Forgive and Forget (Chapter 12)
Chapter 12: Open But Ever Unbroken
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
~ From "Brown Penny" by William Butler Yeats
The following morning, Draco awoke to the pleasant aroma of rain, sea salt, and roses. He realized that the scent was coming from something soft and silky resting against his face and therefore burrowed deeper into it, breathing deeply. He felt more content and well-rested than he could remember feeling in a long time, because for the first night in a year, he had actually slept without having any nightmares. He prepared to roll over and stretch his arms over his head as he did every morning, but found his movement impaired by a warm, female body pushed up against him, pinning his right arm to his side.
Draco opened his eyes, only to find his vision obscured by several locks of curly brown hair. With his free arm, he reached up to brush the hair away and saw the naked, sleeping form of Hermione Granger lying on her side with her body pressed against his, one of her legs flung over his hips. As Draco stared at her, all of the events of the night before came crashing down on him. The memories of what he and Hermione had done caused other parts of his body to awaken as well, and he took a deep breath and forced his body to remain still so as not to awaken her.
Hermione was in a deep sleep, her cheek nestled on his chest and her lips slightly parted. She was breathing softly, and Draco took this opportunity to study her more closely. She looked almost angelic in her sleep. Her curls had started to frizz from the humidity, and they formed a soft halo around her head, catching the morning light that was now streaming through the window.
His gaze wandered appreciatively down to her slender, yet curvy body. If he had thought her beautiful while clothed, then she was positively glorious when she was unclothed. He lightly traced the dip of her waist and the soft skin of her flank, noting the light olive tone of her skin, in contrast with his pale hand. Beneath his gentle touch, he could feel her begin to stir, and that was when he started to panic.
How would Hermione react when she woke up and found herself lying naked in a bed with Draco Malfoy? He recalled the previous two times when she had kissed him in that abandoned classroom back at Hogwarts and remembered that both occasions had concluded with her running away from him as fast as her legs could carry her. Would she act the same way when she awoke this morning? Would she immediately regret their passionate tryst, flee from his arms, and never speak to him again?
Well, Draco would be damned if he would let Hermione's rejection get to him. As she blinked herself awake, he wiped the lazy, contented smile off his face and replaced it with an impassive expression. He watched as her brown eyes emerged from beneath heavy eyelids, and he braced himself for the inevitable fall-out.
"So, you're finally awake," he said coolly. He forced his gaze to remain steely, even as she rubbed her tired eyes with the back of one hand and yawned - an action which, oddly, made him want to kiss her.
"Are you always this grumpy in the morning?" she asked archly. "Or am I just getting special treatment?"
Draco stiffened in surprise at her casual response to his coldness. Then, she surprised him even more by nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck and letting out a blissful sigh. It was almost as if she understood his anxiety about the situation, and this was her way of reassuring him. It took all of his willpower not to let out a massive sigh of relief, but he could feel every muscle in his body relax when he realized that she was not going to throw a fit about what had happened the night before. However, this revelation did not dispel the awkwardness of the moment as he found himself wondering what to say next.
Although Draco had experienced his fair share of "morning afters", he really had no idea how to handle this one. As it was, he felt as if he had acted like an overeager, bumbling idiot the night before. It was very uncharacteristic of him to just grab a woman and haul her up to his bedroom caveman style, before ripping off her clothes and shagging her three times in a row. Well, it was not as if it had never happened before, but Draco still felt that he usually had a bit more style when it came to seduction. However, he had wanted Hermione for so long, that it had been difficult for him not to lose control once he could finally have her. He decided to remedy that situation by regaining some self-control now.
To Draco's dismay, Hermione shifted positions, which brought her inner thigh in close contact with a certain part of his anatomy, causing it to spring to attention. He barely managed to suppress a groan as all his thoughts of self-control started to fly out the window. His mind suddenly narrowed its focus down to the age-old question: Would it be morning sex, or a cold shower?
"Did you...erm, sleep well?" he asked in a very strained voice.
Hermione raised her eyebrows at this, amused by his attempt at politeness when their bodies were so intimately entwined.
"Yes, you?"
"Yes."
There were a few more awkward moments of silence while Hermione traced little patterns on his chest with her finger. Draco forced himself to ignore this pleasant sensation, trying desperately to think of pink hippogriffs instead.
"Do you know what I just realized?" Hermione finally asked.
"Hmm?"
"I don't know your middle name."
Draco rolled his eyes. Leave it to Hermione to bring up such an odd topic at a time like this. Still, he was pleased to have a distraction from his rapidly awakening libido.
"Why do you need to know my middle name?" he asked.
"Well..." Hermione paused, shyly avoiding his gaze, "I don't know if this is just a Muggle thing or not, but I've always heard that you shouldn't sleep with someone unless you know their middle name first. It's a sign that you know them well enough to be intimate."
"That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Besides, I think it's a bit too late for that, isn't it?"
Draco gave her a suggestive smirk and she flushed.
"Quit dodging the question," she said, poking him in the ribs. "Look, I'll even tell you mine first. It's Jean. Now what's your middle name?"
"It's Orion," Draco mumbled. "Satisfied?"
"Draco Orion Malfoy," Hermione said, testing out the name with a thoughtful expression on her face. "It's interesting how your family likes to use the names of stars and constellations: Sirius, Regulus, Bellatrix....Do you think when you have kids someday, you'll continue the tradition?"
Draco shrugged. Though he knew he was expected to eventually produce a Malfoy heir, his future children were not something he ever gave thought to.
"Yeah I guess so," he said.
Hermione's eyes sparkled mischievously as she said, "Maybe you'll have twins - then you can name them Big Dipper and Little Dipper."
Draco reached up to whack her with a pillow. She squealed and rolled to the other side of the bed, out of his reach. Sitting upright, she held the other pillow to her chest as if it was a shield.
