The Unanswered Question [Draco/Hermione - R]
Author: auselysium
Title: The Unanswered Question
Prompt: #107 Submitted by: terrayn
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: R - for some non-graphic references to sex and some language.
Warnings: Ron/Hermione are together, so I suppose this could be considered an infidelity fic, but that is not the crux of the story, nor the basis for the angst.
Word Count: ~ 9,000
Summary: The hatred that Hermione had adopted when she became friends with Harry Potter and had grown with every insult Malfoy directed at her had never really disappeared. Time would not let her forget that kind of relentless disgust and the tireless ball of loathing that been lodged in her gut since first year burned their still. And yet, her attention always seemed to drift his way
Notes: I was so thrilled to get this prompt, as I’ve never written (nor even read) any Draco/Hermione stories. I was so excited to come to a pairing, of which, I had no preconceived notions. The result, I hope, is a true to character, real story for them based on how I see them in cannon and imagine them to be in a post DH world. Title comes from the piece for orchestra entitled “The Unanswered Question” by Charles Ives.
Many thanks to the Mods of hp_emofest for organizing the fest! (And for the two week extension!!) Also, a special thanks to “a” whose black, emo!pompoms convinced me that I really could write the story after all. *hugs*
The Unanswered Question
It was raining the night Hermione returned to Hogwarts. It was not one of those tepid, suburban storms she had been forced to endure while living with her parents in the wake of the war but a proper, Scottish highland’s gale complete with rolls of thunder that seemed to echo across the hills for days and wind that churned the trees like water at a rapid boil.
Rain collected in her hair and ran over her face as she stared, numb, unable to look away from her first glimpse of the Thestrals standing at the ready for their charge in front of the Hogwart‘s carriages. They were haunting and strangely mesmerizing creatures, completely innocent in the horror they instilled in her. They tossed their heads back and forth like horses, shuddering as they shook drops of water from their black, leathery wings.
It was only when Neville Longbottom wrapped his arm around her shoulders, gathering her close under his warm cloak, that she realized she was shivering. And soaked to the bone.
“I suppose we can all see them now, can’t we?” He said, his words nearly lost in a particularly close clap of thunder.
But it didn’t matter. The question didn’t really need answering.
*
She had thought the castle would feel different. As if the halls themselves would ache with the memory of what happened inside them. After all, Hermione still felt rickety and unsteady on the inside so why wouldn’t Hogwarts? The old castle had always felt like a character in her own right, with her unpredictable staircases and hidden rooms that would give you just what you needed. Shouldn’t she still be broken too?
But when she arrived back at Hogwarts that night - sixteen months since the last time and nine years since the first - it all looked the same. Walls she knew to have been shattered to bits were repaired. The spell work cast on the new bricks making them look centuries old was so well done it left her questioning her memory. The same twilight sky glowed over the Welcoming Feast, the happily blinking stars so very unaware of what they shown down upon. The portraits had resumed their places on the wall, the armor stood at unmoving attention. Every inch of her chambers and passageways was as it had been.
The false sense of normalcy was cloying.
It was only the simple metal medallion, inlaid into the Great Hall’s floor on the spot where Voldemort had fallen, etched with the date and name of his vanquisher, and Dumbledore’s gapping absence from the head table that made it feel like time had truly passed. That maybe, if they all agreed to it, it might be alright to carry on.
*
“There are so few of us,“ she whispered to Neville, ignoring the Sorting Hat‘s yearly song.
It wasn’t that their year had taken a particularly high number of casualties in the war. The paltry numbers were more because of how much the war had forced them to grow up. And for most people, Harry and Ron included, being grown up did not equate to going back to school. But for Hermione, her Hogwarts education was too important to simply skip to the end, so she returned. Alone. Leaving behind her boyfriend, her best friend and a stack of job offers from the Ministry a mile high. Sometimes she wondered if I wasn’t completely mad for doing that.
She sat with Neville and Parvati Patil, so that made for 3 Gryffindors returned. There were a handful of Hufflepuffs sitting at the back of their table, a double fist of Ravenclaws interspersed at theirs. And across the Hall, standing alone against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his face pale and pristine, was the lone Slytherin: Draco Malfoy.
He appeared to watch the house sorting with the same amount of distain that Hermione felt on the inside. Hasn’t there just been a war?, his delicately furrowed brow seemed to ask. Haven’t we gotten past such arbitrary delineations?
He presented himself with all of that unfettered Malfoy pride. But instead of lording over the Slytherin table, commanding attention and obedience, Hermione sensed his pride in quieter ways: the straightness of his tie, the crispness of his robes, the way his distinctive hair was slicked back with exacting precision, the conviction that seemed to shine around him like a suit of armor, proclaiming to anyone who might doubt him, that he had just as much right to be there as anyone else.
He looked down at his fingers, scrutinizing each one as he ran his thumb over the nail. Then ever so slowly his eyes drifted up, locking with Hermione’s.
She flushed. His gaze was steely, narrow and inescapable, yet he held her eyes with all the gentleness of an embrace. His lips morphed into the hint of a smirk and Hermione gasped, looking away as quick as she could.
Had that vague expression been in simple amusement at catching her in the act of staring? Had it been an actual greeting? Or had it been some other indication? Acknowledgment that she looked just as alone without her usual compatriots flanking her on either side as he did without his?
She couldn’t quite tell. All she knew was that it left her breathless.
*
After the Welcoming Feast there had been no Prefect duties to rush off to, no beginning of the year meeting in the Gryffindor common room. No Harry. No Ron. So she walked out of the Great Hall slowly, retraining her feet to carry her to a new bed. A new home.
They were given individual rooms separated by several floors from the younger students, for both their sakes, she was sure. The rooms were off a long corridor, in the lower back corner of the castle, near the staff quarters and the kitchen. Hermione passed through the large lounge at the opening of the passageway and noted tables for studying, couches for relaxing and a set of double doors that led out to an enclosed patio for stargazing. Or for impromptu parties, as some of her classmates had already discovered.
Laughter and cigarette smoke wafted through the open doors as Hermione walked past. Neville noticed her and waved for her to join them, but she simply shook her head, giving him a pained smile. She was in no mood for parties and didn’t know if she ever would be.
She clasped the key to her new room tightly in the palm of her hand, walking slowly down the hall as she waited for the spell linking the key to its lock to activate. The corridor was dark, being not quite in the dungeons but still in the basement. There were only a few guttering gas lamps and the one window at the very end of the hall for light. The cool, silver paleness of the moon spilled across the floor.
It wasn’t until she reached the end of the hallway that she remembered the rain and saw the inky clouds that still blocked out the stars and realized that it wasn’t the moon that was lighting the hallway at all but a massive white tomb, emanating its own spectral glow a few hundred feet away from where it sat by the lake’s edge.
“Doesn‘t look like this old pile of bricks has lost her sick sense of humor, does it?”
Directly to her left, Draco’s voice was low, caustic and as dark as the shadow he stood in. He leaned against the door jam to the last room on the left, his neck exposed and pale, his eyes locked on the sight outside. He looked smooth and cocky standing there with his tie loosened and his shirt un-tucked, but there was a smidgen of terror at what he saw outside. A determination to not let it break him. It took only a moment for the sick feeling to settle into Hermione’s stomach, sympathy perhaps, or her own sort of terror too.
He pushed himself off the wall with a small noise of effort and wrapped his hand around his doorknob. “Granger,” he said, inclining his head politely in her direction.
“Malfoy,” she said, returning the civility in kind before she really had time to think.
The key in her hand jangled; the lock to the last door on the right glowed an eerie blue.
*
School began and with it the familiar regimen of class attendance, work and study. It felt like a reunion with an old friend for Hermione, though the same could not be said for most of her classmates who stumbled through the first few weeks with bleary eyes and lame excuses.
The only other person who seemed to ease back into the school schedule without any hint of a grumble was Draco. He was often in class by the time Hermione got there, sitting alone at his desk, his parchment tied in neat scrolls with silver ribbon, his quill inked and at the ready.
So it was no surprise that she found him, of all people, working in the potions lab on a foggy Friday night in late September.
The gentle smells of lemon grass and cardamom were bubbling away at his work station, the focused flame burning a white-hot blue. All his knives had been freshly cleaned, his cutting board wiped down. He leaned over the counter top, propped up on his elbows, a copy of that evening’s Daily Prophet open in front of him, his hair fallen across his face.
It wasn’t until he looked up at her though that her pulse began to run heavy through her veins.
“I’m sorry,” She mumbled, averting her eyes away from those intense eyes of his. “I didn‘t think anyone else would be here. I’ll come back.”
“I’m almost done.” He gave his cauldron and stir, peering in at its contents. “This will just need cooling.”
“No, really,” Hermione smiled, a fake, nervous thing that she hated herself for the minute it happened. “It’s fine.” She turned for the door and was out it in a matter of seconds
Later that night, as she lay in bed rehashing the encounter, she wondered if it ever gets old for Draco to only ever see the back side of people as they run the other way.
*
That sympathy was not long lived, however. The hatred that Hermione had adopted when she became friends with Harry Potter and had grown with every insult Malfoy directed at her had never really disappeared. Time would not let her forget that kind of relentless disgust and the tireless ball of loathing that been lodged in her gut since first year burned their still.
And yet, her attention always seemed to drift his way.
He was quite the enigma, private and alone. With his reputation preceding him everywhere he went, he was constantly by himself. But he held his head high through his isolation. Seemed at peace with it because his solitude never once asked for pity.
He was treading so carefully through the school year that one could almost forget how much of an egotistic, belligerent, swaggering prat he used to be. Even though Hermione fought every day not to. She would purposely wonder if all this good behavior was just an act. Or a court order.
“You sound just as bad as Harry,” Ron laughed one cool October night as she sat in front of the fireplace in her room, the floo call warming her toes. “Maybe the poor bastard finally got some humility knocked into him. I mean after that farce of a trial his father went through and the way the press handled it? Can you really blame him for wanting to keep his head down?”
“Ron Weasley, defending Draco Malfoy.” She teased. “What has the world come to?”
“To a different place than the one we were in the last time you were at that school,” Ron replied seriously. “It’s just Harry has been saying, things aren‘t the same anymore, Herm. They can‘t be.”
It was times like this, when Ron would surprise her with such quiet wisdom, that Hermione thought maybe she really did love him after all.
*
It was the Sunday after Halloween. The lounge was quiet and though the hour was early, Hermione’s classmates were already in bed, recovering from the hangovers that had left them all moaning and pathetic for most of the day. The party had been epic. Even she had been convinced to attend, though she spent most of the night cleaning up spills and assisting with Insta-Sober charms.
Twenty-four hours later, the table she was working at was still sticky from spilled beer and she calculated it would take at least another 10 days for the cloying smell of hookah smoke to truly dissipate, even with the air purifying charm she had used that afternoon.
The hollow sound of footsteps indicated the arrival of a classmate. The slow, long paces led her to one guess.
