tears in heaven | dramione

Morals

What Draco mightn't have thought about was the grandness of the risk they were taking. If anybody in whatever town they would arrive in next recognised them or heard of them, then their plan would crash and burn. As if it were news to their ears, Hermione would be tortured till she told of Harry Potter's whereabouts or be killed when she refused to tell, and he'd most likely be incarcerated and tortured for treason, for having betrayed the Dark Lord. His parents would pay everything they had to make sure he wasn't killed. But death would be delightful, considering the pain the Death Eaters would have him go through.

Yet, there they were, at the gate of yet another town. Old Hammerton was its name, coming from a wizard who had enchanted all the hammers and the flames to create weapons during a civil war in the middle age. The battle had been won, but some time later the muggles turned against him and had him burnt alive. That was the sad reality of so many great wizards over the course of history.

The town itself wasn't big, but not that small either. There were enough risks and enough chances for them to be captured as anywhere.

They moved fast, on smaller alleys, avoiding crowds, before they reached some kind of restaurant. It wasn't exactly the sophisticated kind he had been used to, nor the modern ones she'd drop by at times with her parents, but it served food and that was enough. It wasn't a good time for Draco to be capricious, anyways.

They ordered what seemed the least ridiculous of all, a soup of some kind that didn't really look good at all, but it was edible and that was all that mattered. There were a time and a place to live fancy, which wasn't the case right nor and there.

She was doing her best to finish her meal, just as he ran his hands through all his pockets. Of course that they didn't have any money to pay. If only a waiter with a very crooked nose or, better said, a very crooked nose with a few much smaller body parts attached was eyeing them from another corner of the place. He was waiting for the girl to be done with her soup, so he could come for the pay.

Draco had to think fast. Hermione could see him struggling to figure something out. When she looked up and notice the crooked nose man, she understood and stood from her place, moving gracefully, quickly and subtly, to a man eating alone at another table. Her hand reached for her wand and green sparkles, along with a grey smoke, came out of its end. It was a spell of some kind. The man took something from his pocket, then handed it to Hermione.

"That was so against my morals," she whispered to Draco's ear as she sat again next to him at their table, "but, at least, I got the money." And she put some coins on the table. Making some calculations in his head, Draco thought they were enough to pay for the meal.

A part of him was afraid to ask, but the other surrendered to curiosity. "What did you do?" The answer, however, was pretty much obvious, especially considering the smoke and the sparkles and how many times he'd seen it being performed on innocents, by his own family and by the monster they were serving.

"Imperius," was her short, almost silent answer. It had been enough though.

"Why?"

"It's efficient."

"It's forbidden."

She snorted, as if in laughter. "You're the one who's talking? It's efficient. That's it."

They stood, leaving the money on the table for the crooked nose waiter to come take, then got going, an awkward silence between them. They went back into the woods, taking off their wands, preparing to apparate. Draco's hand was shaking. It had seemed like something funny, like a dystopia that would never ever happen, but it might not have been. He was pretty much shocked, that she'd use a forbidden curse, that she'd do something like that, that she'd do even more, even worse, for the cause. He was terrified to think of what lengths she'd go to... That Hermione Granger... he might have underestimated her will, for her magical ability and wits were impossible not to acknowledge.

And then of his own experience with the forbidden curses, his alone, apart from his family's. He laughed to himself.

Then they apparated to a forest, all the way to a country she hadn't been to before, a land of as magical as stories tell, very close to the Malfoy property that might have held the key to... hopefully, ending it all.