"Are you done insulting my family's time-honored traditions, or do I need to smother you with this pillow first?" he growled, though his lips twitched with suppressed laughter.
It was Hermione's turn to roll her eyes at him.
"How debonair. Nothing says ‘romance' like the threat of asphyxiation."
"Romance isn't part of the package, witch."
Draco suddenly lunged forward and grasped Hermione's ankles, and she shrieked in surprise as he dragged her back to his side of the bed with enough force to leave her flat on her back. Wrenching the pillow she was clutching out of her hands and tossing it aside, he crawled up the length of her body so that his smirking face was hovering over hers.
"But there are other perks to make up for it," he murmured, bending down to trace the line of her jaw with his lips.
"I-I see," Hermione stammered, her eyes falling closed as Draco dipped lower to nibble on her neck. "Ah...oh, I just thought of another question! What's your favorite color?"
Draco groaned into the crook of Hermione's neck. The ache in his groin was begging to be sated, and he was having an extremely hard time picturing pink hippogriffs with Hermione's naked body lying beneath his.
"It’s grey.” He raised his head so that he could grace her with one of his trademark sneers. "And I suppose your favorite color is Gryffindor red, right?'
"No, actually it's blue," Hermione said primly.
"That's right. You wore blue dress robes at the Yule Ball in fourth year."
Hermione raised her eyebrows, clearly stunned by his statement.
"You actually remember what I wore to the Yule Ball four years ago?" she asked.
Draco ducked his head back down so that she wouldn't see the slight flush spreading over his cheeks. Why was it that Hermione seemed to be the only person on the planet who was capable of turning him into a bumbling idiot? Of course he had noticed what she'd worn to the Yule Ball...nearly every boy in Hogwarts had noticed her that night. Even though he supposed to have hated her back then, he was still a hot-blooded male, and he had thought she looked beautiful. It was the first time he had thought of her as more than just one of Harry Potter's lackeys.
"Draco, your essay for the scholarship competition..." Hermione said tentatively, "...what was it about?"
"I - what?"
"Your essay," she persisted. "Was it about...I mean, did it refer to me, by chance?"
In an attempt to disguise his discomfort with the topic, Draco chuckled and shook his head at her implication.
"Think mighty highly of ourselves, don't we?" he teased, but Hermione frowned, not so easily dissuaded.
"It's just the way Professor McGonagall looked at me when she said you should share it with others...I thought that maybe - "
She never had a chance to finish her line of thought, however, because Draco cut off her speech in the best way he knew how - he kissed her. For a moment, she squirmed, probably in protest of his attempt to silence her, but finally she relented, allowing her lips to melt against his. Draco flicked the tip of his tongue along the inside of her upper lip, relishing the small sound of pleasure it elicited from Hermione's throat. Then he pulled away in order to cover her throat with a series of kisses before running his mouth along her collarbone, over her breasts, and down the soft curve of her stomach.
Draco tried to hide his triumphant smirk when his tongue finally found the ultra-sensitive place he was seeking, and Hermione nearly lurched off the bed at his touch. Anything she had to say after that point was basically non-coherent and punctuated by little gasps and moans as Draco added his fingers to the artful motions of his mouth. He watched her grasp the wrought-iron headboard in a white-knuckled grip, as if trying to anchor herself as she writhed beneath his ministrations.
The night before, Draco had been so distracted by his own pleasure that he had been unable to fully appreciate the flicker of emotions that played across Hermione's face as she climaxed. However, now he was able to drink in the sight of her flushed cheeks and slightly parted lips as she reached her peak and came crashing over the other side of it with a low, keening cry....And pink hippogriffs be damned, he did not think a cold shower was going to be enough to dispel the surge of heat that he experienced upon seeing the way she looked at him at that moment. Her eyes were dark with desire, deepening to a warm umber color. They also glowed in a way that was reminiscent of how they looked when she was conjuring fire, though he knew she was not about to do that now - or at least he hoped not. He had a feeling that those feather-down pillows were highly flammable.
"Was that one of those ‘perks' you were talking about?" Hermione asked when her breathing had stilled enough to enable her to speak.
"I like to think so."
"That was a very sneaky way of getting me to shut up," she mumbled, her eyes narrowing.
"I'm a Slytherin," Draco said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. "You were running off at the mouth and I needed to do something about it. I figured you'd prefer this method over being smothered with a pillow."
Hermione scowled at him, but he gave her a cheeky grin, planting a few kisses on the inside of her thigh in order to placate her. He sat upright and ran his hands gently up and down her calves, wondering if he could coax her into alleviating the now painful throbbing between his own legs.
Hermione's scowl faded into a slightly smug smile as she eyed the very obvious source of his discomfort. Then to his dismay, she sat up and hopped out of the bed.
"I think I'm going to take a shower," she said airily, torturing Draco with a slight sway of her hips as she walked across the room and disappeared into the adjacent bath suite.
As Draco heard the sound of Hermione running the water, he fell back on the bed with a groan of disappointment. He took several deep breaths in an attempt to steamroll his unsatisfied desire. He thought that perhaps this was a good thing. It was an exercise in self-control - something that he felt he had been lacking far too often in Hermione's presence, especially during the past twenty-four hours. He was so lost in thought that he nearly jumped in surprise at the sound of Hermione's voice when she peeked around the doorway of the steam-filled bathroom.
"Are you going to join me or what?" she asked, one delicate eyebrow arched in his direction. "You may think I talk too much, but I could show you some of the ‘perks' of having a well-exercised mouth."
Draco nearly knocked her over in his eagerness to accompany her into the hot shower, deciding that he could start practicing self-control after breakfast.
