ward suddenly filled with Death Eaters.

Hermione froze. There were possibly a hundred Death Eaters, and they immediately advanced through the ward, blocking the escape, a wall of curses streaking ahead of them.

If she tried to turn and run with Ron, they'd be mowed down. The closest edge of the anti-apparition wards was through the Death Eaters.

The strengthening potion had kicked in for Ron, and he was no longer leaning heavily on Hermione. The spare wand they'd brought for him still drooped slightly in his hand.

"Stay down, Hermione," he said as he straightened and moved forward to his place beside Harry.

The Order had nothing left but excellent fighters. The speed and accuracy with which everyone fought was remarkable. Considering the steep odds, it was unbelievable that they didn't all immediately die. The disparity in firepower was tremendous.

Tonks and Fred were the only ones using truly dangerous spells as they fought.

The 'strategy' for the escape rapidly dissolved. Ron was nowhere near Hermione.

The Death Eaters attacking didn't seem particularly talented; there was a notable lack of finesse and coordination in their attack. However, the difference in numbers was staggering. There were more than ten Death Eaters to every one of them.

Hermione steadied herself behind the shield she had cast.

She cast a slicing hex at several throats. Tiny little cuts. Simple. Permanent.

Her aim had grown precise.

Three Death Eaters dropped, one after another.

She tried a few more, but other Death Eaters had the sense to keep their shields up.

She slipped low severing charms toward their feet. Quite a few of the Death Eaters' shields weren't comprehensive.

There were screams as more Death Eaters fell, their Achilles tendons cut through, dropping their wands as they went.

Hermione followed the severing charm with more lethal spells to ensure they all stayed down.

Her shield charm was beginning to wear through from the number of spells that had struck it. She dove and spun rapidly to the side as she avoided a Killing Curse. She felt it burn through the air near her cheek as it nearly grazed her. She recast her shield as she fought to move toward the boundary of the anti-apparition wards.

She looked for Harry and Ron and the others, but the Death Eaters were so close.

Everyone was spread out.

Hermione turned sharply to avoid an unfamiliar curse. As she did, something struck her left wrist. The pain was searing.

She stumbled back, glancing down, and found she'd been hit where her shielded shirt had ridden up on her wrist. Cruel, deep pustules were welling up along her arm. The acid curse. If they burst, they'd spit their acid and spread.

It was so agonising that it was hard to rasp out the counter curse. She was forced to stop and dodge or drop to avoid new curses.

On the third try, she managed to get the counter-curse to stick. The pustules subsided, but the pain was still indescribable.

She fell back, gasping raggedly, trying to find a more defensible spot.

It was so open. Nothing to hide behind but bodies.

She couldn't stop herself from calculating her injury, like a ticker running in the back of her mind. Non-lethal but severe. She'd scar, but she was not at risk of losing her hand. The spots where the acid had eaten away at the bones in her wrist would never recover until she removed and regrew them. She'd have to be careful not to fall on it; the bones were pocked with holes and highly fragile.

She cast a powerful confringo to force back the Death Eaters closing in on her. Where were the others?

Remus and Tonks were fighting back to back. Holding their own but nearly thirty feet away, pinned up against the wall of the house.

Harry was closest to her, furiously battling dozens of Death Eaters. His glasses appeared broken, and it looked like a slicing hex had hit him on the forehead. There was blood streaming down half of his face.

Fred, Charlie and Ron were fighting their way toward him.

Hermione tore her eyes away as the flash of a knife caught the corner of her eye.

She dodged instinctively and grabbed the wrist of her attacker, using their momentum to carry them on and bury the knife into the stomach of another approaching Death Eater.

The wielder snarled with rage and spun to attack her again.

Close proximity wand combat was difficult, trying to get the motion right when she hardly had room to move her wrist.

Simple.

Deadly.

With the tiniest flick, she cast upward. A tiny thread of scarlet bloomed beneath the jaw of the Death Eater before his head toppled off. Blood spurted across Hermione's face.

It was in her eyes, and she could taste it as she heard the knife clatter to the ground.

Hermione wiped the blood from her face, spitting, and watched as a huge, unmasked Death Eater grabbed hold of Ron and sank his teeth into Ron's shoulder.

Harry, Fred, and Charlie all shot stunners, but they bounced off the Death Eater. Werewolf.

Ron was screaming in agony as he tried to wrench himself free. The werewolf jerked his head up, tearing Ron's shoulder open.

