Chapter Text
Disintegration
Everything was falling apart.
The stone beneath Draco’s feet shuddered under the force of another explosion. Above him, the high ceiling cracked, raining down grit and blinding dust. The tapestries that had once hung along the walls had been shredded by crossfire into scorched strips of cloth.
The corridors of Hogwarts, paths he could have walked blindfolded, had become a burning road to hell.
“Left! Stay close to the wall!” Hermione’s voice was nearly swallowed by the deafening explosions. Her wand tip held a steady light, each flick deflecting a lethal curse.
Draco stumbled behind her, clutching his wand and practically running in her footsteps. His robes stained and filthy. Sweat and grime matted his platinum hair, plastering it to his forehead. Yet he couldn’t look away from the small, powerful figure leading him through the chaos.
The bookish girl he remembered was gone. In her place stood someone who moved like a battle-hardened Auror, or a soldier who had survived too many wars. There was a terrible grace to the way she cast, every movement precise, every spell so efficient that it left him no room to intervene.
When she turned to block a curse aimed at his head, the spell struck her shield in a flash of red, lighting up her calm brown eyes. For a moment, he felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
He had seen this before.
In the dreams that had haunted him since the first night of sixth year, even when the surroundings were not exactly the same, he could always see her clearly, standing before him in the chaos of a battlefield, wand raised, shielding him from a curse he had not even seen coming.
Other dreams were far less distinct. In those, he knew only that someone had been beside him, close enough to make him wonder whether there had been a kiss. The outline of that person, and the scent that lingered even after waking, felt too much like Hermione.
Even her name felt impossibly familiar, as though he had spoken it this way before.
He could be wrong. Those dreams were too blurred to trust. He should not have thought of her this way. They were supposed to be enemies.
And yet, in those impossible battlefield dreams, and now in this equally impossible reality, one truth remained—when the world was falling apart, she was the only one who had not given up on him.
Her voice. Her commands. Every movement of her wand. All of it felt strangely familiar, as if some part of him had learned to trust her long before his mind had caught up.
Hermione seemed to sense his stare. Her arm paused mid-air, but she didn’t look back.
“Keep up, Malfoy,” she said, her voice rough but clear above the loud blasts.
He quickly picked up his pace, narrowing the dangerous gap between them.
“Ten more seconds and we’re safe!” she shouted, countering another Death Eater’s curse with a nonverbal spell. The force of it knocked her back slightly, but she quickly regained her balance.
Draco’s heart hammered against his ribs. Her plan was working.
He trusted her. He didn’t know why, but he would follow her anywhere.
Just then, a tall, burly, dark-haired figure emerged at the end of the corridor—
Antonin Dolohov.
At the sight of them together, one of Dolohov’s brows lifted.
Without hesitation, Hermione stepped in front of Draco and raised her wand. A silver shield bloomed before them, runes flowing across its surface, a spell he had never seen yet felt impossibly familiar.
With a sneer, Dolohov flicked his wand lazily. A shockwave of bright blue magic slammed into Hermione’s shield, whipping their hair and robes about as cracks spread through the ground and walls around them.
Draco could feel the destructive power bearing down on them. Her wand arm trembled with the sheer effort of holding the shield.
“Granger—” Her name left his mouth before he could stop it. His body moved on instinct, his own wand snapping up toward Dolohov. Before he could make sense of what he was doing, he was already stepping forward, reaching to drag her back behind him—
“Don’t move! Stay where you are!” The panic in her voice, something he had never heard from her before, made him freeze.
A tiny crack appeared in the shield. For one terrible second, he thought it would shatter. But at the last moment, it held.
The curse exploded inches from her face, dissolving into harmless sparks. In the next instant, her Body-Bind Curse struck Dolohov squarely in the chest. He let out a short grunt and hit the ground, instantly immobilized.
A jolt of pure relief shot through Draco.
They had done it.
Hermione turned toward him, her brown eyes shining with triumph, her lips parting as if to call his name.
It was then that a sudden noise from above made him look up.