Draco and Hermione's shower took at least twenty minutes longer than was necessary, and both emerged feeling warm, flushed, and a bit wobbly on their feet. They retrieved their clothes from where they had been strewn throughout the bedroom, and used Drying Charms on them before dressing.
After they were dressed, Hermione used one of the reserve owls that Draco's family kept on the property, and sent a letter to Ginny explaining that she had gone to visit her parents, knowing that her friend was probably worried sick about her sudden disappearance the night before. Draco doubted that any of his Slytherin friends would be overly concerned about his absence, as he had a habit of coming and going unannounced on the weekends, so he did not bother with sending any missives to Hogwarts.
The two found themselves in the kitchen next, trying to find something to quiet their grumbling stomachs. Luckily, the house remained well-stocked with various food staples, all kept fresh beneath a powerful Stasis Charm, and soon Hermione and Draco sat peacefully at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and eating toast with marmalade. It was a very domestic situation, and therefore one that Draco had never experienced with another girl before. Usually, he was out the door as quickly as possible the morning after a shag session, wanting to avoid the awkward business of trying to find something to talk about (and he rarely slept with a girl because of her conversation skills). As usual, however, things were different with Hermione. It was surprisingly comfortable to sit across the kitchen table from her as they drank their coffee, and talked about the things they had recently learned at school.
After they were finished eating, Draco helped Hermione carry the dirty plates and mugs over to the sink where she enchanted a scrub brush to clean them. Then she leaned against the counter, gazing out the window at the beautiful white chalk cliffs that were now gleaming in the morning sun. The storm from the night before had blown over, and the sky was clear and blue, but Hermione's facial expression seemed troubled as she stared unseeingly at the scene, lost in her thoughts.
Draco, however, scarcely noticed her concern, and was instead distracted by how beautiful she looked with the morning light streaming onto her face, lighting up her hair, which was rapidly drying into a tangled mass of curls after their shower. He felt a warm sensation surge through his entire being, starting at the base of his stomach and radiating outwards. It was no longer a foreign sensation - he had felt it before in Hermione's presence, when he first managed to conjure his Patronus, and on several occasions since then, including last night - but it remained unidentifiable to him. It was not lust, because he felt temporarily sated in that department. He supposed it was affection, though he thought the feeling ran a bit deeper than that...
Afterward, Draco could not say what compelled him to do it, but he found himself standing behind Hermione and looping his arms around her waist, bending down to plant a kiss on the top of her head. There was nothing sensual about his actions, and indeed, he had no plans for them to escalate any further. He simply wanted to hold her, and be close to her, and it puzzled him because he had never had that particular desire with any other girl in the past.
At first, Hermione let out a small sigh of contentment in response to Draco's embrace, but then she suddenly stiffened and stepped out of the circle of his arms, turning to cast a searching glance over his face. Her brown eyes were full of confusion, and there were other emotions flickering beneath the surface that made him feel nervous.
"Draco…" she began.
"Perhaps I could give you a tour of the rest of the house?" Draco asked casually, cutting her off. He was eager to distract them both from the awkward moment that had just occurred.
"Sure," she said, following his lead and adopting a light tone.
They spent the next half hour with Draco showing Hermione the numerous delights of the Malfoy summer home, and he was pleased with her reaction to each room that he showed her. She loved the brightness of the parlor, painted in a light yellow hue, and she admired the rich mahogany furniture in the formal dining room. He saved the library for last, knowing that she would be more enthralled with that room than with any other. Her reaction did not disappoint.
"Wow, this is amazing!" Hermione breathed, drinking in the sight of the bookshelves lining the walls. It was not nearly as impressive as the collection at Malfoy Manor, but there were still a wide variety of texts housed in this room, including some rare and ancient tomes that Draco knew could only be found in a few other locations in the world.
He hesitated uncertainly for a moment before deciding to show Hermione the last part of the house that he had, as yet, kept secret from her.
"If I show you one more thing, do you promise you won't tell anyone about it?" Draco asked in a serious tone. "Do you promise you won't tell your Auror-in-training Potter or any of your other friends at the Ministry?"
Hermione frowned at his request, but then nodded.
"Alright, I promise."
Draco scanned her face for a few seconds, just to make sure she was speaking the truth, and then he turned to one of the bookshelves lining the walls of the library. He tapped a particular book three times with his wand, muttering the proper incantation under his breath. As he finished the incantation, the bookshelf suddenly swung open, revealing a large stone archway in the wall behind it.
Hermione gasped.
"A secret tunnel?" she whispered, as she gazed into the darkness beyond.
"Yes," Draco said, lighting his wand as he prepared to step through the archway. "You may have heard of the ancient tunnels behind the cliffs of Dover?"
"Ah, so that's where we are! Yes I've heard of them. They were dug out beneath the cliffs during the Middle Ages, right? As a place to hide troops and supplies for the armies that guarded the coast from invasion?"
Draco nodded, stepping into the tunnel and gesturing for her to follow. She did so with only the slightest hint of reluctance, lighting her own wand as they began to descend a narrow, circular stone staircase into the blackness below.
"This is only a part of the tunnels, of course," Draco continued as they descended. "It's separate from the other tunnels that the Muggles know about. This house has been in the Malfoy family for generations, and my great-grandfather had the tunnels enlarged to create a labyrinth of sorts. My father has used it in the past to hide some of his...um, less politically acceptable belongings."
Hermione raised her eyebrows at this, but made no comment. After a few minutes, the staircase finally ended in a small chamber with three other tunnels leading off of it. The air was cool and damp down here and made Draco shiver somewhat. He tried, with little success, to hide his nervousness as he decided which tunnel to lead Hermione into first. Of course, Hermione noticed his unease.
"You don't like it down here in the dark, do you?" she asked.
"It's...not the dark that bothers me," he muttered, and Hermione's eyes widened as she finally understood.
"You're claustrophobic?"