The full moon was a day away. The spell power required to take down a werewolf at that point would be considerable. At least seven more stunners.

Too long for Ron.

Spells to bring down a werewolf; Hermione scrambled to think of one.

She reached deep inside of her magic and hissed, " Carbonescrere ."

Something in her twisted.

The black curse shot from her wand. It was like a cloud of black smoke that zipped across the field and exploded around the Death Eater. The werewolf froze for a second and collapsed into dust. Ron dropped to the ground.

As Hermione stared, everything inside her went cold and dark.

She stumbled and gripped her chest.

As the world swam back into view, she noticed something moving toward her. She turned, jumping back.

It felt like being punched violently in the ribs.

Hermione gasped, trying to inhale and looked down. There was a knife driven to the hilt in the right side of her chest. If she had turned a split second later, it might have gone into her heart, but—as she studied it with surprise—she thought it had probably missed anything immediately vital.

Her healer mind couldn't turn itself off.

Her wand slipped from her fingers, and her hands darted down to close over those of the Death Eater who was still holding it. Stopping him before he could try to twist it, or pull it out and stab her again.

She felt the bones in her left hand crack as she gripped his hands in hers tightly and—without letting herself stop to think how much it might hurt to move with a blade still inside her—drove her knee viciously between his legs.

He crumpled to the ground, his hold on the hilt loosening. Hermione stumbled away, gasping raggedly.

Where had her wand fallen? There was blood in her eyes. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision.

She looked down at her chest again. Her right lung was punctured, and she suspected her liver had been nicked. From the angle she was looking down at it, it was hard to tell.

She saw her wand. She tried to reach for it without bending her torso. As her fingers closed around the handle, she felt someone dig their fingers into her braided hair and drag her up onto her feet until she was dangling in the air, her toes barely touching the ground.

"I remember you, Mudblood." Rabastan Lestrange chuckled as he pulled off his Death Eater mask. His eyes dropped down, and he noticed the knife still buried in her chest. "Look at that. Someone already got started on you."

She tried to curse him, but he batted her wand away. She heard it clatter onto the ground.

Her knife, she needed to reach it.

"How many times do you think I can stab you before the light goes out in your eyes?" he asked before he jerked the blade from her chest.

Hermione gave a ragged gasp as she tried to stop him. The right side of her body was suddenly slick with the blood sliding down her torso. Rabastan dragged the blade up her chest until it pressed over her heart.

Hermione tried to wrench her head free as she attempted to pull out her knife without drawing his attention.

He pressed the tip in and hit bone. He shifted the blade until it found a space between her ribs. Hermione's eyes widened as she stared up at him.

"Here? Or should l start lower?" His voice was taunting. He was unconcerned with the fighting around him.

Hermione didn't know whether to try to reach for her knife or stop him from stabbing her in the heart.

Was there even a point in making a choice? She could feel herself bleeding to death.

He started to push it in slowly.

As the tip of the knife began cutting into her skin, Rabastan stilled. His hold on her hair loosened, and his expression went slack as he dropped dead at her feet. Hermione collapsed with him and caught herself with one hand.

Behind Rabastan, just beyond the anti-apparition point, a masked Death Eater was standing alone in the field.

Several Death Eaters nearby froze and turned with surprise when Rabastan fell.

They were dead before they could raise their wands.

Hermione just stared. She suspected her punctured lung was collapsing. She pressed her hand against the wound to keep herself from haemorrhaging and to prevent air from seeping into her chest cavity.

She watched blankly as the Death Eater who had just appeared began making his way across the field.

It was Draco.

She'd never seen him fight, not really. But the style was still familiar.

He was as deadly as she'd imagined.

The influence of Bellatrix Lestrange's training was obvious. The fluidity of movement. The wake of bodies he left behind him as he stalked across the field. Bellatrix's unpredictable style had been driven by her sadism—her insanity.

Draco's style was brutal efficiency.

He wasn't concerned with maiming or causing pain. He didn't want prisoners. He killed everyone.

He showed no hesitation as he mowed through the panicking Death Eaters around him. The ways he could conceive of to rapidly kill people was terrifying. It was entirely a numbers game. Minimum effort, high return.

It was impossible that he had ever fought to full potential before. If a Death Eater had ever fought that way before, everyone would have known about it.

He cast a spell on the ground that turned the radius surrounding him into liquid. Fifteen Death Eaters immediately vanished beneath the surface. Screaming. He cancelled it, and left them behind to be suffocated by the earth around them.

