Would You Like A Hand?

22 | some

It didn't take long at all - undead swarmed the area outside of the ministry, but Hermione had been so close to it all this time. How could she have not noticed?

She stood with Draco inside a different building, looking out the fifth floor window at the ministry and onto the streets below.

Staring at the sight in front of her, Hermione turned around with a jolt and hugged her blond companion tightly.

Surprised, Draco stiffened as her arms circled around him. Her bushy hair tickled his face as she told him, "Thank you. For bringing me here. I would've wandered around forever if you hadn't come by."

Relaxing, he awkwardly put his own arms around her and gave a light, momentary squeeze. "It's... no problem. I guess?"

Amused, Hermione drew back, smiling and rolling her eyes at him.

Clearing his throat, Draco asked, "So how're we doing this?"

She looked out the window where he gestured to the wandering zombies. They limped and crawled, some dragged themselves by their arms, and others ran normally, only their upper bodies scarred and injured.

"We could try the blowing-up-car trick again, but there's a lot more of them this time..." Merlin knew they'd had a hard enough time getting into their current building - and five floors up. The undying had been everywhere, and both students had suffered scratches and scrapes on the way up.

The Gryffindor thought to herself that she should be more grateful for her magical abilities. Without her spells, taking on these zombies wouldn't have been so easy.

Getting away with mere scrapes against hordes of zombies was a pretty good accomplishment, she thought.

Their current room had two doorways out, and both had been blockaded by the students so that they could stand and observe the outdoors. They couldn't confirm if they'd killed every undead thing in the building, so this was the easiest way to take a break - hide out in a room and defend it for a bit.

"Do you think casting muffliato on them would work? And then they can't hear us walk by?" Draco wondered aloud.

"I've never had a chance to try it. But there's still too many out there - they'll bump into us as they wander and then it'll be all over... Wait - what if..." Hermione trailed off.

Draco glanced at her for a silent moment and then she continued, "What if we cast muffliato, and then apparate inside? The loud crackling from apparating should be covered and they won't hear. We just gotta cast it over a bigger range - the entire ministry building and the street out here. The apparition wards are probably broken; most died during the panic after the undead appeared."

"Let's test if muffliato works on them, first," Draco cut in, "I'm going to take a look outside our room for an undead."

"Alright... I'm sure it will work - they're dead, but their ears still function the same way ours do," Hermione commented.

It didn't take long; Draco found a crawling body just outside their room and after casting the muffling charm over it, started shouting some taunts at the thing.

It seemed confused, likely because of the buzzing from the charm in its ears, but it didn't react to the Slytherin boy until it saw him standing by.

After taking it down and letting it burn away to nothing, Draco and Hermione shared excited smiles with each other.

"You couldn't think of a better insult than 'rotten blind bat'?" she said.

"Who cares? It works!" Draco hooted.

"I said it would, didn't I?" Hermione replied, "And I'm the brightest witch of our age!"

For a moment, she could pretend that she was with her boys again, proving them wrong like usual.

For just a moment, Hermione could pretend she was still sane enough to be the brightest witch of her age.

But the blond haired boy in front of her shattered that moment into a million pieces. Because never in her entire life did she think she would ever be hanging out with Draco Malfoy - yet here he stood, reminding her that the world was ending and her boys were out there somewhere, lost to her.

Draco watched as her expression fell and she said, "let's get this over with."

He wondered what was going through her mind. Did she fear that Potter and Weasley were dead? Did she fear that they wouldn't even be in the ministry?

For Draco, there was no moment of pretend. He had never had a nice memory to pretend to remember. He didn't know when the last time he'd felt happy was, because most of his life had been surrounded by dark arts, lies, and threats to his life.

But here stood Hermione Granger, giving him a chance to redeem himself even though he had been more than horrible to her and her friends. Here was something he could make right, because even though the trio had saved him before, he hadn't given them any help.

So if he could help Hermione Granger now, it would be a step towards making everything right. So he nodded confidently, "Let's go."

And the two started casting their spells over the area as best as they could.