Draco's brow creased into a frown, and he recalled his father's constant warnings over the years, telling him never to reveal his fears to another person, because fear was a weakness that could, in the wrong hands, be used as a weapon against him. Still, he found himself compelled to be honest with Hermione.
"I wouldn't call it claustrophobia," Draco muttered, leading her through the first of the three tunnel entrances. "Once, when I was five years old, I got lost for hours in the labyrinth until my father finally found me. He was livid because I wasn't supposed to be down here by myself. Ever since then, I have an extreme dislike of enclosed spaces. I don't like feeling confined, but I wouldn't call it my greatest fear."
Hermione nodded in understanding.
"Well, if your fear of small spaces isn't your greatest fear, then what is?" she asked.
Draco rolled his eyes when he realized she had decided to resume her earlier game of "twenty questions".
"I don't know," he replied, quite honestly. If he would have been asked during his fourth year at Hogwarts, he would have said it was Mad-Eye Moody. After all, being turned into a ferret was an experience that one did not get over easily. If someone would have asked him during his sixth or seventh year, he would have said that his greatest fear was that Voldemort would kill him and his family. Now, with Voldemort dead and gone, Draco really could not say what his greatest fear was.
"What's your greatest fear?" Draco asked, deciding to turn the tables on Hermione for once.
"Heights," she responded automatically. "I'm deathly afraid of heights. I've had enough experiences over the past several years to cement that fear in me - having to ride Buckbeak when Harry and I rescued Sirius, riding a thestral to the Ministry of Magic in our fifth year..." She shuddered at that particular memory. "...and the thestral was invisible to me at the time, too. It was very disconcerting to be floating high above the earth without being able to see what was keeping me aloft. And then there was that dragon we had to hitch a ride with to escape from Gringott's last year..."
Draco shook his head in amazement at just how many harrowing events Hermione had been involved in during the past seven years. She had told him some of the stories, but there were still a few that he would like to hear more about in the future - particularly that daring escape from Gringott's Bank. He had to admit that, despite his persistent dislike of Potter and Weasley, the trio had had some awe-inspiring adventures.
Draco spent the next hour giving Hermione a tour of the labyrinth, showing her the other, less savory books that were secreted there, which yielded an amusing reaction from Hermione, causing her lip to curl with disgust while her eyes flashed with begrudged interest. He also showed her the stone chamber in which Lucius Malfoy had hidden the remains of his Dark Arts collection. Although he greatly respected his father, the rebellious streak in Draco found it entertaining to imagine what Lucius would think of his own son leading a Muggle-born witch through these tunnels, showing her his secret stash of magical contraband items. Hermione shook her head and clucked her tongue at the impressive display of dangerous and potentially lethal artifacts.
"Don't worry," Draco said, sensing Hermione's trepidation, "I don't think my father has any intention of ever using this stuff again. He just likes to collect these items, and admire the power behind them, that's all."
"Yes, but these things are still dangerous and he should really turn them over to the Ministry...What's this?" she asked suddenly, reaching out to touch a solid glass box containing a tiny vial of glowing green liquid. Draco instantly seized her hand and dragged it away from the object.
"I wouldn't touch that if I were you. It's a sample of Dragon's Breath."
Hermione's eyes widened when he told her this.
"Your father has a vial of Dragon's Breath here, stashed beneath your family's summer home? Has he completely lost his mind? That substance is really volatile - they say that one drop is the equivalent of three Reducto Curses. If it was activated, it could bring half of these tunnels crashing down on our heads. Where on earth did he get it from? It's supposed to be incredibly rare."
"Yes, ancient Chinese wizards invented it ages ago, but the recipe has been lost over time, and no one knows how to make it anymore," Draco said. "So that's a very old sample. My mother's father, Cygnus Black, managed to procure this vial from one of his shady connections in Shanghai, and he gave it to my parents as part of their wedding present. There's a protective charm placed over the glass box, so only a special password can remove it. You could drop an anvil on that box and it wouldn't shatter - that's what keeps it safe."
Hermione shook her head, an expression of disbelief on her face.
"Only in your family would an explosive device be considered an appropriate wedding gift," she mused. "What's the password to unlock it?"
"I don't know," Draco said with a shrug. "My Grandfather had the protective box made for it, and I assume he told my parents the password. For some reason, they never trusted me enough to share it with me."
"I wonder why?" Hermione said with a sarcastic snort, and Draco couldn't help but grin in response.
"Come on, there's one last thing I want to show you," he said, leading her back out into the dark, winding tunnels. "I think you'll like this."
The way became narrower and darker as they walked into the oldest and deepest portion of the tunnels, which had been carved out in ancient times. The ceiling was so low here, that Draco had to duck his head at times to keep from hitting it on the stone surface, and he found his breath quicken as the walls closed in on either side of him.
To Draco's surprise, Hermione suddenly reached over and slipped her hand into his, giving him a reassuring squeeze as they made their journey through the darkness. Draco was even more surprised that he allowed her to continue holding his hand. He had never been the hand-holding type, and remembered all the arguments this had generated between him and Pansy during their sixth year. Now, however, he liked the feeling of Hermione's small hand enveloped in his larger one, and it somehow made him feel less nervous about the tight space surrounding them.
Suddenly, the tunnel reached a dead end, and the two of them stepped into a pitch-black cave that was too massive for their meager wand-light to fully illuminate. Draco waved his wand over a cistern to the right of the cave entrance and with a muttered "Incendio," a dozen cisterns throughout the chamber were suddenly alight with flames. Hermione gasped and stared in awe at what the firelight revealed.
The cave walls were smooth and black, covered with hundreds of ancient drawings that seemed to sparkle as if they were painted on with a paste made of crushed diamonds. More interesting than that, the images actually moved, much like the paintings at Hogwarts did. As it always happened when he entered this space, Draco felt a shiver run down his spine, letting him know that he was in the presence of powerful magic.