He cast curse after curse after curse, most of them nonverbally. The Death Eaters steadily dropped.

He conjured a flock of dozens of silver hummingbirds. Several Death Eaters hesitated, visibly confused. Draco whipped his wand forward, and the tiny birds shot through the air like a hail of bullets, burying themselves into the throats and chests of anyone nearby without a powerful shield. He called the birds back, dripping blood, and shot them off again.

He was within a few feet of Hermione.

He reached out and grabbed her by the left wrist. She gave a low scream as she felt her damaged bones fracture in his grip. He pulled something out of his robes. Holding it high over his head, he activated it.

It was like all the air and sound in the area was suddenly sucked away. Deadly silent. Everyone around them dropped to the ground, gasping and clawing at their throats.

Hermione was screaming in pain and panic. She felt her wrist breaking as she tried to get free. The Death Eaters were gasping silently for air as they suffocated.

"Harry! Harry. Ron! Stop. Stop! You can't kill everyone! Stop, Draco!" she was screaming. Their faces were turning blue.

The struggling was coming to an end. The bodies went still.

"Draco, stop!" She renewed her struggles to tear herself free and felt the bones in her hand shatter. "Stop!"

"You idiot," he snarled through his mask, releasing her wrist. "Wait here."

He tossed the dark artifact onto the ground. It sizzled and twisted up into a heap of scrap metal. He stalked over to Harry, Ron, Fred, Charlie, Remus, and Tonks. He performed a reviving spell on each of them followed by a muttered "obliviate" before he levitated the unconscious bodies up behind him as he turned back. He summoned her wand up off the ground and dragged her up by the arm.

It was hard to breathe.

Moving was agonising. Her left wrist felt like it was being crucioed. Blood was streaming down her side.

It got harder and harder to breathe as Draco pulled her across the field.

She needed to seal the puncture. As soon as she could find someone—someone who could perform the spells to keep her from bleeding out. Who could remove the air from her chest cavity.

If she could apparate. If she could apparate to Grimmauld Place.

If she could.

She stumbled. Her head was feeling light, and it was hard to think straight. She tried to breathe but felt as though she couldn't.

Draco dropped everyone just outside the anti-apparition wards. She moved toward their bodies. She didn't know what resuscitation spell Draco had used. Before she could take a step, Draco's grip tightened and he apparated away with her.

They landed in the shack.

He immediately let go of her and ripped his mask and gloves off. She slumped against the door.

"You—you can't leave them there," she rasped.

"They'll wake in less than a minute," he said, his face twisting with fury.

Kneeling on the ground, he used the tip of his wand to draw a series of runes on the floor. The runes glowed for a moment, and a trapdoor appeared. Jerking it open, he reached down and pulled out what seemed to be an entire hospital worth of healing supplies.

Draco turned to look at her. His face was white with rage.

"Can you last long enough for me to get a healer for you?" he asked. His voice was shaking.

She shook her head.

"You'll have to tell me how to do it. I've never used complex healing charms," he said, pulling supplies out.

She dragged herself up from the wall and gave a small gesture toward her right side with her broken wrist.

"My liver. It's—where the blood is coming from. I think. There's air in my chest cavity. It's collapsing my lung."

He conjured a stretcher and helped her down onto it.

She gulped a Blood-Replenishing Potion before she had him cast a diagnostic, so she could confirm the injuries were what she thought.

He had all the necessary potions to help stabilise her and keep her from going into shock.

He was steady-handed. He cut off her clothes and performed the spells to staunch the bleeding and repair the blood vessels and biliary ducts in her liver as it started healing, following her instructions carefully. Then he handed her another vial of Blood-Replenishing Potion.

The spell to siphon out the air collapsing her lung was tricky. She had trouble showing him the wand movement. Her hands were still shaking despite the pain relief she'd taken.

"It's more subtle than that," she tried to explain. "Just the faintest sideways shiver of the tip, or it will pull too hard and damage the tissue."

Wincing, she put both hands around his and slowly moved his left hand in the necessary motion as she said the incantation in time with each movement.

He got it right on the third try.

"And then after you repair the lung tissue it's—just a regular healing charm to fix the diaphragmatic muscle and close the incision," she instructed when she could finally breathe again."

She slumped down to recover while he cleaned the blood off her. It was crusted on her face, in her eyelashes.

"What were you doing there?" he asked in a low, shaking voice as she turned and transfigured a piece of dressing into a shirt and started trying to pull it over her head.

