His hands are smooth with clean and straightly cut fingernails, hands that, seem to have never touched a hard day's work in his life. "What good would a wand be then, or a house elf?" he'd once mused, and even now he believes it.

The man he'd killed was an auror with coarse and calloused hands but Draco doesn't remember his face. It was dark and all thoughts of it being a clean death were forgotten from the beginning and he had washed himself afterwards for what seemed like eternity. Scrub, scrub, scrub. But a dead man's blood is a hard thing to clean and even now he can see dark liquid staining his arms, his palms, his fingers.

Have mercy. Please have mercy on me. Except Death Eaters do no such thing and Draco landed the first punch right on the man's mouth to shut him up. A bloody wonderful death scene the others had praised him; another bloody death was what he read in the papers.

And when he looks in the mirror, he traces his reflection, and sees a murderer with bloody hands that really don't belong on the boy staring back at him with smooth skin and clean and straightly cut fingernails. He's a murderer, a murderer, and he whispers it out loud before he sleeps and thinks there would be an echo if only the snoring of his comrades didn't echo first.

It's May and school hasn't even started; the battle, however, has, and for all her seven years as a Gryffindor Hermione certainly doesn't feel like one. She wonders if any Gryffindor does.

Ron had said, when it all had started, he knew they'd be the winners in the end, taking her tear stricken face in his hands and kissing her for the first time. And McGonagall had made a speech about the light side rising up in glory as Dumbledore nodded his head in wise agreement. Except Hermione's not sure whether to believe in their words anymore because irony plays hard and Dumbledore's one step away from dying and McGonagall died after the second month and Ron... well, Ron's dead too.

Now all she has is Harry. Harry, the boy who lived, who's life and death had and would affect the whole wizarding world. But he's slipping- slipping so quickly away like all the rest of them and when it's dark outside, his eyes closed, she hears his broken voice, broken words, frightening dream. Oh, Harry. And she sits on the cold floor beside his bed and hugs him, kisses his forehead, and says words of comfort like the mother he never had because all she has now is Harry. Or at least, whatever's left of him.

They're broken wires, Draco and Hermione, and they doubt if they'll survive the war intact or sane. Maybe they're both slipping- fading unlike dead man's blood stains, living like the walking corpses they see everyday. They don't know. Draco's never questioned. Hermione doesn't think, for once, she wants the answer.

It's after hours when they come together. Dueling perspectives don't matter in the dark. And for all the lightlessness around them, their lips find eachother's quickly, as if it's only normal for adversary mouths to converge like theirs. Except, they don't fit together, because light never mixes with dark, and their noses bump, and their mouths meet akwardly, imperfectly. Like broken souls. And kisses aren't meant to be rough hurried lustful- so very lustful their kisses are, no never like that.

But they realize, it's easy to forget with their eyes closed, their lips, their hands, intertwining with someone else's- becoming one. And their problems aren't their own for the moments when skin's against skin. Problems don't exist. They don't exist. Nothing is. Ever was. Thank Merlin.

And that's all they want. All they're looking for. Release. And if rough hurried lustful kisses is what they'll get, they'll take it. They'll take it and kiss for all their weary and broken souls are worth. Because it's release. Comforting, saccharine release. And it's all they want, really.