"It's like the Cave of Lascaux," Hermione murmured. When Draco looked at her blankly, she added, "It's a cave in France that has drawings like these...but those were made by Muggles, so they don't move. These drawings must have been made by ancient wizards."
She walked around the cave, and then paused beside a large stone altar that was placed in the center of the cave.
"Ah, so there is an altar in the Malfoy summer home," she said, her mouth quirking into an odd little smirk. "Although there are no bloodstains on it, I see."
"What are you on about?" Draco asked, staring at her in bewilderment.
"Never mind," Hermione said with a shake of her head. She wandered around the room, tracing her hand over the pictures on the walls.
"I think this was a handfasting temple," she whispered.
"Handfasting?" Draco repeated. The term sounded vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't quite recall where he had heard it before. It surprised him that a Muggle-born witch knew something about ancient Wizarding history that he did not. Well, maybe it wasn't that surprising, considering the Muggle-born witch in question.
"Handfasting is an ancient marriage ritual," Hermione explained. "It went out of vogue a few generations ago in the Wizarding World, but some Muggle couples still practice it."
"Ah." Well that explained why Draco didn't know about handfasting. Despite his relatively in-depth knowledge of wizard history, he had never taken interest in any topics related to love and marriage.
"See, here's a drawing showing a couple standing in front of an altar," Hermione continued, pointing to one of the sketches on the wall. "The priest or priestess would draw a circle in the ground and call upon the four elements prior to performing the ceremony."
She moved on to point to a drawing that showed a bearded, robed man standing in front of a couple, holding his hands over them as if in blessing.
"Then the couple would have their hands tied to each other's with a piece of cloth or a cord to demonstrate the bond they were creating between them," she continued, pausing before one picture that showed a man and a woman standing with their wrists bound together. "Sometimes the bonds were removed at the end of the ceremony, and other times not until after the marriage was...erm, consummated. It's my guess that the couple was left alone in this cave after the ceremony was over, in order to seal the new bond between them."
Hermione's cheeks flushed somewhat as she noticed a series of drawings that showed couples moving together in various erotic positions. She quickly moved on to a large symbol that was drawn on the wall with glowing white paint. It looked like a figure-eight, and there were at least a dozen others like it, drawn in various locations in the cave.
"When the married couple's hands were bound together during the handfasting, they formed two interlocking circles, like this," Hermione said. "It's the mathematical symbol for infinity, and also symbolizes the sun and the moon, and male and female."
In addition to the infinity symbols, there were numerous outlines of hands on the walls, usually two hands overlapping in various ways, with one hand being larger than the other. Draco assumed they were probably the handprints of the couples who had been married in this cave. He watched as Hermione pressed her own hand into one of these imprints, and then ran her fingers along a row of words that were written just above eye level along the back wall of the cave.
"My Latin is terrible," she said, "but I think this says - "
"‘The circle is open but ever unbroken'", Draco read automatically, shrugging at the look of surprise that Hermione gave him. "My parents made sure I was tutored in Latin before beginning at Hogwarts, since the spells we learn are usually Latin-based. It's a common practice in the Pureblood families. What does that phrase really mean, anyway: ‘open but ever unbroken'?"
"Well, it's a common line used to close a pagan ceremony. The bit about the circle being open generally means that the magic that we draw upon is available wherever we go, and the part about the circle being unbroken means that the power is always carried within us. However, I think that in this case, the ancient wizards were also referring to love - it is open because it is always available to us, if we're willing to let it in, and it is unbroken because of its infinite power."
"You sound like Professor Hong, going on and on about how ‘love is the most powerful force in the world", Draco said, rolling his eyes to make sure Hermione understood how ridiculous he thought this theory was.
"I think it's true," Hermione said slowly, her brow lowering into a frown. "Love is the most powerful force in the world. Love is what saved Harry from Voldemort's attack all those years ago, when his mother died to save him. Love is what allowed Harry to walk into the Forbidden Forest and hand his life over to Voldemort seventeen years after that. And love for Harry's mother is what enabled Severus Snape to turn to the light and help Dumbledore protect Harry..."
Draco snorted at this last statement, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Even if that were true, Lily Potter didn't love Snape in return. She chose another man - married that other man and had a child with him. Then she died, and Snape still went on carrying a torch for her, and sacrificed his life, but for what? A ghost? The memory of a woman who never wanted him? That doesn't sound like love to me. Sounds more like lunacy."
"You've never been in love before, have you?" Hermione asked suddenly, and Draco felt extremely uncomfortable beneath the weight of her question and the knowing look she was now giving him.
"What, you mean cupids and valentines and all that tripe?" he asked in a disgusted tone.
"Well, that answers my question," Hermione said, shaking her head and turning away from him.
"What do you mean by that?" Draco said testily, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to face him again. She squirmed out of his grip, scowling up at him.
"I mean that if you had ever really been in love you'd realize it was more than ‘cupids and valentines and all that tripe'", she said fiercely, and Draco was surprised to see tears springing to her eyes. "You would know...you would know what it really is."
"And what is it really, Hermione?" Draco asked harshly, experiencing a sudden, irrational surge of anger. "What makes you think you know so much more about love than I do?"
He was shocked when Hermione burst into tears. He stood there for a moment, his anger waning in the face of his friend's obvious distress. With a sigh, he went to hug her, but to his surprise, she pushed him away.
"Please, don't," she wrenched out. "I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry."
Draco just stared at her, utterly puzzled and wondering what Hermione was trying to apologize for. Finally it dawned on him, and he felt a sickening feeling in his stomach, almost as if his intestines had turned to ice.
"You still love him, don't you?" he murmured. He did not need to specify which "him" he was referring to. Hermione's sobs grew in intensity.