"Harry asked me come," she said with a small shrug. "I told you, we need Ron."

"You aren't experienced in combat," he said. He was pale, and his hands were trembling faintly as he helped her pull the shirt over her head, "Why are they bringing you out again without even giving you a partner?"

Hermione didn't look at him. She swallowed and slid her right hand down the sleeve. "They needed a healer. Our other healer lost her foot foraging. I was chosen because I could walk faster."

He drew a sharp breath.

"You knew it was a trap," he said. "You knew it. But you went anyway. Rabastan's prison ambush. No one actually thought the Order would be idiotic enough to fall for it. It was a training simulation for the rookies."

"Harry was going to go."

"So?"

"Harry is the point of this war. If he dies, it's over. I will always follow him. Strategically, I'm a casualty we can afford. Harry is not. If I improve his odds at all, it's worth it," she replied in a steady voice as she twisted gingerly and lifted her broken wrist up to slide down the sleeve.

"You weren't saving Potter. You were saving Weasley."

Hermione twitched her shoulder. "Ron is critical. Harry—needs Ron. If something happens to Ron, it'll break him. He needs Ron to want to win."

"What about you? Doesn't Potter need you?" Draco said. His eyes glittered with rage.

Hermione looked away. "Not like he needs Ron. I'm—not like that to him."

She swallowed the lump in her throat.

"The Weasleys—," she started, and then she gave a short sigh. "They're his family. They're everything he wants. To win, he has to be able to see himself with them afterward. That—is what drives him. If he loses it—stops believing that he'll get it—he won't keep going. He won't be able to."

"I thought you were part of the Trio. Won't Potter despair if he loses you?"

"No," she said, glancing away. "He'd grieve, he'll be angry. But I'm—I'm not emotionally vital. I was never very good at—," her lips twitched, "—Ron connects to Harry emotionally. Harry is driven by his emotions."

"So—what? Potter drags you into a firefight you have no experience trying to survive because you're expendable enough?"

"Ron comes first. Harry will always take care of him first. He doesn't think clearly when the people he regards as family are in danger. He doesn't realise he's risking others," she said, lifting her chin. "He's always been that way."

Draco stared at her. "So who cares for you, Granger, if Potter doesn't?"

She blinked.

"I don't need anyone to care for me," she said stiffly, but her voice shook. "It wasn't an accident, Draco. I chose to reduce my casualty value."

His expression hardened. "You let yourself become expendable to Potter."

"The more weaknesses Harry has, the more vulnerable the entire Resistance is."

She hadn't thought Draco could look angrier than he already did, but he suddenly looked ready to explode.

"When I think I can't hate Potter more, he finds a new way to prove me wrong," he said, pulling out several more potions and handing them to her.

She tried to pull the corks out with one hand but couldn't manage it. She was pretty sure if she had to move her left wrist again, she would faint.

"What happened to your left hand?" he abruptly asked, snatching back a vial and unstoppering it for her.

"You—broke it."

He seemed to get paler.

"It was already injured," she said in clarification, "I got hit by that acid curse. By the time I managed to counter it, the bones were pretty much wrecked. You just happened to grab it."

"You should have told me."

He reached into his robes and pulled out the kit she'd given him for Christmas. He snatched the analgesic from its slot, doused a cloth, and wrapped it around her wrist and hand.

Hermione nearly gasped with relief as the burning subsided.

"Do you need me to remove the bones?" he asked after a moment as he watched her cradle her wrist against her chest.

She looked up at him. "Could you? I—I was going to do it myself, when I got a chance."

Removing bones with precision, especially shards, was a painful process. Unless she wanted to regrow her whole arm, it was going to be a slow ordeal that would be difficult to remain focused and steady-handed throughout. She'd planned to deal with it after she went back to check on Ron.

"I know the spellwork. Do you want me to stun you?" he asked.

"N-no. I should stay awake, unless you already know all the names of the bones in the hand and wrist."

"No," he said, glancing away, his mouth pressed into a hard line.

Unwrapping her hand again, she cast a diagnostic spell over it and surveyed the damage. Aside from the deep pockets the acid had burned into the flesh, there were four bones that had been crushed and another six with varying levels of corrosion, including her ulna. She'd have to debone half her forearm.

She stared at it for several minutes before drawing a sharp breath and looking away.

"The fifth metacarpal first. Quinque metacarpus."

"Quinque metacarpus ossios dispersimus."