Draco rounded the corner, just as expected, dressed in a tailored suit of dark brown, tugging at its high Mandarin collar as he walked. His normally pale skin was flushed, his eyes heavy and unfocused. He saw her and stumbled for a moment but didn’t stop on the way to his room.
Hermione thought of her conversation with Ron weeks previous and, seeing as they were alone, quickly mustered all the Gryffindor courage with which she was supposedly endowed and spoke out.
“You just getting in?”
Draco turned slowly, his head swimming for a moment before his eyes linked with hers. “What a brilliant statement of the obvious, Granger. What the hell does it looks like?”
Hermione smirked. “It looks like someone’s drunk.”
“Again.” Draco gestured at himself with the sweep of his hand. “The obvious.”
Hermione laughed briefly and Draco clasped his hands behind his back, trying to make his position on his two feet slightly more permanent.
“Halloween party?” She asked.
“Of sorts, I suppose. I went home to see my mother. She’s been…” Draco’s eyes blurred and he cut himself with a shake of his head. He took a few steps closer to the table and peered over her shoulder. “Looks to like someone isn’t done with her Arithmomancy paper. Tsk tsk.”
“It’s not due until next week.”
“Really? I’ve had mine done for ages.” Grabbing the back of her chair for balance, Draco reached over to pick up the long scroll of parchment, already 8 inches longer than required.
The simple nearness of him made her spine tingle. She could smell the Ogden’s fire whisky on his breath and the cologne on his skin, something French and complex.
He made a noise of approval at the back of his throat and put the parchment back down in front of Hermione. “No matter. You’ll still probably get a better score than me. You always do.” He laughed once to himself and rapped the table with his knuckles. “Well, goodnight Granger.” He said with an amicable air.
“Goodnight, Malfoy.”
She turned in her chair and watched him walk away, counting the number of long-legged steps it took for him to reach their end of the hall.
*
Draco’s eyes seemed to find her more from then on. Always ready to offer up a nod or a small smile in return and once, during an especially tedious History of Magic lecture, a sympathetic eye roll. But their communication rarely went beyond the unspoken, remaining instead in the private and discreet world of looks and glances.
But then one Tuesday in early November, Hermione was in the Great Hall trying to eat her lunch and review for the upcoming Ancient Runes quiz at the same time when she heard the scrape of a chair. She looked up.
“Mind if I join you?”
Draco looked exceedingly tall standing opposite her and she would have probably been less surprised if Crookshanks, her cat, had been on two legs asking the same question.
“What?” She asked befuddled.
Draco took that as a ‘yes’ and sat down, filling the glass that appeared in front of him with pumpkin juice.
“What are you doing?” She whispered, leaning over her pile of texts.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Draco responded in equally conspiratorially tones, “But you are quite the celebrity here.”
Hermione looked perplexed.
“Oh, yes,” He continued. “Only returning student of the Golden Trio? One of the great Horcrux hunters? You have certainly taken the place of Saint Potter’s as the person Hogwarts students most like to gossip about. Well, either you,” He looked at her, his expression souring. “Or me.”
The bitterness in his voice made her swallow.
“I hadn’t really noticed.” She stammered.
“Well, sometimes it’s not so obvious, sometimes it is more just staring. Just like now, in fact.” He looked over his shoulder to the room around them, his eyes guiding Hermione to notice the quietly stunned looks on their fellow classmates faces. She didn’t blame them. She was feeling pretty stunned herself.
“What exactly do you expect me to do about this?” She asked, hushed.
“Do? Oh, nothing at all. I just figured, if they are going to stare, we might as well give them something to really look at.” He waggled his eyebrows, covering his smile with the lip of his cup before taking a sip.
Hermione shook her head. “You’ve gone completely mad.”
His grin was mischievous and a bit dashing, adjectives she never though she would attribute to him.
“Haven’t I just?” Draco asked, tipping back in his chair. He picked up an apple and bit into it with a loud crunch. Hermione went back to her books, hiding her blush behind the feather of her quill, realizing she rather didn’t mind it when Draco smiled like that.
*
“So you and Weasley, eh?”
It was a chilly November afternoon outside but from inside Greenhouse 3, Draco and Hermione couldn’t tell. They still didn’t talk much when they worked together, opting for amenable and studious silence with they could both appreciate. But when they did talk, Hermione was always surprised by the ease with which conversation came.
She stilled her knife halfway through a sneezewort stalk and looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a long look down her nose.
“Right,” Draco snorted, realizing the stupidity of his question. “Like there was anyone who didn’t see that one coming from a mile away. Although,” He reconsidered, pointing at her with his dirt covered trowel. “I always expected you to end up with Potter.”
“Harry? Really?” She crinkled her face with a giggle. “Why”
“I don’t know. He’s just so much less…ginger.” Draco almost grimaced before remembering to stop himself.
“I happen to like the ginger,” Hermione said with a coy grin. Draco quirked one of those ridiculously perfect eyebrows and pressed his lips into a smirk. Hermione shrugged. “Makes him rather feisty.”
“Oh so that‘s what you like in your men then is it, Granger? Fresh with fire and danger? Color me impressed.” Draco’s voice was silky smooth and Hermione flushed as red as Ron’s hair.
But their flirtatious moment was quickly terminated as Draco rolled his sleeves up past his elbows and plunged his hands deep into a fresh pot of rose hips.
For the first time, Hermione was able to confirm with her eyes something which had only been hinted at before in rumor or vague implications by the press.
“Careful now, Granger,” Draco rasped, looking at her through weighted lids. “You’re staring.” But Hermione was unable to take her eyes away from his bared forearms.
“You never…”
“I never.” Draco pulled his hands out of the dirt, slapping them against each other to brush them clean. He settled them on his hips and Hermione’s eyes flicked up to his face.
“Harry was so sure that you‘d become one of them, but… I knew you hadn‘t. I knew there was no way.”
“What could possibly have made you so sure?” He challenged.
Hermione tossed her hair off her shoulders. “Because you were a coward.”
Draco flinched. Hermione sounded as if she had just stated that the sky was blue or that food is the first exception to Gamp’s Elemental Laws of Transfiguration. His cowardice was a statement of fact for her. Uncontestable truth. And for as bitter a pill that may have been to swallow, Draco didn‘t deign to deny it. How could he when she was right?
Without breaking eye contact he picked up his wand and cast a wordless aguamanti spell, wetting the freshly transplanted rose bush. Hermione turned back to her cutting, marveling at how well you can know someone who has never been your friend.
*
She hadn’t gone back to Gryffindor Tower since returning to school, trying to avoid that place so full of childhood and joy when she felt neither young nor cheerful. But the 4th years had needed tutoring in Transfigurations and McGonagall had asker her personally to pick up the task. The space, which had once felt so grand to her now felt small. She could see the wear and tear on furniture that once seemed lush. Age and retrospect seemed ready to destroy even the most lovely memories.
The tutoring done, the shortest route back to the “8th year” corridor as it was being called, took her past another space ripe with memories. These not nearly as nice.
The door to the Room of Requirement was small and non-descript that night. Looking little more than the entrance to a broom cupboard. She tried not to look at it as she hurried past, noticing instead the shadowy figure slumped against the wall opposite.
It was Draco and he was crying. Why is it that it always sounds so painful when men cry? As if the physical act itself is more agonizing than the thing they grieve.
“Draco?”
He looked up at her and then swore. “Fuck off.” He scrambled to turn away from her and wiped at his face.
Hermione took a step back. This was the Draco she remembered though decided more bereft. She glanced up and down the hallway, finding it empty and dark.
“Look, there is no one else here. It’s just me.” She stepped close enough so she could whisper. “Has something happened? To your Mum? Or…”
“Has something happened?” His laughed. But the noise quickly became choked and turned into a cough. He clutched at his gut, catching his breath before continuing. “What’s happened is that I nearly died in there.” He gasped. “Greg did. It’s his birthday today, you know…”
Hermione didn’t and she hated not knowing things. She dropped her bag on the floor and slid down next to him on the wall. Draco looked like a little boy with tears on his face. His eyes wide with the panic of someone so very unaccustomed to real emotion. If this were Ron or Harry or Ginny, she knew she would put her arm around them or stroke their back or any one of those comforting acts that friends provide. But they weren’t friends. Not really. They were something stranger, but equally real.
Her fingers hesitated for a moment, toying with the idea of brushing a lock of hair off his cheek and her stomach somersaulted at the idea. In the end she opted for a hand on his arm, making sure as she curled her fingers around his forearm that the grip did not relay any of the exhilaration she felt at the contact. Why did touching him seem so forbidden? Why did giving him comfort feel unlawful and yet absolutely crucial that she do so?
“I nearly died in there.” She nodded at the door. “Harry nearly died in there. Ron. Your friend Crabbe. People did die in every inch of this place, Draco,” She said softly. “You knew that before you came back.”
He ran his hand over his face with a slow inhale, nodding as he did as if this were some rational he had already told himself and had been left unconvinced.
“You can’t let yourself be haunted by anyone’s ghosts.”
He looked at her, his mind working behind that steely gaze. “Not even your own?”
She pulled her hand away from him, dropping it into her lap. There was a stray thread at the hem of her jumper and she wound it round her thumb again and again. They sat in silence as the wind picked up outside, wailing against the castle walls.
Some time later, Draco stood and turned to offer his hand. He pulled her to her feet and picked up her bag from the floor, slinging it over his own shoulder.
In silence, they walked back to their rooms.
*
Exams were upon her before she knew it, the fall term having nearly evaporated before her eyes. There was time for little else but study and revision. Certainly not time to notice how she would lie in bed at night and think of Draco’s tears. Not enough hours in the day to realize that she spent more time with him or thinking about him than any of her other friends, including Ron. There was too much re-reading to do to notice how that great ball of hate in her stomach had loosened slightly. Some of its knots kneaded away by understanding, camaraderie and a dangerous, blooming attraction.
One night after dinner, she and Draco were sitting at a table in the far corner of the library, a habit they had fallen into in the last few weeks. The table top was covered in piles of Defense against the Dark Arts texts, each pile five or six books tall.
“Sod this,” Draco said with a sigh, pushing his text out of the way and sprawling across the table with a dramatic flop. They’d been at it for hours and Hermione had only made it through two of her piles.
Her quill scratched steadily across her parchment even as she felt Draco’s eyes fell on her. He watched her, unabashed, and as the moments passed she became aware of every one of her movements, wondering how they looked to him.
“Now you’re the one staring,” she said, her head still tucked over her work
“Do you ever think about it?”
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that if you expect me to give you an answer.” Hermione doubled checked a date in her text book then jotted it done on the page.
“Do you ever think about the night you and Potter and Weasley got caught and were brought to the Manor?”
Her quill went silent. “What a preposterous question,” She whispered.
“Because sometimes that night is all I can think about when I look at you.”
The tremble in his voice caught him off guard and he sat back in his seat as if trying to escape his own words. Hermione heard the tinge of regret as well, the wish for her face to bring to mind happier memories.
