By the time you realize you know better, the world is burning around you. Do you decide you have to think for yourself, or is it easier to think rebelliously quietly and lie loudly if it means you save their lives? He hadn't answered those questions. 7 yr postwar and Hermione is looking for a career change, and the only project she's interested in studying is under Draco Malfoy.

Two years after the end of the war Magical Britain was dying, and after a deadly outbreak of Dragon Pox, their numbers were dwindling. Then the Marriage Law came. When it had been repealed 4 years later, she'd handed him the paperwork. It was 6 years later before she found her way back to England. All of it prompted by a letter from her sons.

With each glimpse she was granted of the man beneath the cool and hardened aristocratic exterior, she had felt her heart warm for the first time in years. She had begun to want so much more. The reality; however, was that she didn't dare threaten the rather fragile foundation that was between them. Didn't dare try to cross the thin line between friendship and something else.

They would underestimate him. The strongest person he'd ever known had been underestimated, and she was his mother in all but blood. He molded himself, played the part he'd been cast to play, while he waited for his chance. Then Sirius Black had escaped. Twisted canon. AU picking up at the start of DH.

"No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it's born with us the day that we are born. "You know, when I got that letter saying you were Head Boy, I never imagined it would lead us here using the past and the future to end a war neither one of us wanted"I do not own Harry Potter. HBP AU

It's not that he hadn't known about her cat. He remembered the orange monster from school as well as the few times she'd mentioned it. Yet, he was under the impression the beast was still living with her parents. "You've survived the Dark Lord, Draco. You can survive a cat." He murmured to himself. Although, he wasn't sure about that. He was extremely allergic to the thing.