Call Me Psyche - Dramione

9

AN: Don't panic. Dramione HEA guaranteed!

"Ron is back," Hermione said, still blinking in the dimness of the shelter of Draco's cloak as he held her back from dashing outside. "And You-know-who is out there right now with him and Harry."

She twisted in Draco's arms as he whispered pleas for her to wait.

"I can't just leave them. I have to help," she said, both her hands on his chest, her breath laboured, her eyes shining, near tears. "And you'd better get back to your manor before he finds you here and I lose all of you in one night."

"No, I certainly will not go back," Draco said. "Will you listen to me? You don't even have a wand. If you're going out there, I'm coming too. Then at least then you'll be armed."

Her breath slowed and her expression softened, telling him with a look that if the greatest monster of their age wasn't attacking her dearest friends a few metres away, she would definitely be raining kisses on him for this gallantry.

He understood and blushed a little as he twisted and clasped his cloak around his neck. It left them standing exposed on the frozen floor of the Forest of Dean. Draco's wand was drawn, their arms linked, as they stooped low, advancing toward where they'd heard the sound of Ron's howl and the clanging of metal on stone.

"Why have they gone so quiet?" Hermione whispered as they approached. "Maybe he's carried them off."

Draco frowned, holding tightly to her arm to keep her from bolting ahead. "Maybe. But I don't have that same shadowy feeling I get when he's inside the house. I don't think he's here anymore. Maybe he never was."

"But we heard him – "

"That was his voice, yes," Draco said. "But his being – it's not like other people's. It's almost as if he can separate himself into pieces, and leave snatches of his voice, or his magic scattered around loose in random jinxes and bad feelings, like cursed objects."

Hermione startled, stumbling as she crouched behind a fallened log overlooking a hollow she remembered had a frozen pool at its bottom. What Draco was describing sounded almost like a horcrux. Did he already know what they were? She couldn't ask him about it. He was too close to the Death Eaters for him to know that Harry knew anything about horcruxes. Stars, he was technically a Death Eater himself. She'd never seen it, but he had a Dark Mark on his arm. Harry had seen it the night Dumbledore died. It was there in Draco's warm, beautiful skin, on the same arm that reached for her, and held her, strong around her waist, across her back when she kissed him.

"What?" he prompted as her silence went on.

She shook her head. "I was just thinking that it might be important that you not look at Harry," she said. "You can stay here with me but don't look at him. If there's an image in your mind of where he is or what he's doing, You-know-who might see it. So just stay behind this tree while I look into the hollow myself."

Draco's throat bobbed as he swallowed. It was dawning on him too, the understanding that no matter how close he felt to her, and how much closer he wanted her, in the interests of both of their survival, there had to be distances between them. Until the world changed into something different from what it now was, there were places they must not follow each other. He gave a miserable nod, and pressed the wand into her hand.

Rising slowly to her feet, the wand tracking for anything that moved, Hermione peered into the darkness of the hollow the loud voices had come from moments before. Only, it wasn't dark. The moon was no longer full but it was bright, and near the bottom of the hollow it was reflecting like a silver lantern off a long, metal blade. By its light, two figures sat slumped together, speaking quietly and earnestly to each other.