“You got the Cruciatus curse that night.” It wasn’t a question but Hermione gave him a terse nod anyway. “Hurts doesn’t it?”
“I try not to think about it.”
“And does it work? Can you just not think about it? Trap all those memories? Hide them away? Forget?”
“Why are you doing this?” She asked, too quietly. Her voice broke.
“I’ve been under Cruciatus too, you know. One of the worst nights of my life and that is saying a lot. How do you not think of it? Not think of that pain? Of the fear you must have felt?” He cocked his head, narrowing his gaze. “Did you think you were going to die?”
“Stop it.” Tears spilled hot on her cheeks, but she bit through them.
“My Aunt, Hermione. My fucking Aunt did that to you. She wanted to turn you in. She tortured you.” Draco’s eyes were like daggers trying to slice her wide open. She was certain that if he kept on pressing her in this manner he would succeed. “How can you sit here with me, studying Dark Arts Defense of all the ironic things in the universe and not think of it?”
“You weren’t the one holding the wand.”
Draco laughed. “You can reason your way out of everything can’t you? That perfect, little mind of yours. Is that what it means to be Hermione Granger? To be one of the victorious? Is that truly your prize? To be able to forget while the rest of us are forced to remember forever?”
“I have forgotten nothing!” She snapped, slamming a fist on the table. “You really think you suffer alone with the memories of what happened? There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see that image of Hagrid coming out of the forest with Harry’s limp body in his arms, thinking that my best friend and the only person able to save us from Voldemort was gone forever. I still wake up in a panic about my parents. Imagining if I had gone to Australia and couldn’t find them. Or the Memory charm hadn’t been reversible or I had messed up the process and left their minds completely blank. I imagine what would have happened if you had turned us in, or if the Fyndfire had been too fast or we hadn’t been able to find the Horcruxes in time. I remember, Draco Malfoy. I remember every blasted moment of that war. Every time I thought I was too late, every moment I thought I had failed, every mistake I made that cost us something, every excruciating pain, every death, every tear. So don’t you dare think it’s all locked away! Don’t you ever dare assume anything about me!”
A thin smile curled his lips as he leaned across the table, reaching out his right hand. His touch was warm. Just a gentle brush of fingers to jaw, but after a moments tension, after they had both adjusted to the contact, they melted into it. She leaned into his palm, her eyes closing as he let his thumb brush slowly across the her cheek, wiping away the tears that still clung there.
They were skin to skin. So tender. Finally.
“I knew all that feeling had to be in there somewhere,” He breathed, his eyes wandering tenderly over her face. “Don’t hide it, Hermione. Not ever. It looks too good on you.”
She opened her eyes, golden with tears, met his and did not look away.
*
Hermione had never been drunk before but she was pretty sure that was what she was feeling. She felt free and a little bit ditzy and she simply didn’t care.
Exams were over and everyone in her years was celebrating. “Only one term left!” Neville had cheered, wrapping his arm around Hermione’s waist, lifting her in his strong arms and spinning her around once. They had toasted with what was the first of many drinks that night, their thick mugs clanging together, full of something red and frothy and horrifically potent.
It had been then, amidst the people who had been her friends for years, Neville and the Patil twins and other former DA members, that she felt Draco’s absence most acutely. Only then, in her inebriated state, did she realize how much time she had spent with him, and only him, these past few months. He wasn’t there of course. She hadn’t even bothered to ask if he was coming. Such parties required too much social interaction for his liking and too much cheap alcohol.
But then she saw him out the corner of her eye, hovering much as he had that very first night at the Welcoming Feast, observing and watching but not quite participating. Hermione was suddenly determined to change that.
“You’re here,” She said, walking over with a big grin.
Draco shrugged. He had a crystal tumbler full of what looked like Scotch in his right hand. Clearly he‘d been having an end of term celebration all his own. “Thought I’d take a look, make sure Longbottom wasn’t getting you too pissed.” He examined her flushed cheeks and glassy eyes. “Though it appears I may be too late.” Hermione giggled and rested her shoulder against the brick of the wall.
They watched the party for a few minutes, simply enjoying the amenable silence and the nearness of each other. The alcohol seemed to make her hyper aware, able to sense every curve of him. She felt herself smiling like she hadn’t in ages.
“I’m glad you’re here,” She said, putting her back against the wall. Whether accidental or intentional, this movement brought her closer to him.
“Why?” Draco asked turning to face her. The space between them closed even more.
“Because you’ve changed.”
Draco laughed softly through his nose, looked down into his glass then threw the remaining contents back with a toss of his head. He shook his head sadly. “I really haven’t. I’m just not your enemy anymore.”
“I don’t know if you ever really were, though. You were always Harry’s enemy and only became mine by default.”
“Don’t try to look through our past with rose colored glasses, Hermione. It just won’t work. Mudblood? Foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach? That ringing any bells?”
“I suppose you have a point.”
“But all the same,” Draco said softly, placing his hand on the wall above her head, leaning in even closer. “I’m glad things are the way they are.”
“Here’s to not being enemies, then,“ Hermione put her hand into the small space between them, offering up a handshake even though the angle was awkward. Her fingers brushed against the fabric of his shirt as she did and they both looked down at the spot. She felt her cheeks warm.
Instead of aligning his palm with hers, he grasped her hand lightly, almost fondling it, his fingers slipping between hers as he pressed their joined hands to his chest. His thumb swept over her pulse point and she was sure he could feel the way her heart was leaping franticly beneath her skin just as she could feel his pounding steadily through the fabric of his shirt. No touch of Ron’s or any man’s, had ever left Hermione so liquefied.
The music was loud. The darkness of the room so close. His cologne and his breath and his heat.
She kissed him soundly on the lips, reaching up on tip toes to do it, only to rock back to flat feet moments later as Draco bent forward, slipping a hand around her waist and moving in deeper. It didn’t feel real. As if someone else were doing it, the alcohol or some irrational part of herself that she’d never met before. But she felt small in his arms. Controlled. As if his hands and lips and the beautiful, small whimper at the back of his throat had physically possessed her. Guided her. She couldn’t deny how much she liked this feeling of complete abandon.
Draco watched her for a long moment afterwards, rolling his lips into his mouth, his eyes brilliant and a little bit wild. She was certain, if only for a moment, that he was about to spit the mudblood taste of her back out. But instead he smiled at her, a debonair, unruffled sort of a thing, and sauntered off, leaving Hermione reeling in her confusion.
Hermione woke the next morning with her head pounding, memories from the night before foggy except for one moment that glowed crystal clear.
Draco was already gone when she knocked on his door. She rested her head against the heavy wood panels and told herself it was all for the best.
*
Christmas was knit with denial.
It was too easy, while at home with her parents or at festive holiday gathering at the Weasley’s to lie. She didn’t tell Ron. Didn’t confide in Harry. She denied herself any thought of him - his mesmerizing eyes, the overpowering grace of his lips, the strength of his hand at her waist - when it was Ron’s eyes, Ron’s lips, Ron’s body that were beside, around, inside her. She convinced herself that the kiss had only happened because she was drunk and that it would never happen again. That she didn’t want it to.
But when she returned to Hogwarts and saw him, sitting at a table in the lounge and a slow smile that one might give a true friend stretched across his face, the lies felt only like lies. The denials were little more than pretense. The very sight of him broke down any certainty in the meaninglessness of the kiss into hopeless, simpering doubt.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Draco said one morning a week into winter term. His head was rested back against his closed door, his arms crossed and his voice stern. He’d clearly been waiting.
Hermione had already been feeling flustered that morning and Draco‘s intervention was quite untimely. She’d woken late after staying up to re-copy her Astronomy paper, having found a spelling mistake around inch 38 and unable to stomach the thought of turning it in with such an obvious typo.
She sighed. Frankly, she’d been waiting for this confrontation. After all, she had been avoiding him since she arrived back at Hogwarts.
“You noticed,” She said as she turned back to lock her room.
“You‘re the only person who really talks to me at this school, so yeah I noticed.”
They fell into step together, bypassing a few classmates who were mingling in the corridor before continuing their conversation. They walked shoulder to shoulder, close enough so they could speak in voices only they would hear.
“I thought we had established that we were…” He paused, swallowing down a poor word choice. “Not enemies anymore.”
“We did.”
“Well, then have I done something wrong? Were you offended I didn‘t send you present for Christmas?”
“No,” she said, exasperated. Draco held the door to the main corridor open for her and she hurried past, waiting as two other students late from breakfast passed them before she whispered, “I kissed you.”
“Ah, so it is that then.” Draco dampened a smile. He slid his hands into his pockets as they began walking again. Great swaths of sunlight angled through the high windows, cutting squares of radiance across the floor, changing the temperature between high to low, light and dark.
“But you see I’m confused.” He continued a while later. “What is the problem with you kissing me, exactly?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, right. Could he tell you’d been practicing?” Draco smirked and Hermione made an insulted sound of disgust.
“I hardly consider one kiss practice.”
“Did you tell him?” Draco asked, bringing the tone back to something more serious.
“No, of course not. Why would I? We were drunk and it was an accident.”
Draco stopped, a coy look on his face.
“Was it?”
There was a short hallway to their left, a narrow corridor ending in a door that went who knows where, cast in darkness that the morning light didn’t hit. Draco grabbed her wrist and slid with her into the shadows.
It was he who kissed her this time. He fell back against the rough brick of the wall, pulling her close. His arms were gentle at her hips, knowing that he really didn’t have to worry about her running away. He still tasted faintly of morning, the crisp brightness of a new day. Their lips seemed to fit together like two things destined, which of course was a ridiculous thought, but apropos to the moment.
She’d dreamt of this. At night sleeping in Ron’s arms. In the quiet moments between Molly Weasley’s epic meals. When she would sit on her parents couch and watch telly, she had imagined feeling like this again. Reckless and careless. Ignoring what was right or what made sense and simply feeling.
But Hermione Granger could only ignore the rules for so long.
“Stop,” she said, as Draco went to undo the clasp of her robe.
“Why?”
Because this makes no sense. Because it is wrong. Because it’s you.
“Because I can’t,” She stated, trying to regain her composure. Draco leaned down to catch her lips once more. “Please, Draco” she begged, pulling away. “Please.”
Something clicked in Draco’s eyes just then and he nodded, letting her slip from his grasp and back into the daylight.
*
He didn’t come to her until well after midnight, when the hall was quiet, most other students asleep. When she heard the knock, she opened the door wide, having no doubt of who it would be.
He was out of his school clothes by then, dressed in a comfortable pair of slacks and a loose sweater. His feet were bare and his hair, free of its usual product, fell soft at his temples. She was struck by how vulnerable he looked. A repentant Draco Malfoy looked more human and she found it incredibly unfair. Hermione, after all, had always been a sucker for pathetic things.
He paced the small square of the room left vacant in the middle by the bed, desk, dresser and fireplace, one hand tucked into the back pocket of his pants, the thumb nail of his other hand caught between his teeth.