The sharp stabbing pain as the bone in Hermione's hand abruptly vanished nearly made her scream. She dropped her head against Draco's shoulder and shuddered.

Pain without the adrenaline surge of battle was harder to handle.

"Then the hamate. Os hamatum." She shivered against his shoulder, trying to brace herself.

She was crying into his robes by the time he had removed all the bone shards. Half her forearm and most of her palm were largely boneless and lay puddled in her lap.

Draco pulled a bottle of skele-gro out. She gagged it down and then winced as the stabbing, needle-like sensation of the regrowing bones enveloped her arm.

He poured Essence of Dittany across her entire arm to repair the pockets of corroded tissue. She was tempted to scream at him.

"Don't!" She tried to grab the vial away from him. "It's a waste. I can heal them with spellwork after the bones regrow."

He glared at her. "Shut up."

She fell silent while he doused her arm a second time and then rummaged through more materials from his supplies and assembled a magical cast with surprising efficiency.

"Why do you have all this?" she asked, surveying all the supplies as he wrapped the frame around her hand and up around her elbow, so that the bones could regrow straight.

"I got it for you," he said. She stared at him in surprise. "After Hampshire, I was worried you'd show up injured again. I thought if I had everything you might need on hand, I'd worry less."

Hermione's heart hurt inside her chest as he helped her get the sling of the cast up over her head.

"But—this is a lot. This is practically a casualty ward's entire inventory list."

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know what kinds of things were crucial for casualty healing at the time. I researched it. Then I got a long lecture on healing common battle injuries as a Christmas present last year. It helped me round it out with anything I'd missed."

Hermione blushed.

"You could become a healer," she told him. "You have a natural talent for it."

The corner of his mouth twitched faintly. "That's one of the most ironic things anyone has ever said to me," he said.

The conversation stalled.

"I have to get back. Ron's injured. And Harry too," she said in a soft voice as she moved to stand.

Draco stood up, his eyes growing cold. "Don't ever go on another mission."

"That's not your call," she said, meeting his eyes.

He paled and his jaw tensed. "Remind Moody if the Order wants my continued assistance, they will keep you alive."

Hermione stilled, and her mouth twisted as she looked away from him. "You are doing this for your mother, Draco."

He turned her firmly by the shoulders and stared down at her.

"She is dead," he said. "You are not. My loyalty was to those least responsible for her suffering. However, if the Order has decided you're an affordable casualty and sends you out to be mowed down as battle fodder, I will not be noble. I have no compunction against exacting dual revenge. I will make Potter pay if he gets you killed."

Hermione froze.

This was dangerous.

She hadn't factored for this risk. She knew that Draco's loyalty wasn't based on ideology; it was purely a sense of personal loyalty. He hated Harry, he just hated Voldemort more. Hermione's careless, emotional confession had just given him grounds to waver. He was possessive. She was his. Harry had endangered her.

She should have felt panicked. She should have been cold. She should have reminded him of his Vow. Reminded him that she would always choose the Order first until they won. If he wanted her, he would have to wait.

It was what she should do.

She stared up at him, and her shoulders shook. She was so tired. Life had been cold for such a long time.

Her fingers twitched. She almost reached for him.

Then she slowly curled her hand into a fist and slid it behind her back. "Don't—don't do this, Draco." Her voice broke.

"You are not expendable," he said in a low, desperate voice. "You don't get to push everyone away so that they'll feel comfortable with using you and letting you die."

Hermione's hand was shaking, and her throat felt as though there were a stone lodged inside it. She dropped her head and drew a deep breath.

Ron is hurt. And Harry.

She steeled herself and tried to twist free.

"This is war. It's not some sort of tragic self-condemnation to be expendable. It's a strategic liability not to be. I would've thought you'd have realised it was the case with me. A healer isn't going to win the war; that's why I was available to trade. I even have a replacement in the hospital ward now—because of you. I had to train her." She gave a bitter laugh. "You did this to me. You made me as expendable as I am." She choked back a sob. "And you didn't even want me either."

He flinched and his hold loosened.

"I have to go now." Her voice shook as she stepped away.

Draco caught her by her right arm and pulled her back.

"You are not replaceable," he said. His hands were shaking as he gripped her. "You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I took that fucking Vow was to keep you alive. To keep you safe."

She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn't let go. She twisted, trying to get away. She had to go, because he kept staring at her with desperation written across his face, and it was breaking her inside.

She sobbed and—before she had time to think—twisted the fingers of her right hand into his robes, pulled him closer, and kissed him.