"I'm so sorry," she repeated. "It's just that Ron didn't want me...but you did."
Draco froze, feeling a fresh wave of anger wash over him at these words.
"So you just used me, is that it?" he spat out. It was a cruel sort of irony, he thought, considering all of those women he had used throughout the years. Hermione shook her head vehemently in response to his question.
"N-no!" she stammered. "That's not it at all! I...I wanted you in return, I really did. I think maybe I still do. I like being with you, Draco, but this is all happening so fast..."
Now Draco had no idea what to feel. Part of him still felt angry about how Hermione had slept with him, even though she still had feelings for Weasley. Then part of him felt guilty, because after all, hadn't he forced her to make a decision, even though it was only one month since she had broken up with someone she had clearly loved for a long time? He also felt confused because he couldn't understand why her persistent love for Weasley bothered him so much. Did this mean that he wanted her to love him instead? He shook his head, deciding that that line of thought was one he should not pursue at the present moment.
The final emotion Draco experienced was, for him, the strangest one of all: compassion. His whole life he had been trained to shut down compassion. His father had always told him that compassion, like fear, was a weakness that could be exploited by an enemy, and so Draco had learned to lock that emotion away behind some hidden door in his heart. He thought he had thrown away the key to that door many years ago, but somehow, this curly-haired witch had found a way to unlock it and open it just enough for some compassion to slip through the cracks at last.
"Merlin, Granger, I think you're going to be the death of me," Draco muttered, and ignoring Hermione's protests, he wrapped his arms around her heaving shoulders and held her to him tightly. He rubbed his hands soothingly over her back and murmured "It's okay", over and over again, thinking that maybe if he said it enough, it would actually come true. Finally, her sobs slowed and she backed away from him, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper and sniffling.
"I think we should go back to Hogwarts now," he said to Hermione. "We can talk more about this later."
Hermione nodded and they turned to exit the cave. At the stone archway leading out into the tunnels, Draco raised his wand, preparing to snuff out the flames in the cisterns lining the handfasting temple. He paused, taking in the sight of all the conjoined couples drawn on the walls, the overlapping hands, the figure-eight symbols that represented infinite love. A small, slowly-awakening part of him wondered if he could ever experience that sort of love.
Feeling more miserable than he had felt in a long time, Draco flicked his wand, plunging the cave into darkness once more. He turned to lead Hermione out of the labyrinth, thinking that perhaps he knew what his greatest fear was after all.
A/N: Just a little history lesson, for those interested: There actually were secret tunnels dug out behind the cliffs of Dover, during the Middle Ages. Oddly enough, I discovered this after I had already come up with the concept of having Draco's summer home be in Dover, and have a labyrinth beneath it, so the real-life history of the area melded perfectly with my ideas for this chapter! Weeeird.
The Cave of Lascaux that Hermione mentions also exists in real life, in France, with cave paintings drawn by Paleolithic humans. Here are some pictures of the paintings on Google Images. These are how I imagine the paintings in the Malfoys' handfasting temple would look, except in motion because they were made by ancient wizards, rather than Muggles. :)
As for the handfasting rituals and symbols, all of those are also real. I researched handfasting and related pagan rituals at this site here: Handfasting info. Interesting stuff. The ancient rituals usually took place outdoors, but I've modified it to allow for indoor ceremonies that used to occur in the cave beneath the Malfoy summer home. Besides, who's to say that ancient wizards didn't do things a little differently? ;)
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O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
~ From "Brown Penny" by William Butler Yeats
The following morning, Draco awoke to the pleasant aroma of rain, sea salt, and roses. He realized that the scent was coming from something soft and silky resting against his face and therefore burrowed deeper into it, breathing deeply. He felt more content and well-rested than he could remember feeling in a long time, because for the first night in a year, he had actually slept without having any nightmares. He prepared to roll over and stretch his arms over his head as he did every morning, but found his movement impaired by a warm, female body pushed up against him, pinning his right arm to his side.
Draco opened his eyes, only to find his vision obscured by several locks of curly brown hair. With his free arm, he reached up to brush the hair away and saw the naked, sleeping form of Hermione Granger lying on her side with her body pressed against his, one of her legs flung over his hips. As Draco stared at her, all of the events of the night before came crashing down on him. The memories of what he and Hermione had done caused other parts of his body to awaken as well, and he took a deep breath and forced his body to remain still so as not to awaken her.
Hermione was in a deep sleep, her cheek nestled on his chest and her lips slightly parted. She was breathing softly, and Draco took this opportunity to study her more closely. She looked almost angelic in her sleep. Her curls had started to frizz from the humidity, and they formed a soft halo around her head, catching the morning light that was now streaming through the window.
His gaze wandered appreciatively down to her slender, yet curvy body. If he had thought her beautiful while clothed, then she was positively glorious when she was unclothed. He lightly traced the dip of her waist and the soft skin of her flank, noting the light olive tone of her skin, in contrast with his pale hand. Beneath his gentle touch, he could feel her begin to stir, and that was when he started to panic.
How would Hermione react when she woke up and found herself lying naked in a bed with Draco Malfoy? He recalled the previous two times when she had kissed him in that abandoned classroom back at Hogwarts and remembered that both occasions had concluded with her running away from him as fast as her legs could carry her. Would she act the same way when she awoke this morning? Would she immediately regret their passionate tryst, flee from his arms, and never speak to him again?
Well, Draco would be damned if he would let Hermione's rejection get to him. As she blinked herself awake, he wiped the lazy, contented smile off his face and replaced it with an impassive expression. He watched as her brown eyes emerged from beneath heavy eyelids, and he braced himself for the inevitable fall-out.
