Saviour

'A kiss, in time,

May build a dream:

A hope to see

What may seem

To be the truth,

But stays a lie;

What forbids a stay

Yet shuns goodbye.

Uncertainty builds,

Doubt grows...

So go the perils of a love

No one knows.'

Hermione Granger stared at the messy scrawl on the parchment she was reading. Her History of Magic class had just gotten over and she had been on her way out when she spotted the stray scrap lying on the ground by her usual seat.

Someone obviously wrote this while Professor Binns droned on in class, she mused, reading over it again. It's lovely...but who writes like this? Certainly not Lavender or Parvati! She giggled, thinking of her sweet roommates, who were definitely a few accessories short of an ensemble.

"Mione?" Ron Weasley and Harry Potter came up beside her. "Whatcha readin'?"

Harry grabbed the parchment from her. Giving it a once-over, his eyes widened.

"Someone's writing you love poems?"

"What?" Ron yelped indignantly, yanking the paper out of his hand for a look.

Hermione rolled her eyes. Boys... especially her best friends! She was sixteen, for crying out loud, and a more-than-competent witch. These two, given a chance, would rush to her defence over a paper cut! And more often than not, she was the one saving their skins!

"No one's writing me love poems, you dolts... I just found it in the classroom. Now if you two would be kind enough to stop goggling over it like it's the 'PlayWizard' centerfold, we might actually get to Transfiguration on time!"

Grinning, Harry tossed it over his shoulder and he and Ron set off down the corridor, pleasantly debating the merits of dating girls on the Quidditch team. Hermione had to agree with Ron, having a Bludger sent at your head by a bitter ex during a game was enough reason to stop sneaking into the girls' showers for an after-match...um... workout.

Without even realizing it, Hermione bent to retrieve the poem before catching up with Ron and Harry.

'Mystery surrounds

Even a child

It is present in the air,

Untamable, Wild.

Shrouded in darkness,

I wait for that soul

Who can refrain from judgement

And take me out of the cold.

I build a wall

To keep the mystery in

Only now I realize,

Loneliness is my sin.'

Another one? Hermione arched a delicate eyebrow. This one had been waiting for her at the desk where she usually sat in McGonagall's classroom. She glanced up at her professor, but the other woman showed no sign of noticing anything amiss. Quietly, Hermione tucked the note into her school robes, resolving to show it to Harry and Ron later at lunch.

"I still don't get it, Mione," Ron said in between mouthfuls of shepherd's pie. "So some loon's writing poems and leaving them all over the place. Why are you so curious?"

Hermione ran her fingers through her long coffee-coloured curls. "I don't know, Ron, I really don't. It just seems to me that someone wants me to find them...or, at least, wants somebody to find them."

"So, let me get this straight, you want to find out who this person is because you think it's a cry for help?" Harry asked her. She nodded. "Then there's one thing I don't understand," he said.

"What?" she asked curiously.

"Does that make you a sidekick to Sherlock Holmes or Sigmund Freud?" he asked, grinning impishly and ducking the bread roll she threw at him.

Hermione smiled at the librarian, Madam Pince, as she walked into the library after dinner that night. She had a few spare hours while Harry and Ron discussed Quidditch tactics for their upcoming match against Ravenclaw, and she intended to work on the mystery of the notes.

She set her book bag down at her regular table and almost jumped out of her seat when she saw a scrap of parchment covered with familiar script lying on the table.

'A tower where the stars are viewed,

A boy stands alone.

He gathers courage to punish himself;

He has many sins to atone.

He waits for a saviour

But none will come;

He is hated, feared, avoided,

Scorned by all and pitied by none.

He wants to call for you

But fears your hate;

He needs only you

In his vulnerable state.'

Hermione's eyes widened as she assimilated the message in the poem. So it hadn't been a coincidence...someone had meant for her to find the notes. Someone who needed help. Each poem is darker than the previous one.

Tower where the stars are viewed...the Astronomy Tower, of course, she mused. Courage to punish himself? Please, no, not suicide!