“I’m sorry,” He said finally. “About this morning.”
It was so genuine and real that there was only one response Hermione could conceive of.
“I really did hate you, you know.” She rounded on him, jabbing a finger in his face. Draco’s mouth hung open for a moment before he clamped it shut as he realized Hermione was far from done.
“You were always strutting around like you were so above this place. Walking around with Crabbe and Goyle like some monarch with his entourage. You’d pick fights with Harry just because you could. Flaunt your money while hiding in your father’s shadow. You were a prat, Draco. A complete and utter prat. But you know why I hated you the most?”
Draco shook his head but Hermione barely even noticed.
“It was the way, even with that quick, brilliant mind of yours, that you could not be reasoned with. You of all people should have been able to see what was right in front of you. You should have realized that even with my supposedly muddled blood I was…that I AM, just as good as you. And I hated you for that. I hated you for not seeing sense. Fuck what your father thought, you should have known better! But you didn’t and you made it so bloody easy to completely despise you!”
Draco crossed his arms, giving her a moment to relish the completeness of her rant.
“And now?” He asked. “Is that still what you think?”
Hermione shook her head. “Now I just don’t understand.” She collapsed onto the edge of her bed, sighing. She watched her hands between her knees, twisting them together. “It was so much easier when everything was black and white.”
“Things never were black and white, Hermione. You of all people should know that.”
A winded laugh puffed from between her lips. She looked up at the face of the boy who she’d always associated with cruelty and immorality and instead saw a friend.
“Who are you and what have you done with Draco Malfoy?” She said in an awed whisper.
Draco laughed, sinking slowly into her desk chair opposite her. “He’s here. He always has been.”
“Then how is it that I like him so much now?”
This time it was Draco’s turn for his cheeks to flood with a betraying blush.
*
As the weeks went on and Draco‘s looks took on more weight, each one a more complex mixture of want and affection, there was little else for Hermione to do but give in.
So she did.
“When is your birthday?” He asked as they lay side by side in his bed, still clothed but not for long. He brushed away a tendril of hair that had curled at the base of her throat.
“September 19th.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Draco smiled, enjoying this time to learn the little things.
It snowed their first time together, the soft flakes falling noiselessly as they moved together beneath the sheets of her bed with the same near silent wonder of the snow. Draco pointed out the beauty of the snow filled night sky as they lay together, his arms forming a loose circle around her waist, and she laughed calling him sentimental.
Their secret affair couldn’t remain secret for long, not in quarters as close as theirs.
“So you and Draco, huh?” Neville asked one Potions class just a week before Valentine’s Day. Hermione looked up, the delicate quail’s egg she had been siphoning cracking in her hand. She bit nervously at her lip and Neville simply nodded. “Mum’s the word then, is it?” He glanced over his shoulder to where Draco was laughing cautiously with his lab partner. He relationship with Hermione had left him more willing to attempt friendship with others. “Can’t say I blame you. He’s bloody gorgeous.”
Hermione eye’s widened as Neville turned back to his cauldron, blushing furiously. She wiped her hands and rounded the table. Neville’s face was the only part of him that still looked like an eleven year old boy and she kissed his cheek swiftly. Feeling both unendingly grateful for his discretion and an understanding as to why he had never acted on any of Hannah Abbott’s advances.
Across the classroom Draco watched the interaction, giving her a playfully possessive glare. The little action was enough to make her smile.
She felt a bit smug during those days as they pulled the wool over the world’s eyes. She walked taller, let her hips swing a little more freely. Here she was, Hermione Granger, breaking all the rules but getting away with it.
“Do you remember when I punched you?” She asked one night as she drew her knees up around his narrow waist, pressing her palms against his ribs.
“Yes,” he pouted against her navel, his hair brushing against her nipples as his mouth moved ever slowly up her belly. “Bloody hurt.”
“Well you deserved it,” She teased but then, suddenly urgent, she grasped his face between her two hands, drawing him up so she could look into his eyes. “We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we?”
He kissed her softly. “Just a bit of a way, yeah.”
*
Hermione sat at her desk one night, her naked body covered carelessly with her robe. For all the time she spent with Draco now, her grades never suffered as they seemed to spend nearly as much time studying as they did between the sheets.
She turned a page in her History of Magic text and said idly, “I suppose I’ll have to tell Ron.”
It had been months now and still her actual boyfriend had no idea. Clearly the gossip mill between Hogwarts and the Auror Academy was shutdown permanently.
Draco was lounging on her bed under the pretense of reading his History assignment as well but had really spent the last half hour pestering Crookshanks, tickling her nose with his quill whenever the poor thing would start to fall asleep again. Hermione was surprised he had been yet to lose a finger. Or two.
But at the sound of her words panic filled his eyes. “What?” He asked. “Why would you want to do that? He’d never speak to you again. And neither would Potter.”
“He’ll have to know the truth sometime. They both will. It’s only fair.” She turned in her chair. “I’ve been lying to him long enough.”
Draco tossed his book aside. It landed near Crookshankes who jumped from the bed with a disgruntled yelp, slinking under the wardrobe to sulk. Draco swung his legs over the side of the bed and dropped his head into his hands, threading his fingers, white-knuckled and taut, through his hair.
“What did you think this was, Hermione?”
She started, blinking, unprepared for such a question. It did nothing to slow the way her heart was racing in her chest.
“I don’t know,” She said levelly, trying with all her strength to remain calm. “But whatever it was I thought it was real.”
“It was,” Draco said hastily, pressing his thumb and pointer finger against his eyes. Then he shook his head and laid a reassuring look upon her. “It is. But you’d really want this? You really think…you and me?”
“Yes,” Hermione breathed, taking a seat beside him on the bed. “Why do you think I’ve been doing this for the past few months?”
“Behind closed doors, far from the world‘s prying eyes.” He gestured towards the door, indicating the world at large. “You’d tell your friends?”
“Yes.”
“And I’d tell my family?”
“Yes.”
“And you really think they would be happy for us? That it would make us happier?”
“Well, obviously it wouldn’t be easy. But I don‘t know,” She ran her hand across the skin of his back, so pale but so very warm. “Maybe, with time, they would see how you‘ve changed. I know I have.”
Draco stood hastily, strutting across the floor with jerky movements. “You keep saying that but I really, really haven’t.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Hermione kidded, wanting desperately to change the intensity of his tone. “You haven’t called me a mudblood once all year. Not even by accident.”
“This isn’t a fucking joke, Hermione!” Draco shouted, clenching both hands into fists. Those platinum eyes could be so very frightening when they pierced her the way they did then. “What would you have me say, hm?” He asked, stalking slowly towards her. “That I never meant it a single time I called your blood dirty? That I never wished to be in the good graces of a powerful leader who I thought one day might rule our kind? Do you want me to tell you that I only behaved the way I did to please my father? Or to save my family from ruin? And that if I had it to do over I would have come running over to the side of the Light? Is that what you‘d like to hear? Draco Malfoy’s grand repentance?”
Her breath caught in her throat as the full terror of how very much she wished to hear those exact things washed through her. She clutched the satin collar of her robe tight around her neck and sobbed, “Yes.”
“Well tough!” Draco spat. “I was a spineless, spoiled, intolerant, stupid boy, Hermione and because of that I saw and did things that would make the hair on your head crawl back into your skull. But it wasn’t an act, Hermione.” He threw himself onto the floor, sliding in between her knees. She cringed back, trying to protect herself from his frighteningly wild eyes. But he grabbed onto her shoulders, clutching them too tight.
“I threw the worst slurs imaginable at you with these very lips,” He whispered sharply. “I used these hands to mend a vanishing cabinet that brought Death Eaters into this school.” He shook her narrow shoulder then made a frantic grab for his wand shoved it into her face to see, “I pointed this wand at Dumbledore and threatened to kill him. Me, Hermione!” He shouted, pounding his chest with a fist, his teeth bared like something feral. “I did that!”
He stood, throwing his wand to the floor with a clatter brining his hands up to clutch his head. Hermione could not contain the cries that wracked her body then, the horrified noises of fear and grief that he caused in her. His chest rose and fell with ragged gasps until, with a wretched sound all his own he collapsed onto the bed, gathering Hermione up in his arms and clutching her tear soaked face to his chest.
As they rocked slowly back and forth, it was hard to tell who was the comforter and who was the one being comforted. They both needed each other then. The safety of the other’s arms.
“You wouldn’t do any of that now,” Hermione said a few minutes later. “You couldn’t.”
“No,” Draco exhaled, his voice rough with emotion. He cradled her head like one might something precious, careful to hold it too tightly. Her curls slipped through his fingers as she looked at him with swollen eyes. “I’d never.”
Hermione reached up and ran a hand through his hair, reassuring herself and consoling him all at once. They both took a moment to compose themselves before Draco ran a hand over his face, a sigh seeming to shake his entire frame.
“I’m not proud of what I did and God knows I’ve paid for it…But all of that is a part of me.” He swallowed, his eyes bright when he looked at her again. “If I have any chance of moving forward with my life I have to accept it. Make peace with it. Forgive myself, if I can ever find a way.” He shook his head, a painful pinch knitting his brow. “But you , Hermione, you don’t have to do any of that. You have a choice. You can walk away, be free of all of this before…before we become anything more than a partially fulfilled fantasy. You don’t have to forgive because I know we‘ll never forget.”
He hooked his finger under her chin, tilting her face towards his. “So the question becomes,” His thumb stroked the skin just below her lip and she trembled. “Can you?”
She saw light and dark in his eyes, rain and snow. Irrationality and beauty and comfort and strangeness. She felt like she could look into his eyes forever, all the while knowing that doing so might burn her to the core. She felt hopeless and trapped. And at the same she felt as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff, staring off into unending possibility.
They kissed. Oh, did they kiss. Tongues melded together with loops and knots. Fingers scrambled for traction against already sweaty skin. They sighed and sobbed and moaned with the frantic knowledge of two people who know that this - theirs - is not a love story. Not in the traditional sense, at least, where the achieving is the hardest part of loving.
As their bodies sought those secret places only lovers know, they did so knowing that no matter what this became, where it went or how long it lasted, even if it were million years, questions of forgiveness and blame, mercy and spite, right and wrong, good and bad would never leave them. They would haunt them until the bitter end and would more than likely be what destroyed them.
But as Draco slept that night, nestled between the wall and Hermione’s body, she was met with a certain peace. She realized that while the answers to certain questions come easily, certain questions are so inane they didn’t even deserve answering, while others are so attuned to universal truth they don’t even require one. Then there are those questions which are so timeless, accosting humanity from generation to generation that they cannot be answered. There are still others that must be answered with misdirection, little white lies or veiled truths to protect those you care for.
And yet there are some questions - those most horrible questions that force you to examine yourself and shine a light on those places you wish most to ignore, those questions that for the sake of all things self-serving, for the hope of letting yourself live for one more day blissfully ignorant - there are some questions which indeed must never be answered at all.
In the quietness of that night, Hermione curled against Draco, brushed her lips across his collar bone and remained silent.