"So, you're finally awake," he said coolly. He forced his gaze to remain steely, even as she rubbed her tired eyes with the back of one hand and yawned - an action which, oddly, made him want to kiss her.
"Are you always this grumpy in the morning?" she asked archly. "Or am I just getting special treatment?"
Draco stiffened in surprise at her casual response to his coldness. Then, she surprised him even more by nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck and letting out a blissful sigh. It was almost as if she understood his anxiety about the situation, and this was her way of reassuring him. It took all of his willpower not to let out a massive sigh of relief, but he could feel every muscle in his body relax when he realized that she was not going to throw a fit about what had happened the night before. However, this revelation did not dispel the awkwardness of the moment as he found himself wondering what to say next.
Although Draco had experienced his fair share of "morning afters", he really had no idea how to handle this one. As it was, he felt as if he had acted like an overeager, bumbling idiot the night before. It was very uncharacteristic of him to just grab a woman and haul her up to his bedroom caveman style, before ripping off her clothes and shagging her three times in a row. Well, it was not as if it had never happened before, but Draco still felt that he usually had a bit more style when it came to seduction. However, he had wanted Hermione for so long, that it had been difficult for him not to lose control once he could finally have her. He decided to remedy that situation by regaining some self-control now.
To Draco's dismay, Hermione shifted positions, which brought her inner thigh in close contact with a certain part of his anatomy, causing it to spring to attention. He barely managed to suppress a groan as all his thoughts of self-control started to fly out the window. His mind suddenly narrowed its focus down to the age-old question: Would it be morning sex, or a cold shower?
"Did you...erm, sleep well?" he asked in a very strained voice.
Hermione raised her eyebrows at this, amused by his attempt at politeness when their bodies were so intimately entwined.
"Yes, you?"
"Yes."
There were a few more awkward moments of silence while Hermione traced little patterns on his chest with her finger. Draco forced himself to ignore this pleasant sensation, trying desperately to think of pink hippogriffs instead.
"Do you know what I just realized?" Hermione finally asked.
"Hmm?"
"I don't know your middle name."
Draco rolled his eyes. Leave it to Hermione to bring up such an odd topic at a time like this. Still, he was pleased to have a distraction from his rapidly awakening libido.
"Why do you need to know my middle name?" he asked.
"Well..." Hermione paused, shyly avoiding his gaze, "I don't know if this is just a Muggle thing or not, but I've always heard that you shouldn't sleep with someone unless you know their middle name first. It's a sign that you know them well enough to be intimate."
"That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Besides, I think it's a bit too late for that, isn't it?"
Draco gave her a suggestive smirk and she flushed.
"Quit dodging the question," she said, poking him in the ribs. "Look, I'll even tell you mine first. It's Jean. Now what's your middle name?"
"It's Orion," Draco mumbled. "Satisfied?"
"Draco Orion Malfoy," Hermione said, testing out the name with a thoughtful expression on her face. "It's interesting how your family likes to use the names of stars and constellations: Sirius, Regulus, Bellatrix....Do you think when you have kids someday, you'll continue the tradition?"
Draco shrugged. Though he knew he was expected to eventually produce a Malfoy heir, his future children were not something he ever gave thought to.
"Yeah I guess so," he said.
Hermione's eyes sparkled mischievously as she said, "Maybe you'll have twins - then you can name them Big Dipper and Little Dipper."
Draco reached up to whack her with a pillow. She squealed and rolled to the other side of the bed, out of his reach. Sitting upright, she held the other pillow to her chest as if it was a shield.
"Are you done insulting my family's time-honored traditions, or do I need to smother you with this pillow first?" he growled, though his lips twitched with suppressed laughter.
It was Hermione's turn to roll her eyes at him.
"How debonair. Nothing says ‘romance' like the threat of asphyxiation."
"Romance isn't part of the package, witch."
Draco suddenly lunged forward and grasped Hermione's ankles, and she shrieked in surprise as he dragged her back to his side of the bed with enough force to leave her flat on her back. Wrenching the pillow she was clutching out of her hands and tossing it aside, he crawled up the length of her body so that his smirking face was hovering over hers.
"But there are other perks to make up for it," he murmured, bending down to trace the line of her jaw with his lips.
"I-I see," Hermione stammered, her eyes falling closed as Draco dipped lower to nibble on her neck. "Ah...oh, I just thought of another question! What's your favorite color?"
Draco groaned into the crook of Hermione's neck. The ache in his groin was begging to be sated, and he was having an extremely hard time picturing pink hippogriffs with Hermione's naked body lying beneath his.
"It’s grey.” He raised his head so that he could grace her with one of his trademark sneers. "And I suppose your favorite color is Gryffindor red, right?'
"No, actually it's blue," Hermione said primly.
"That's right. You wore blue dress robes at the Yule Ball in fourth year."
Hermione raised her eyebrows, clearly stunned by his statement.
"You actually remember what I wore to the Yule Ball four years ago?" she asked.
Draco ducked his head back down so that she wouldn't see the slight flush spreading over his cheeks. Why was it that Hermione seemed to be the only person on the planet who was capable of turning him into a bumbling idiot? Of course he had noticed what she'd worn to the Yule Ball...nearly every boy in Hogwarts had noticed her that night. Even though he supposed to have hated her back then, he was still a hot-blooded male, and he had thought she looked beautiful. It was the first time he had thought of her as more than just one of Harry Potter's lackeys.
"Draco, your essay for the scholarship competition..." Hermione said tentatively, "...what was it about?"
"I - what?"
"Your essay," she persisted. "Was it about...I mean, did it refer to me, by chance?"
In an attempt to disguise his discomfort with the topic, Draco chuckled and shook his head at her implication.
"Think mighty highly of ourselves, don't we?" he teased, but Hermione frowned, not so easily dissuaded.