Leaving her bag and cloak draped haphazardly over the chair, she hurled herself out of the library. Running down the now-empty corridors, she looked at the crumpled parchment in her hand. Hated, feared, avoided? Only one person came to mind...one person who most people were afraid to cross, but greeted with a charade of respect, simply out of fear for the repercussions of any unseemly behaviour. Draco Malfoy, of course.

But he wouldn't call for help, would he? Least of all, help from me? she thought uncertainly. Still, she ran up the winding stone steps to the top of the Astronomy Tower, not slowing her pace.

Quietly, she pushed open the door leading to the parapet from which some students conducted their nightly studies of the galaxy, while other students studied Advanced Anatomy, which, to the best of Hermione's knowledge, was not one of the prescribed courses at Hogwarts.

Brushing aside her wildly see-sawing thoughts, she peered around in the semi-darkness. There. A glint of the purest silver hair, almost a halo in the undulating moonlight. Draco Malfoy stood at the edge of the tower, looking, not down into the forest, but up at the night sky. His grey eyes shone with the reflected glory of the stars, and his profile looked like marble: bloodless and finely carved.

He turned as he heard her soft footfalls. A soft smile, quite unlike his usual smirks, twisted his lips. "You came," he said.

Hermione drew in a shaky breath. His eyes, his behaviour, the way he stood all convinced her that this was most definitely not a prank. "Malfoy, my heart feels like it's transfigured itself into a pair of steel bongos. Would you mind getting down from there?"

"The long way or the short way?" he asked obligingly, a hint of a sparkle in his eyes.

"God, don't make jokes like that," Hermione said, stepping closer to him. He balanced precariously on the ledge, and shifted like a skittish cat.

"If it's quite alright with you, I'd like to conduct the conversation from here," he told her loftily, sounding a bit more like himself. "That way, if things get ugly, I have a quick escape route," he quipped, pointing down seven stories to the Forbidden Forest.

"You're being a drama queen," Hermione informed him, well aware that he might be mentally unhinged and she should speak in more soothing tones, but really, it was impossible to override the ingrained rudeness of six years in ten seconds. Changing tack, she asked, "Why did you leave the poems for me to find?"

"Because I needed your help, Granger," he stated simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Hermione almost howled in sheer frustration, but remembered the predicament they both were in and asked with a modicum of calmness, "Why do you need my help, Malfoy? How on earth can I possibly help you?"

You can save me, he thought. Maybe you can show me that there's more to look forward to in my life than pain. Maybe...maybe not. Draco regarded her carefully. She seemed sincere. Unlike many others, she had never attempted to conceal her contempt for him, nor was she doing so now. Well, not successfully, at least. He admired that in her. He loved that in her. Oh, yes, that. A bit of a sticky problem, that, since, if she found out about it, he was sure that consequences be damned, she would push him off the tower rather than wait for him to jump. "You know about me spying for Dumbledore from my position in Voldemort's inner circle?" he asked her abruptly.

She nodded mutely, impressed that he, a boy in thrall to the side of evil, could speak the name of his master, which most grown wizards feared to do. After Lucius Malfoy had been killed, Draco's eyes had been opened to what a monster Voldemort was, and, without the slightest hesitation or fear, he had turned spy for the side of good.

"You know that I was discovered and Dumbledore now protects me?" he asked.

This time she shook her head in the negative. She hadn't known.

"Voldemort doesn't forgive treachery easily," Draco said, so softly that she had to strain to hear him. "He haunts me; burns me through the Dark Mark on my chest; floods my dreams with visions of blood and death till I can't be certain whether it's a nightmare or reality. I just want it to end..." his frail voice trailed off.

"Like this?" she asked, her voice sounding shrill to her own ears. "By throwing yourself off the side of a building? Malfoy, you've done nothing but fight since I've known you, are you telling me that you're going to give up now?"