Title: The Unanswered Question
Prompt: #107 Submitted by: terrayn
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: R - for some non-graphic references to sex and some language.
Warnings: Ron/Hermione are together, so I suppose this could be considered an infidelity fic, but that is not the crux of the story, nor the basis for the angst.
Word Count: ~ 9,000
Summary: The hatred that Hermione had adopted when she became friends with Harry Potter and had grown with every insult Malfoy directed at her had never really disappeared. Time would not let her forget that kind of relentless disgust and the tireless ball of loathing that been lodged in her gut since first year burned their still. And yet, her attention always seemed to drift his way
Notes: I was so thrilled to get this prompt, as I’ve never written (nor even read) any Draco/Hermione stories. I was so excited to come to a pairing, of which, I had no preconceived notions. The result, I hope, is a true to character, real story for them based on how I see them in cannon and imagine them to be in a post DH world. Title comes from the piece for orchestra entitled “The Unanswered Question” by Charles Ives.
Many thanks to the Mods of hp_emofest for organizing the fest! (And for the two week extension!!) Also, a special thanks to “a” whose black, emo!pompoms convinced me that I really could write the story after all. *hugs*
The Unanswered Question
It was raining the night Hermione returned to Hogwarts. It was not one of those tepid, suburban storms she had been forced to endure while living with her parents in the wake of the war but a proper, Scottish highland’s gale complete with rolls of thunder that seemed to echo across the hills for days and wind that churned the trees like water at a rapid boil.
Rain collected in her hair and ran over her face as she stared, numb, unable to look away from her first glimpse of the Thestrals standing at the ready for their charge in front of the Hogwart‘s carriages. They were haunting and strangely mesmerizing creatures, completely innocent in the horror they instilled in her. They tossed their heads back and forth like horses, shuddering as they shook drops of water from their black, leathery wings.
It was only when Neville Longbottom wrapped his arm around her shoulders, gathering her close under his warm cloak, that she realized she was shivering. And soaked to the bone.
“I suppose we can all see them now, can’t we?” He said, his words nearly lost in a particularly close clap of thunder.
But it didn’t matter. The question didn’t really need answering.
*
She had thought the castle would feel different. As if the halls themselves would ache with the memory of what happened inside them. After all, Hermione still felt rickety and unsteady on the inside so why wouldn’t Hogwarts? The old castle had always felt like a character in her own right, with her unpredictable staircases and hidden rooms that would give you just what you needed. Shouldn’t she still be broken too?
But when she arrived back at Hogwarts that night - sixteen months since the last time and nine years since the first - it all looked the same. Walls she knew to have been shattered to bits were repaired. The spell work cast on the new bricks making them look centuries old was so well done it left her questioning her memory. The same twilight sky glowed over the Welcoming Feast, the happily blinking stars so very unaware of what they shown down upon. The portraits had resumed their places on the wall, the armor stood at unmoving attention. Every inch of her chambers and passageways was as it had been.
The false sense of normalcy was cloying.
It was only the simple metal medallion, inlaid into the Great Hall’s floor on the spot where Voldemort had fallen, etched with the date and name of his vanquisher, and Dumbledore’s gapping absence from the head table that made it feel like time had truly passed. That maybe, if they all agreed to it, it might be alright to carry on.
*
“There are so few of us,“ she whispered to Neville, ignoring the Sorting Hat‘s yearly song.
It wasn’t that their year had taken a particularly high number of casualties in the war. The paltry numbers were more because of how much the war had forced them to grow up. And for most people, Harry and Ron included, being grown up did not equate to going back to school. But for Hermione, her Hogwarts education was too important to simply skip to the end, so she returned. Alone. Leaving behind her boyfriend, her best friend and a stack of job offers from the Ministry a mile high. Sometimes she wondered if I wasn’t completely mad for doing that.
She sat with Neville and Parvati Patil, so that made for 3 Gryffindors returned. There were a handful of Hufflepuffs sitting at the back of their table, a double fist of Ravenclaws interspersed at theirs. And across the Hall, standing alone against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his face pale and pristine, was the lone Slytherin: Draco Malfoy.
He appeared to watch the house sorting with the same amount of distain that Hermione felt on the inside. Hasn’t there just been a war?, his delicately furrowed brow seemed to ask. Haven’t we gotten past such arbitrary delineations?
He presented himself with all of that unfettered Malfoy pride. But instead of lording over the Slytherin table, commanding attention and obedience, Hermione sensed his pride in quieter ways: the straightness of his tie, the crispness of his robes, the way his distinctive hair was slicked back with exacting precision, the conviction that seemed to shine around him like a suit of armor, proclaiming to anyone who might doubt him, that he had just as much right to be there as anyone else.
He looked down at his fingers, scrutinizing each one as he ran his thumb over the nail. Then ever so slowly his eyes drifted up, locking with Hermione’s.
She flushed. His gaze was steely, narrow and inescapable, yet he held her eyes with all the gentleness of an embrace. His lips morphed into the hint of a smirk and Hermione gasped, looking away as quick as she could.
Had that vague expression been in simple amusement at catching her in the act of staring? Had it been an actual greeting? Or had it been some other indication? Acknowledgment that she looked just as alone without her usual compatriots flanking her on either side as he did without his?
She couldn’t quite tell. All she knew was that it left her breathless.
*
After the Welcoming Feast there had been no Prefect duties to rush off to, no beginning of the year meeting in the Gryffindor common room. No Harry. No Ron. So she walked out of the Great Hall slowly, retraining her feet to carry her to a new bed. A new home.
They were given individual rooms separated by several floors from the younger students, for both their sakes, she was sure. The rooms were off a long corridor, in the lower back corner of the castle, near the staff quarters and the kitchen. Hermione passed through the large lounge at the opening of the passageway and noted tables for studying, couches for relaxing and a set of double doors that led out to an enclosed patio for stargazing. Or for impromptu parties, as some of her classmates had already discovered.
Laughter and cigarette smoke wafted through the open doors as Hermione walked past. Neville noticed her and waved for her to join them, but she simply shook her head, giving him a pained smile. She was in no mood for parties and didn’t know if she ever would be.
She clasped the key to her new room tightly in the palm of her hand, walking slowly down the hall as she waited for the spell linking the key to its lock to activate. The corridor was dark, being not quite in the dungeons but still in the basement. There were only a few guttering gas lamps and the one window at the very end of the hall for light. The cool, silver paleness of the moon spilled across the floor.
It wasn’t until she reached the end of the hallway that she remembered the rain and saw the inky clouds that still blocked out the stars and realized that it wasn’t the moon that was lighting the hallway at all but a massive white tomb, emanating its own spectral glow a few hundred feet away from where it sat by the lake’s edge.
“Doesn‘t look like this old pile of bricks has lost her sick sense of humor, does it?”
Directly to her left, Draco’s voice was low, caustic and as dark as the shadow he stood in. He leaned against the door jam to the last room on the left, his neck exposed and pale, his eyes locked on the sight outside. He looked smooth and cocky standing there with his tie loosened and his shirt un-tucked, but there was a smidgen of terror at what he saw outside. A determination to not let it break him. It took only a moment for the sick feeling to settle into Hermione’s stomach, sympathy perhaps, or her own sort of terror too.
He pushed himself off the wall with a small noise of effort and wrapped his hand around his doorknob. “Granger,” he said, inclining his head politely in her direction.
“Malfoy,” she said, returning the civility in kind before she really had time to think.
The key in her hand jangled; the lock to the last door on the right glowed an eerie blue.
*
School began and with it the familiar regimen of class attendance, work and study. It felt like a reunion with an old friend for Hermione, though the same could not be said for most of her classmates who stumbled through the first few weeks with bleary eyes and lame excuses.
The only other person who seemed to ease back into the school schedule without any hint of a grumble was Draco. He was often in class by the time Hermione got there, sitting alone at his desk, his parchment tied in neat scrolls with silver ribbon, his quill inked and at the ready.
So it was no surprise that she found him, of all people, working in the potions lab on a foggy Friday night in late September.
The gentle smells of lemon grass and cardamom were bubbling away at his work station, the focused flame burning a white-hot blue. All his knives had been freshly cleaned, his cutting board wiped down. He leaned over the counter top, propped up on his elbows, a copy of that evening’s Daily Prophet open in front of him, his hair fallen across his face.
It wasn’t until he looked up at her though that her pulse began to run heavy through her veins.
“I’m sorry,” She mumbled, averting her eyes away from those intense eyes of his. “I didn‘t think anyone else would be here. I’ll come back.”
“I’m almost done.” He gave his cauldron and stir, peering in at its contents. “This will just need cooling.”
“No, really,” Hermione smiled, a fake, nervous thing that she hated herself for the minute it happened. “It’s fine.” She turned for the door and was out it in a matter of seconds
Later that night, as she lay in bed rehashing the encounter, she wondered if it ever gets old for Draco to only ever see the back side of people as they run the other way.
*
That sympathy was not long lived, however. The hatred that Hermione had adopted when she became friends with Harry Potter and had grown with every insult Malfoy directed at her had never really disappeared. Time would not let her forget that kind of relentless disgust and the tireless ball of loathing that been lodged in her gut since first year burned their still.
And yet, her attention always seemed to drift his way.
He was quite the enigma, private and alone. With his reputation preceding him everywhere he went, he was constantly by himself. But he held his head high through his isolation. Seemed at peace with it because his solitude never once asked for pity.
He was treading so carefully through the school year that one could almost forget how much of an egotistic, belligerent, swaggering prat he used to be. Even though Hermione fought every day not to. She would purposely wonder if all this good behavior was just an act. Or a court order.
“You sound just as bad as Harry,” Ron laughed one cool October night as she sat in front of the fireplace in her room, the floo call warming her toes. “Maybe the poor bastard finally got some humility knocked into him. I mean after that farce of a trial his father went through and the way the press handled it? Can you really blame him for wanting to keep his head down?”
“Ron Weasley, defending Draco Malfoy.” She teased. “What has the world come to?”
“To a different place than the one we were in the last time you were at that school,” Ron replied seriously. “It’s just Harry has been saying, things aren‘t the same anymore, Herm. They can‘t be.”
It was times like this, when Ron would surprise her with such quiet wisdom, that Hermione thought maybe she really did love him after all.
*
It was the Sunday after Halloween. The lounge was quiet and though the hour was early, Hermione’s classmates were already in bed, recovering from the hangovers that had left them all moaning and pathetic for most of the day. The party had been epic. Even she had been convinced to attend, though she spent most of the night cleaning up spills and assisting with Insta-Sober charms.
Twenty-four hours later, the table she was working at was still sticky from spilled beer and she calculated it would take at least another 10 days for the cloying smell of hookah smoke to truly dissipate, even with the air purifying charm she had used that afternoon.
The hollow sound of footsteps indicated the arrival of a classmate. The slow, long paces led her to one guess.