A massive stone gargoyle on the ceiling above him—one he’d never seen in this corridor before—had developed a fatal crack at its base, weakened by the shockwave of the deflected curse.
The crack widened in silence. His heart stopped.
Time stretched into a thick, suffocating slow motion. The gargoyle’s wings began to tilt. Gravel trickled down, landing in his hair.
No time to think. No time to move.
He saw her smile freezing, her eyes widening in pure terror as she reached out. Her fingers were an inch from him—
His hand jerked up toward her on instinct, but never reached hers.
Pain tore through him, and then there was only blackness.
3:17 a.m.
No.
No—
No, no, no, no, no.
Countless screams exploded inside Hermione’s mind, yet her throat had closed too tightly for her to make a sound.
It was over. Again.
It wasn’t the curse that had killed him. Not the shockwave, not the collapsing ceiling.
This time, it was her own plan, her own shield, that had killed him.
Her victory had signed his death warrant.
Hermione’s knees finally gave out, and she collapsed to the floor. As the dust settled, Draco was gone, buried beneath a pile of broken, blood-stained rubble.
Everything fell silent. The screams and explosions still echoed in the distance, but she could no longer hear them. A tearing pain ripped through her chest as she felt her soul cracking further, inch by inch.
No tears came.
Something deeper than grief, more absolute than despair, expanded within her ribcage, filling every breath until it felt as though it would suffocate her from the inside.
Then came the familiar pull, an immense force that felt like it was ripping her soul from her body. An invisible hand grabbed her, yanking her away, folding the universe inward on itself and spinning.
The golden plates, the floating candles, the starry ceiling. The noise of the hall drowned out the ringing in her ears. The smell of roast chicken rushed into her nose, but the phantom scent of blood still lingered in her senses.
Dumbledore had just finished his welcome speech. Everything was warm, bright, and full of hope.
She was sitting at the Gryffindor table.
It was the start of her sixth year. And her one hundred and thirty-seventh reset.
The hand she had reached toward him with just moments ago was still trembling, almost imperceptibly, as though her nerves were still trapped in that final moment of his death. She quickly drew it beneath the table and dug her nails into her palm until the sting became something she could hold on to.
“Hermione? What’s wrong?” Ron’s voice came from her left, muffled by a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “I know Dumbledore’s hand looks awful, but blimey, not that awful. You look like you’ve just seen a corpse sit up.”
“Ron!” Harry snapped.
“What? It’s just a figure of speech. She went really pale all of a sudden.”
Hermione didn’t answer right away. She took a deep breath, fighting a weariness that rose from the depths of her soul, threatening to drown her.
She forced a smile. “It’s nothing. I was up too late reading last night. I just got a little dizzy for a moment.”
Harry looked at her with concern. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve gone completely pale. How late were you up last night?”
“Am I?” Hermione touched her cheek. Her fingertips were even colder. She feigned a yawn. “I was up until three. I’ll have to get to bed early tonight.”
Her friends asked after her a few more times before their attention was completely taken by Dumbledore’s announcement that Slughorn would be the new Potions professor.
None of them knew what she had been through only minutes earlier.
The chatter in the Great Hall sounded distant, as if she were hearing it through thick glass. Hermione lifted her goblet mechanically, but couldn’t taste the sweetness of the pumpkin juice.
Her gaze drifted to the Slytherin table.
Draco sat there perfectly unharmed, leaning back leisurely as Pansy Parkinson chattered at his side. He wore that familiar smirk of boredom and arrogance. He was alive, his robes immaculate, his hair perfect, and completely oblivious to the fate that awaited him.
He was the king on a cursed chessboard; every time she tried to move him from the fated square of checkmate, the game found a new, crueler way to end.
It felt as though invisible cords were tightening around her chest. Hermione drained her pumpkin juice in one go and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.
It wasn’t over yet.
He was still there. There had to be a chance. No matter how small. No matter how many times the game had already proved her wrong.
The board had been reset.
Every piece stood once more in its proper place, as though nothing had happened.
The same game awaited her once more.
She did not know how to win it. But she would play until it broke before she did.