"You don't know how tired I am," he whispered. But she knew. She saw it in the dark circles marring the pale skin under his eyes. Saw it in the way he no longer called her 'Mudblood' or taunted Harry and Ron in the hallways. Saw it in the way he looked longingly at the ground hundreds of feet below, as if he couldn't wait to finally have a restful slumber.

"Then why haven't you jumped already?" she asked, not unkindly, though.

He looked at her. And she swallowed hard. There seemed to be a much more pressing question to ask. "Malfoy? How were you found out?"

He still looked at her. And she knew.

"I disobeyed his orders to kill you," was his curt reply.

"Why?" she whispered.

"Why does he want you dead? You're muggle-born; you're Potter's friend so it would be a real blow to him; you're brilliant so it would be a deadly opponent out of the way..."he seemed to have no end of explanations.

She cut him off. "No. Why did you disobey him? Not that I'm not grateful, mind you; I cherish the fact that because of you I am alive and breathing and capable of having this insane conversation with you. But why did you disobey him?"

He groaned inwardly. Damn. She would have to pick up on that. "Do I have to tell you?" he asked plaintively, like a small child asking, "Do I have to take a bath?"

"If you're going to say something along the lines of being in love with me and thus saving me from unspeakable horrors and certain doom by sacrificing yourself, I might be forced to rip you apart with my bare hands and throw the pieces down to the werewolves in the forest," Hermione told him.

He blinked. "Ah. Right, then. That's out."

Hermione looked at him, perplexed. "What, you mean it? You're in love with me?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Don't get all mushy about it, woman. I was going to leave you this in case you didn't come."

He handed her yet another piece of parchment, this one bound by a delicate silver chain from which hung a dragon's tooth. The jewelry was beautiful and deadly, breathtaking and forbidding...So much like Draco, Hermione mused.

Opening the scroll, she read silently:

'A life, for a life

A nightmare, for peace.

A soul, for none;

These exchanges, complete.

A hate, for love

And love, for hate;

Where neither knows either

There is nothing in their fate.

Exchange evil for good,

Exchange ruined for pure;

Where death is imminent,

Forgiveness, ensure.

To whom love went unspoken,

Protection provide;

With my salvation

My heart will reside.

This is my plea.'

Hermione looked up at him. "Well, I came. And if you so much as think about declaring your love to me and then leaving me alone while you die in peace, you can think again!"

Draco grinned. "I assume that means you feel the same way?"

Hermione grimaced. "Don't assume anything about me," she said tartly. At the look on his face, she continued. "Oh, alright, you manipulative freak, stop with the puppy-dog eyes! You know how I feel."

His smile was so genuine and so blatantly...happy... that Hermione, for once, found herself quite at a loss for words...insults or otherwise. Without giving it a second thought, she smiled back at him and reached out. Grabbing the front of his robes, she gently pulled him off the ledge. He made no move to protest; he just stood towering over her petite frame, yet making her feel like she was the one who needed to protect him.

"Congratulations, Malfoy, you've just heaped more worries on my shoulders," she said wryly, but the slight smile adorning her lips took the sting out of her words.

"While there was a time I lived to hear those words," Draco said, gently pushing a stray strand of hair back from her face, "Right now they don't particularly make my heart sing 'Joy To The World'."

Hermione looked up at him. "Well, all these years I've turned my hair grey worrying what would happen if Voldemort caught up with Harry, or decided to exact his revenge by hurting Ron. Now, thanks to you, I'm probably going to be completely grey before I reach the ripe old age of seventeen! Why is it that the three of you are supposedly the big, strong men, and yet I'm the one looking after you?" She pouted good-naturedly. "Ah, well, if I can handle the two of them, you shouldn't be too much of a problem."

Draco studied the smirk that tilted her lips, and the spark that gave her chocolate eyes a molten intensity, and the delicate hands that rested against his chest. And the concern and love in her words, her pose, her gestures, that he knew were for him. And he knew he couldn't have jumped. He would live with the fear, and the voices, and the agony of the searing mark on his chest. But he couldn't have jumped.

He couldn't have missed out on this.