Draco rounded the corner, just as expected, dressed in a tailored suit of dark brown, tugging at its high Mandarin collar as he walked. His normally pale skin was flushed, his eyes heavy and unfocused. He saw her and stumbled for a moment but didn’t stop on the way to his room.
Hermione thought of her conversation with Ron weeks previous and, seeing as they were alone, quickly mustered all the Gryffindor courage with which she was supposedly endowed and spoke out.
“You just getting in?”
Draco turned slowly, his head swimming for a moment before his eyes linked with hers. “What a brilliant statement of the obvious, Granger. What the hell does it looks like?”
Hermione smirked. “It looks like someone’s drunk.”
“Again.” Draco gestured at himself with the sweep of his hand. “The obvious.”
Hermione laughed briefly and Draco clasped his hands behind his back, trying to make his position on his two feet slightly more permanent.
“Halloween party?” She asked.
“Of sorts, I suppose. I went home to see my mother. She’s been…” Draco’s eyes blurred and he cut himself with a shake of his head. He took a few steps closer to the table and peered over her shoulder. “Looks to like someone isn’t done with her Arithmomancy paper. Tsk tsk.”
“It’s not due until next week.”
“Really? I’ve had mine done for ages.” Grabbing the back of her chair for balance, Draco reached over to pick up the long scroll of parchment, already 8 inches longer than required.
The simple nearness of him made her spine tingle. She could smell the Ogden’s fire whisky on his breath and the cologne on his skin, something French and complex.
He made a noise of approval at the back of his throat and put the parchment back down in front of Hermione. “No matter. You’ll still probably get a better score than me. You always do.” He laughed once to himself and rapped the table with his knuckles. “Well, goodnight Granger.” He said with an amicable air.
“Goodnight, Malfoy.”
She turned in her chair and watched him walk away, counting the number of long-legged steps it took for him to reach their end of the hall.
*
Draco’s eyes seemed to find her more from then on. Always ready to offer up a nod or a small smile in return and once, during an especially tedious History of Magic lecture, a sympathetic eye roll. But their communication rarely went beyond the unspoken, remaining instead in the private and discreet world of looks and glances.
But then one Tuesday in early November, Hermione was in the Great Hall trying to eat her lunch and review for the upcoming Ancient Runes quiz at the same time when she heard the scrape of a chair. She looked up.
“Mind if I join you?”
Draco looked exceedingly tall standing opposite her and she would have probably been less surprised if Crookshanks, her cat, had been on two legs asking the same question.
“What?” She asked befuddled.
Draco took that as a ‘yes’ and sat down, filling the glass that appeared in front of him with pumpkin juice.
“What are you doing?” She whispered, leaning over her pile of texts.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Draco responded in equally conspiratorially tones, “But you are quite the celebrity here.”
Hermione looked perplexed.
“Oh, yes,” He continued. “Only returning student of the Golden Trio? One of the great Horcrux hunters? You have certainly taken the place of Saint Potter’s as the person Hogwarts students most like to gossip about. Well, either you,” He looked at her, his expression souring. “Or me.”
The bitterness in his voice made her swallow.
“I hadn’t really noticed.” She stammered.
“Well, sometimes it’s not so obvious, sometimes it is more just staring. Just like now, in fact.” He looked over his shoulder to the room around them, his eyes guiding Hermione to notice the quietly stunned looks on their fellow classmates faces. She didn’t blame them. She was feeling pretty stunned herself.
“What exactly do you expect me to do about this?” She asked, hushed.
“Do? Oh, nothing at all. I just figured, if they are going to stare, we might as well give them something to really look at.” He waggled his eyebrows, covering his smile with the lip of his cup before taking a sip.
Hermione shook her head. “You’ve gone completely mad.”
His grin was mischievous and a bit dashing, adjectives she never though she would attribute to him.
“Haven’t I just?” Draco asked, tipping back in his chair. He picked up an apple and bit into it with a loud crunch. Hermione went back to her books, hiding her blush behind the feather of her quill, realizing she rather didn’t mind it when Draco smiled like that.
*
“So you and Weasley, eh?”
It was a chilly November afternoon outside but from inside Greenhouse 3, Draco and Hermione couldn’t tell. They still didn’t talk much when they worked together, opting for amenable and studious silence with they could both appreciate. But when they did talk, Hermione was always surprised by the ease with which conversation came.
She stilled her knife halfway through a sneezewort stalk and looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a long look down her nose.
“Right,” Draco snorted, realizing the stupidity of his question. “Like there was anyone who didn’t see that one coming from a mile away. Although,” He reconsidered, pointing at her with his dirt covered trowel. “I always expected you to end up with Potter.”
“Harry? Really?” She crinkled her face with a giggle. “Why”
“I don’t know. He’s just so much less…ginger.” Draco almost grimaced before remembering to stop himself.
“I happen to like the ginger,” Hermione said with a coy grin. Draco quirked one of those ridiculously perfect eyebrows and pressed his lips into a smirk. Hermione shrugged. “Makes him rather feisty.”
“Oh so that‘s what you like in your men then is it, Granger? Fresh with fire and danger? Color me impressed.” Draco’s voice was silky smooth and Hermione flushed as red as Ron’s hair.
But their flirtatious moment was quickly terminated as Draco rolled his sleeves up past his elbows and plunged his hands deep into a fresh pot of rose hips.
For the first time, Hermione was able to confirm with her eyes something which had only been hinted at before in rumor or vague implications by the press.
“Careful now, Granger,” Draco rasped, looking at her through weighted lids. “You’re staring.” But Hermione was unable to take her eyes away from his bared forearms.
“You never…”
“I never.” Draco pulled his hands out of the dirt, slapping them against each other to brush them clean. He settled them on his hips and Hermione’s eyes flicked up to his face.
“Harry was so sure that you‘d become one of them, but… I knew you hadn‘t. I knew there was no way.”
“What could possibly have made you so sure?” He challenged.
Hermione tossed her hair off her shoulders. “Because you were a coward.”
Draco flinched. Hermione sounded as if she had just stated that the sky was blue or that food is the first exception to Gamp’s Elemental Laws of Transfiguration. His cowardice was a statement of fact for her. Uncontestable truth. And for as bitter a pill that may have been to swallow, Draco didn‘t deign to deny it. How could he when she was right?
Without breaking eye contact he picked up his wand and cast a wordless aguamanti spell, wetting the freshly transplanted rose bush. Hermione turned back to her cutting, marveling at how well you can know someone who has never been your friend.
*
She hadn’t gone back to Gryffindor Tower since returning to school, trying to avoid that place so full of childhood and joy when she felt neither young nor cheerful. But the 4th years had needed tutoring in Transfigurations and McGonagall had asker her personally to pick up the task. The space, which had once felt so grand to her now felt small. She could see the wear and tear on furniture that once seemed lush. Age and retrospect seemed ready to destroy even the most lovely memories.
The tutoring done, the shortest route back to the “8th year” corridor as it was being called, took her past another space ripe with memories. These not nearly as nice.
The door to the Room of Requirement was small and non-descript that night. Looking little more than the entrance to a broom cupboard. She tried not to look at it as she hurried past, noticing instead the shadowy figure slumped against the wall opposite.
It was Draco and he was crying. Why is it that it always sounds so painful when men cry? As if the physical act itself is more agonizing than the thing they grieve.
“Draco?”
He looked up at her and then swore. “Fuck off.” He scrambled to turn away from her and wiped at his face.
Hermione took a step back. This was the Draco she remembered though decided more bereft. She glanced up and down the hallway, finding it empty and dark.
“Look, there is no one else here. It’s just me.” She stepped close enough so she could whisper. “Has something happened? To your Mum? Or…”
“Has something happened?” His laughed. But the noise quickly became choked and turned into a cough. He clutched at his gut, catching his breath before continuing. “What’s happened is that I nearly died in there.” He gasped. “Greg did. It’s his birthday today, you know…”
Hermione didn’t and she hated not knowing things. She dropped her bag on the floor and slid down next to him on the wall. Draco looked like a little boy with tears on his face. His eyes wide with the panic of someone so very unaccustomed to real emotion. If this were Ron or Harry or Ginny, she knew she would put her arm around them or stroke their back or any one of those comforting acts that friends provide. But they weren’t friends. Not really. They were something stranger, but equally real.
Her fingers hesitated for a moment, toying with the idea of brushing a lock of hair off his cheek and her stomach somersaulted at the idea. In the end she opted for a hand on his arm, making sure as she curled her fingers around his forearm that the grip did not relay any of the exhilaration she felt at the contact. Why did touching him seem so forbidden? Why did giving him comfort feel unlawful and yet absolutely crucial that she do so?
“I nearly died in there.” She nodded at the door. “Harry nearly died in there. Ron. Your friend Crabbe. People did die in every inch of this place, Draco,” She said softly. “You knew that before you came back.”
He ran his hand over his face with a slow inhale, nodding as he did as if this were some rational he had already told himself and had been left unconvinced.
“You can’t let yourself be haunted by anyone’s ghosts.”
He looked at her, his mind working behind that steely gaze. “Not even your own?”
She pulled her hand away from him, dropping it into her lap. There was a stray thread at the hem of her jumper and she wound it round her thumb again and again. They sat in silence as the wind picked up outside, wailing against the castle walls.
Some time later, Draco stood and turned to offer his hand. He pulled her to her feet and picked up her bag from the floor, slinging it over his own shoulder.
In silence, they walked back to their rooms.
*
Exams were upon her before she knew it, the fall term having nearly evaporated before her eyes. There was time for little else but study and revision. Certainly not time to notice how she would lie in bed at night and think of Draco’s tears. Not enough hours in the day to realize that she spent more time with him or thinking about him than any of her other friends, including Ron. There was too much re-reading to do to notice how that great ball of hate in her stomach had loosened slightly. Some of its knots kneaded away by understanding, camaraderie and a dangerous, blooming attraction.
One night after dinner, she and Draco were sitting at a table in the far corner of the library, a habit they had fallen into in the last few weeks. The table top was covered in piles of Defense against the Dark Arts texts, each pile five or six books tall.
“Sod this,” Draco said with a sigh, pushing his text out of the way and sprawling across the table with a dramatic flop. They’d been at it for hours and Hermione had only made it through two of her piles.
Her quill scratched steadily across her parchment even as she felt Draco’s eyes fell on her. He watched her, unabashed, and as the moments passed she became aware of every one of her movements, wondering how they looked to him.
“Now you’re the one staring,” she said, her head still tucked over her work
“Do you ever think about it?”
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that if you expect me to give you an answer.” Hermione doubled checked a date in her text book then jotted it done on the page.
“Do you ever think about the night you and Potter and Weasley got caught and were brought to the Manor?”
Her quill went silent. “What a preposterous question,” She whispered.
“Because sometimes that night is all I can think about when I look at you.”
The tremble in his voice caught him off guard and he sat back in his seat as if trying to escape his own words. Hermione heard the tinge of regret as well, the wish for her face to bring to mind happier memories.
