Hermione rested on the bed in the small, dark room as she had done since she'd arrived.

She felt ridiculous for not challenging Malfoy's intentions, but he'd saved her from the worst fate, and that meant something.

She ran her thumb over the word on her arm that Bellatrix had carved, still bruised from when the cruel witch had repeated it not so long ago.

"All I'm saying is I could have killed him if I wanted to" She heard a voice come into the apartment. Deciding that any time she heard a voice it might be dangerous. She scurried under the duvets and stayed silent.

"He was on our side," stated a second voice she identified as Malfoy.

"Is that supposed to mean something?" said the first voice, as she now realised was Theo Nott's.

As she heard someone cast a spell there was an outburst of laughter coming from a witch, Pansy.

"I'm gonna kill you" shouted Theo from his position above the kitchen table "let me down"

"Nope"

"Oh go bugger off with Blaise or something," he said which was almost immediately followed by a scream and a crash.

She jumped when the door opened and Draco Malfoy stepped in. Closing the door quietly behind him he said "Granger. Do you need anything?"

Hermione, still slightly shocked as she hadn't heard him coming to the room shook her head.

The wizard nodded as he took a seat on the green armchair that sat in the corner of the room.

"Please tell me now," asked Hermione sounding hopeful "I won't think badly of you, I promise."

Draco took a sharp breath "I've wanted to defect for months, probably years. I got in contact with my aunt, Andromeda and she told Kingsley. They knew that nobody would believe that I was telling the truth. So we decided that I would stay on the Dark Lord's side to get information and I would pass it on to her when I could. When I found out about the multiple attacks on the order's base's I knew that I had to tell them. I guess it was just too late."

Hermione slowly creeped out from underneath the duvet "You weren't too late, we had gotten most of the people out before they arrived. I stayed with the few who wanted to fight. I took a blow to the back of the head and it knocked me out."

"Always the Gryffindor Granger."

"What about your friends?" asked Hermione, picking at her fingernails.

"Well, Blaise knows you're here and hasn't told anyone, I think he also wants to defect. Theo doesn't know his head from a hole in the ground. He follows mostly Blaise and me, I doubt he'd have a problem with it. Never spoken to Pansy about it, but she's a good person, probably the best of us all."

"Harry and Ron-" was all Hermione could get out before her head snapped up to the sound of someone outside the room.

Draco knew there were locks on the room so nobody but him could get in but if anyone found out there was magic on it, he would look suspicious.

"What are you doing in there?" shouted Theo from the other side of the door.

Draco groaned "I'm just checking something, fuck off." he said back.

"I'm coming in," said Theo whilst trying to figure out the spells to unlock the door. "Why am I not coming in?"

"There's a lot of shit in here you probably wouldn't want to see," said Draco convincingly enough but still he walked to the door and held it shut.

"Why can't I see?" whined Theo.

"Because it's private"

"I don't care if you've got secret stuff," said Theo, eventually managing to break through the barrier as the door swung open.

Hermione had tried to hide but Theo noticed her before she could.

Theo's eyes widened and he looked as though his jaw dropped to the floor "mudblood."