“You got the Cruciatus curse that night.” It wasn’t a question but Hermione gave him a terse nod anyway. “Hurts doesn’t it?”
“I try not to think about it.”
“And does it work? Can you just not think about it? Trap all those memories? Hide them away? Forget?”
“Why are you doing this?” She asked, too quietly. Her voice broke.
“I’ve been under Cruciatus too, you know. One of the worst nights of my life and that is saying a lot. How do you not think of it? Not think of that pain? Of the fear you must have felt?” He cocked his head, narrowing his gaze. “Did you think you were going to die?”
“Stop it.” Tears spilled hot on her cheeks, but she bit through them.
“My Aunt, Hermione. My fucking Aunt did that to you. She wanted to turn you in. She tortured you.” Draco’s eyes were like daggers trying to slice her wide open. She was certain that if he kept on pressing her in this manner he would succeed. “How can you sit here with me, studying Dark Arts Defense of all the ironic things in the universe and not think of it?”
“You weren’t the one holding the wand.”
Draco laughed. “You can reason your way out of everything can’t you? That perfect, little mind of yours. Is that what it means to be Hermione Granger? To be one of the victorious? Is that truly your prize? To be able to forget while the rest of us are forced to remember forever?”
“I have forgotten nothing!” She snapped, slamming a fist on the table. “You really think you suffer alone with the memories of what happened? There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see that image of Hagrid coming out of the forest with Harry’s limp body in his arms, thinking that my best friend and the only person able to save us from Voldemort was gone forever. I still wake up in a panic about my parents. Imagining if I had gone to Australia and couldn’t find them. Or the Memory charm hadn’t been reversible or I had messed up the process and left their minds completely blank. I imagine what would have happened if you had turned us in, or if the Fyndfire had been too fast or we hadn’t been able to find the Horcruxes in time. I remember, Draco Malfoy. I remember every blasted moment of that war. Every time I thought I was too late, every moment I thought I had failed, every mistake I made that cost us something, every excruciating pain, every death, every tear. So don’t you dare think it’s all locked away! Don’t you ever dare assume anything about me!”
A thin smile curled his lips as he leaned across the table, reaching out his right hand. His touch was warm. Just a gentle brush of fingers to jaw, but after a moments tension, after they had both adjusted to the contact, they melted into it. She leaned into his palm, her eyes closing as he let his thumb brush slowly across the her cheek, wiping away the tears that still clung there.
They were skin to skin. So tender. Finally.
“I knew all that feeling had to be in there somewhere,” He breathed, his eyes wandering tenderly over her face. “Don’t hide it, Hermione. Not ever. It looks too good on you.”
She opened her eyes, golden with tears, met his and did not look away.
*
Hermione had never been drunk before but she was pretty sure that was what she was feeling. She felt free and a little bit ditzy and she simply didn’t care.
Exams were over and everyone in her years was celebrating. “Only one term left!” Neville had cheered, wrapping his arm around Hermione’s waist, lifting her in his strong arms and spinning her around once. They had toasted with what was the first of many drinks that night, their thick mugs clanging together, full of something red and frothy and horrifically potent.
It had been then, amidst the people who had been her friends for years, Neville and the Patil twins and other former DA members, that she felt Draco’s absence most acutely. Only then, in her inebriated state, did she realize how much time she had spent with him, and only him, these past few months. He wasn’t there of course. She hadn’t even bothered to ask if he was coming. Such parties required too much social interaction for his liking and too much cheap alcohol.
But then she saw him out the corner of her eye, hovering much as he had that very first night at the Welcoming Feast, observing and watching but not quite participating. Hermione was suddenly determined to change that.
“You’re here,” She said, walking over with a big grin.
Draco shrugged. He had a crystal tumbler full of what looked like Scotch in his right hand. Clearly he‘d been having an end of term celebration all his own. “Thought I’d take a look, make sure Longbottom wasn’t getting you too pissed.” He examined her flushed cheeks and glassy eyes. “Though it appears I may be too late.” Hermione giggled and rested her shoulder against the brick of the wall.
They watched the party for a few minutes, simply enjoying the amenable silence and the nearness of each other. The alcohol seemed to make her hyper aware, able to sense every curve of him. She felt herself smiling like she hadn’t in ages.
“I’m glad you’re here,” She said, putting her back against the wall. Whether accidental or intentional, this movement brought her closer to him.
“Why?” Draco asked turning to face her. The space between them closed even more.
“Because you’ve changed.”
Draco laughed softly through his nose, looked down into his glass then threw the remaining contents back with a toss of his head. He shook his head sadly. “I really haven’t. I’m just not your enemy anymore.”
“I don’t know if you ever really were, though. You were always Harry’s enemy and only became mine by default.”
“Don’t try to look through our past with rose colored glasses, Hermione. It just won’t work. Mudblood? Foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach? That ringing any bells?”
“I suppose you have a point.”
“But all the same,” Draco said softly, placing his hand on the wall above her head, leaning in even closer. “I’m glad things are the way they are.”
“Here’s to not being enemies, then,“ Hermione put her hand into the small space between them, offering up a handshake even though the angle was awkward. Her fingers brushed against the fabric of his shirt as she did and they both looked down at the spot. She felt her cheeks warm.
Instead of aligning his palm with hers, he grasped her hand lightly, almost fondling it, his fingers slipping between hers as he pressed their joined hands to his chest. His thumb swept over her pulse point and she was sure he could feel the way her heart was leaping franticly beneath her skin just as she could feel his pounding steadily through the fabric of his shirt. No touch of Ron’s or any man’s, had ever left Hermione so liquefied.
The music was loud. The darkness of the room so close. His cologne and his breath and his heat.
She kissed him soundly on the lips, reaching up on tip toes to do it, only to rock back to flat feet moments later as Draco bent forward, slipping a hand around her waist and moving in deeper. It didn’t feel real. As if someone else were doing it, the alcohol or some irrational part of herself that she’d never met before. But she felt small in his arms. Controlled. As if his hands and lips and the beautiful, small whimper at the back of his throat had physically possessed her. Guided her. She couldn’t deny how much she liked this feeling of complete abandon.
Draco watched her for a long moment afterwards, rolling his lips into his mouth, his eyes brilliant and a little bit wild. She was certain, if only for a moment, that he was about to spit the mudblood taste of her back out. But instead he smiled at her, a debonair, unruffled sort of a thing, and sauntered off, leaving Hermione reeling in her confusion.
Hermione woke the next morning with her head pounding, memories from the night before foggy except for one moment that glowed crystal clear.
Draco was already gone when she knocked on his door. She rested her head against the heavy wood panels and told herself it was all for the best.
*
Christmas was knit with denial.
It was too easy, while at home with her parents or at festive holiday gathering at the Weasley’s to lie. She didn’t tell Ron. Didn’t confide in Harry. She denied herself any thought of him - his mesmerizing eyes, the overpowering grace of his lips, the strength of his hand at her waist - when it was Ron’s eyes, Ron’s lips, Ron’s body that were beside, around, inside her. She convinced herself that the kiss had only happened because she was drunk and that it would never happen again. That she didn’t want it to.
But when she returned to Hogwarts and saw him, sitting at a table in the lounge and a slow smile that one might give a true friend stretched across his face, the lies felt only like lies. The denials were little more than pretense. The very sight of him broke down any certainty in the meaninglessness of the kiss into hopeless, simpering doubt.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Draco said one morning a week into winter term. His head was rested back against his closed door, his arms crossed and his voice stern. He’d clearly been waiting.
Hermione had already been feeling flustered that morning and Draco‘s intervention was quite untimely. She’d woken late after staying up to re-copy her Astronomy paper, having found a spelling mistake around inch 38 and unable to stomach the thought of turning it in with such an obvious typo.
She sighed. Frankly, she’d been waiting for this confrontation. After all, she had been avoiding him since she arrived back at Hogwarts.
“You noticed,” She said as she turned back to lock her room.
“You‘re the only person who really talks to me at this school, so yeah I noticed.”
They fell into step together, bypassing a few classmates who were mingling in the corridor before continuing their conversation. They walked shoulder to shoulder, close enough so they could speak in voices only they would hear.
“I thought we had established that we were…” He paused, swallowing down a poor word choice. “Not enemies anymore.”
“We did.”
“Well, then have I done something wrong? Were you offended I didn‘t send you present for Christmas?”
“No,” she said, exasperated. Draco held the door to the main corridor open for her and she hurried past, waiting as two other students late from breakfast passed them before she whispered, “I kissed you.”
“Ah, so it is that then.” Draco dampened a smile. He slid his hands into his pockets as they began walking again. Great swaths of sunlight angled through the high windows, cutting squares of radiance across the floor, changing the temperature between high to low, light and dark.
“But you see I’m confused.” He continued a while later. “What is the problem with you kissing me, exactly?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, right. Could he tell you’d been practicing?” Draco smirked and Hermione made an insulted sound of disgust.
“I hardly consider one kiss practice.”
“Did you tell him?” Draco asked, bringing the tone back to something more serious.
“No, of course not. Why would I? We were drunk and it was an accident.”
Draco stopped, a coy look on his face.
“Was it?”
There was a short hallway to their left, a narrow corridor ending in a door that went who knows where, cast in darkness that the morning light didn’t hit. Draco grabbed her wrist and slid with her into the shadows.
It was he who kissed her this time. He fell back against the rough brick of the wall, pulling her close. His arms were gentle at her hips, knowing that he really didn’t have to worry about her running away. He still tasted faintly of morning, the crisp brightness of a new day. Their lips seemed to fit together like two things destined, which of course was a ridiculous thought, but apropos to the moment.
She’d dreamt of this. At night sleeping in Ron’s arms. In the quiet moments between Molly Weasley’s epic meals. When she would sit on her parents couch and watch telly, she had imagined feeling like this again. Reckless and careless. Ignoring what was right or what made sense and simply feeling.
But Hermione Granger could only ignore the rules for so long.
“Stop,” she said, as Draco went to undo the clasp of her robe.
“Why?”
Because this makes no sense. Because it is wrong. Because it’s you.
“Because I can’t,” She stated, trying to regain her composure. Draco leaned down to catch her lips once more. “Please, Draco” she begged, pulling away. “Please.”
Something clicked in Draco’s eyes just then and he nodded, letting her slip from his grasp and back into the daylight.
*
He didn’t come to her until well after midnight, when the hall was quiet, most other students asleep. When she heard the knock, she opened the door wide, having no doubt of who it would be.
He was out of his school clothes by then, dressed in a comfortable pair of slacks and a loose sweater. His feet were bare and his hair, free of its usual product, fell soft at his temples. She was struck by how vulnerable he looked. A repentant Draco Malfoy looked more human and she found it incredibly unfair. Hermione, after all, had always been a sucker for pathetic things.
He paced the small square of the room left vacant in the middle by the bed, desk, dresser and fireplace, one hand tucked into the back pocket of his pants, the thumb nail of his other hand caught between his teeth.
“I’m sorry,” He said finally. “About this morning.”
It was so genuine and real that there was only one response Hermione could conceive of.
“I really did hate you, you know.” She rounded on him, jabbing a finger in his face. Draco’s mouth hung open for a moment before he clamped it shut as he realized Hermione was far from done.
“You were always strutting around like you were so above this place. Walking around with Crabbe and Goyle like some monarch with his entourage. You’d pick fights with Harry just because you could. Flaunt your money while hiding in your father’s shadow. You were a prat, Draco. A complete and utter prat. But you know why I hated you the most?”
Draco shook his head but Hermione barely even noticed.
“It was the way, even with that quick, brilliant mind of yours, that you could not be reasoned with. You of all people should have been able to see what was right in front of you. You should have realized that even with my supposedly muddled blood I was…that I AM, just as good as you. And I hated you for that. I hated you for not seeing sense. Fuck what your father thought, you should have known better! But you didn’t and you made it so bloody easy to completely despise you!”
Draco crossed his arms, giving her a moment to relish the completeness of her rant.
“And now?” He asked. “Is that still what you think?”
Hermione shook her head. “Now I just don’t understand.” She collapsed onto the edge of her bed, sighing. She watched her hands between her knees, twisting them together. “It was so much easier when everything was black and white.”
“Things never were black and white, Hermione. You of all people should know that.”
A winded laugh puffed from between her lips. She looked up at the face of the boy who she’d always associated with cruelty and immorality and instead saw a friend.
“Who are you and what have you done with Draco Malfoy?” She said in an awed whisper.
Draco laughed, sinking slowly into her desk chair opposite her. “He’s here. He always has been.”
“Then how is it that I like him so much now?”
This time it was Draco’s turn for his cheeks to flood with a betraying blush.
*
As the weeks went on and Draco‘s looks took on more weight, each one a more complex mixture of want and affection, there was little else for Hermione to do but give in.
So she did.
“When is your birthday?” He asked as they lay side by side in his bed, still clothed but not for long. He brushed away a tendril of hair that had curled at the base of her throat.
“September 19th.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Draco smiled, enjoying this time to learn the little things.
It snowed their first time together, the soft flakes falling noiselessly as they moved together beneath the sheets of her bed with the same near silent wonder of the snow. Draco pointed out the beauty of the snow filled night sky as they lay together, his arms forming a loose circle around her waist, and she laughed calling him sentimental.
Their secret affair couldn’t remain secret for long, not in quarters as close as theirs.
“So you and Draco, huh?” Neville asked one Potions class just a week before Valentine’s Day. Hermione looked up, the delicate quail’s egg she had been siphoning cracking in her hand. She bit nervously at her lip and Neville simply nodded. “Mum’s the word then, is it?” He glanced over his shoulder to where Draco was laughing cautiously with his lab partner. He relationship with Hermione had left him more willing to attempt friendship with others. “Can’t say I blame you. He’s bloody gorgeous.”
Hermione eye’s widened as Neville turned back to his cauldron, blushing furiously. She wiped her hands and rounded the table. Neville’s face was the only part of him that still looked like an eleven year old boy and she kissed his cheek swiftly. Feeling both unendingly grateful for his discretion and an understanding as to why he had never acted on any of Hannah Abbott’s advances.
Across the classroom Draco watched the interaction, giving her a playfully possessive glare. The little action was enough to make her smile.
She felt a bit smug during those days as they pulled the wool over the world’s eyes. She walked taller, let her hips swing a little more freely. Here she was, Hermione Granger, breaking all the rules but getting away with it.
“Do you remember when I punched you?” She asked one night as she drew her knees up around his narrow waist, pressing her palms against his ribs.
“Yes,” he pouted against her navel, his hair brushing against her nipples as his mouth moved ever slowly up her belly. “Bloody hurt.”
“Well you deserved it,” She teased but then, suddenly urgent, she grasped his face between her two hands, drawing him up so she could look into his eyes. “We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we?”
He kissed her softly. “Just a bit of a way, yeah.”
*
Hermione sat at her desk one night, her naked body covered carelessly with her robe. For all the time she spent with Draco now, her grades never suffered as they seemed to spend nearly as much time studying as they did between the sheets.
She turned a page in her History of Magic text and said idly, “I suppose I’ll have to tell Ron.”
It had been months now and still her actual boyfriend had no idea. Clearly the gossip mill between Hogwarts and the Auror Academy was shutdown permanently.
Draco was lounging on her bed under the pretense of reading his History assignment as well but had really spent the last half hour pestering Crookshanks, tickling her nose with his quill whenever the poor thing would start to fall asleep again. Hermione was surprised he had been yet to lose a finger. Or two.
But at the sound of her words panic filled his eyes. “What?” He asked. “Why would you want to do that? He’d never speak to you again. And neither would Potter.”
“He’ll have to know the truth sometime. They both will. It’s only fair.” She turned in her chair. “I’ve been lying to him long enough.”
Draco tossed his book aside. It landed near Crookshankes who jumped from the bed with a disgruntled yelp, slinking under the wardrobe to sulk. Draco swung his legs over the side of the bed and dropped his head into his hands, threading his fingers, white-knuckled and taut, through his hair.
“What did you think this was, Hermione?”
She started, blinking, unprepared for such a question. It did nothing to slow the way her heart was racing in her chest.
“I don’t know,” She said levelly, trying with all her strength to remain calm. “But whatever it was I thought it was real.”
“It was,” Draco said hastily, pressing his thumb and pointer finger against his eyes. Then he shook his head and laid a reassuring look upon her. “It is. But you’d really want this? You really think…you and me?”
“Yes,” Hermione breathed, taking a seat beside him on the bed. “Why do you think I’ve been doing this for the past few months?”
“Behind closed doors, far from the world‘s prying eyes.” He gestured towards the door, indicating the world at large. “You’d tell your friends?”
“Yes.”
“And I’d tell my family?”
“Yes.”
“And you really think they would be happy for us? That it would make us happier?”
“Well, obviously it wouldn’t be easy. But I don‘t know,” She ran her hand across the skin of his back, so pale but so very warm. “Maybe, with time, they would see how you‘ve changed. I know I have.”
Draco stood hastily, strutting across the floor with jerky movements. “You keep saying that but I really, really haven’t.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Hermione kidded, wanting desperately to change the intensity of his tone. “You haven’t called me a mudblood once all year. Not even by accident.”
“This isn’t a fucking joke, Hermione!” Draco shouted, clenching both hands into fists. Those platinum eyes could be so very frightening when they pierced her the way they did then. “What would you have me say, hm?” He asked, stalking slowly towards her. “That I never meant it a single time I called your blood dirty? That I never wished to be in the good graces of a powerful leader who I thought one day might rule our kind? Do you want me to tell you that I only behaved the way I did to please my father? Or to save my family from ruin? And that if I had it to do over I would have come running over to the side of the Light? Is that what you‘d like to hear? Draco Malfoy’s grand repentance?”
Her breath caught in her throat as the full terror of how very much she wished to hear those exact things washed through her. She clutched the satin collar of her robe tight around her neck and sobbed, “Yes.”
“Well tough!” Draco spat. “I was a spineless, spoiled, intolerant, stupid boy, Hermione and because of that I saw and did things that would make the hair on your head crawl back into your skull. But it wasn’t an act, Hermione.” He threw himself onto the floor, sliding in between her knees. She cringed back, trying to protect herself from his frighteningly wild eyes. But he grabbed onto her shoulders, clutching them too tight.
“I threw the worst slurs imaginable at you with these very lips,” He whispered sharply. “I used these hands to mend a vanishing cabinet that brought Death Eaters into this school.” He shook her narrow shoulder then made a frantic grab for his wand shoved it into her face to see, “I pointed this wand at Dumbledore and threatened to kill him. Me, Hermione!” He shouted, pounding his chest with a fist, his teeth bared like something feral. “I did that!”
He stood, throwing his wand to the floor with a clatter brining his hands up to clutch his head. Hermione could not contain the cries that wracked her body then, the horrified noises of fear and grief that he caused in her. His chest rose and fell with ragged gasps until, with a wretched sound all his own he collapsed onto the bed, gathering Hermione up in his arms and clutching her tear soaked face to his chest.
As they rocked slowly back and forth, it was hard to tell who was the comforter and who was the one being comforted. They both needed each other then. The safety of the other’s arms.
“You wouldn’t do any of that now,” Hermione said a few minutes later. “You couldn’t.”
“No,” Draco exhaled, his voice rough with emotion. He cradled her head like one might something precious, careful to hold it too tightly. Her curls slipped through his fingers as she looked at him with swollen eyes. “I’d never.”
Hermione reached up and ran a hand through his hair, reassuring herself and consoling him all at once. They both took a moment to compose themselves before Draco ran a hand over his face, a sigh seeming to shake his entire frame.
“I’m not proud of what I did and God knows I’ve paid for it…But all of that is a part of me.” He swallowed, his eyes bright when he looked at her again. “If I have any chance of moving forward with my life I have to accept it. Make peace with it. Forgive myself, if I can ever find a way.” He shook his head, a painful pinch knitting his brow. “But you , Hermione, you don’t have to do any of that. You have a choice. You can walk away, be free of all of this before…before we become anything more than a partially fulfilled fantasy. You don’t have to forgive because I know we‘ll never forget.”
He hooked his finger under her chin, tilting her face towards his. “So the question becomes,” His thumb stroked the skin just below her lip and she trembled. “Can you?”
She saw light and dark in his eyes, rain and snow. Irrationality and beauty and comfort and strangeness. She felt like she could look into his eyes forever, all the while knowing that doing so might burn her to the core. She felt hopeless and trapped. And at the same she felt as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff, staring off into unending possibility.
They kissed. Oh, did they kiss. Tongues melded together with loops and knots. Fingers scrambled for traction against already sweaty skin. They sighed and sobbed and moaned with the frantic knowledge of two people who know that this - theirs - is not a love story. Not in the traditional sense, at least, where the achieving is the hardest part of loving.
As their bodies sought those secret places only lovers know, they did so knowing that no matter what this became, where it went or how long it lasted, even if it were million years, questions of forgiveness and blame, mercy and spite, right and wrong, good and bad would never leave them. They would haunt them until the bitter end and would more than likely be what destroyed them.
But as Draco slept that night, nestled between the wall and Hermione’s body, she was met with a certain peace. She realized that while the answers to certain questions come easily, certain questions are so inane they didn’t even deserve answering, while others are so attuned to universal truth they don’t even require one. Then there are those questions which are so timeless, accosting humanity from generation to generation that they cannot be answered. There are still others that must be answered with misdirection, little white lies or veiled truths to protect those you care for.
And yet there are some questions - those most horrible questions that force you to examine yourself and shine a light on those places you wish most to ignore, those questions that for the sake of all things self-serving, for the hope of letting yourself live for one more day blissfully ignorant - there are some questions which indeed must never be answered at all.
In the quietness of that night, Hermione curled against Draco, brushed her lips across his collar bone and remained silent.