"It's just the way Professor McGonagall looked at me when she said you should share it with others...I thought that maybe - "
She never had a chance to finish her line of thought, however, because Draco cut off her speech in the best way he knew how - he kissed her. For a moment, she squirmed, probably in protest of his attempt to silence her, but finally she relented, allowing her lips to melt against his. Draco flicked the tip of his tongue along the inside of her upper lip, relishing the small sound of pleasure it elicited from Hermione's throat. Then he pulled away in order to cover her throat with a series of kisses before running his mouth along her collarbone, over her breasts, and down the soft curve of her stomach.
Draco tried to hide his triumphant smirk when his tongue finally found the ultra-sensitive place he was seeking, and Hermione nearly lurched off the bed at his touch. Anything she had to say after that point was basically non-coherent and punctuated by little gasps and moans as Draco added his fingers to the artful motions of his mouth. He watched her grasp the wrought-iron headboard in a white-knuckled grip, as if trying to anchor herself as she writhed beneath his ministrations.
The night before, Draco had been so distracted by his own pleasure that he had been unable to fully appreciate the flicker of emotions that played across Hermione's face as she climaxed. However, now he was able to drink in the sight of her flushed cheeks and slightly parted lips as she reached her peak and came crashing over the other side of it with a low, keening cry....And pink hippogriffs be damned, he did not think a cold shower was going to be enough to dispel the surge of heat that he experienced upon seeing the way she looked at him at that moment. Her eyes were dark with desire, deepening to a warm umber color. They also glowed in a way that was reminiscent of how they looked when she was conjuring fire, though he knew she was not about to do that now - or at least he hoped not. He had a feeling that those feather-down pillows were highly flammable.
"Was that one of those ‘perks' you were talking about?" Hermione asked when her breathing had stilled enough to enable her to speak.
"I like to think so."
"That was a very sneaky way of getting me to shut up," she mumbled, her eyes narrowing.
"I'm a Slytherin," Draco said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. "You were running off at the mouth and I needed to do something about it. I figured you'd prefer this method over being smothered with a pillow."
Hermione scowled at him, but he gave her a cheeky grin, planting a few kisses on the inside of her thigh in order to placate her. He sat upright and ran his hands gently up and down her calves, wondering if he could coax her into alleviating the now painful throbbing between his own legs.
Hermione's scowl faded into a slightly smug smile as she eyed the very obvious source of his discomfort. Then to his dismay, she sat up and hopped out of the bed.
"I think I'm going to take a shower," she said airily, torturing Draco with a slight sway of her hips as she walked across the room and disappeared into the adjacent bath suite.
As Draco heard the sound of Hermione running the water, he fell back on the bed with a groan of disappointment. He took several deep breaths in an attempt to steamroll his unsatisfied desire. He thought that perhaps this was a good thing. It was an exercise in self-control - something that he felt he had been lacking far too often in Hermione's presence, especially during the past twenty-four hours. He was so lost in thought that he nearly jumped in surprise at the sound of Hermione's voice when she peeked around the doorway of the steam-filled bathroom.
"Are you going to join me or what?" she asked, one delicate eyebrow arched in his direction. "You may think I talk too much, but I could show you some of the ‘perks' of having a well-exercised mouth."
Draco nearly knocked her over in his eagerness to accompany her into the hot shower, deciding that he could start practicing self-control after breakfast.
Draco and Hermione's shower took at least twenty minutes longer than was necessary, and both emerged feeling warm, flushed, and a bit wobbly on their feet. They retrieved their clothes from where they had been strewn throughout the bedroom, and used Drying Charms on them before dressing.
After they were dressed, Hermione used one of the reserve owls that Draco's family kept on the property, and sent a letter to Ginny explaining that she had gone to visit her parents, knowing that her friend was probably worried sick about her sudden disappearance the night before. Draco doubted that any of his Slytherin friends would be overly concerned about his absence, as he had a habit of coming and going unannounced on the weekends, so he did not bother with sending any missives to Hogwarts.
The two found themselves in the kitchen next, trying to find something to quiet their grumbling stomachs. Luckily, the house remained well-stocked with various food staples, all kept fresh beneath a powerful Stasis Charm, and soon Hermione and Draco sat peacefully at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and eating toast with marmalade. It was a very domestic situation, and therefore one that Draco had never experienced with another girl before. Usually, he was out the door as quickly as possible the morning after a shag session, wanting to avoid the awkward business of trying to find something to talk about (and he rarely slept with a girl because of her conversation skills). As usual, however, things were different with Hermione. It was surprisingly comfortable to sit across the kitchen table from her as they drank their coffee, and talked about the things they had recently learned at school.
After they were finished eating, Draco helped Hermione carry the dirty plates and mugs over to the sink where she enchanted a scrub brush to clean them. Then she leaned against the counter, gazing out the window at the beautiful white chalk cliffs that were now gleaming in the morning sun. The storm from the night before had blown over, and the sky was clear and blue, but Hermione's facial expression seemed troubled as she stared unseeingly at the scene, lost in her thoughts.
Draco, however, scarcely noticed her concern, and was instead distracted by how beautiful she looked with the morning light streaming onto her face, lighting up her hair, which was rapidly drying into a tangled mass of curls after their shower. He felt a warm sensation surge through his entire being, starting at the base of his stomach and radiating outwards. It was no longer a foreign sensation - he had felt it before in Hermione's presence, when he first managed to conjure his Patronus, and on several occasions since then, including last night - but it remained unidentifiable to him. It was not lust, because he felt temporarily sated in that department. He supposed it was affection, though he thought the feeling ran a bit deeper than that...
Afterward, Draco could not say what compelled him to do it, but he found himself standing behind Hermione and looping his arms around her waist, bending down to plant a kiss on the top of her head. There was nothing sensual about his actions, and indeed, he had no plans for them to escalate any further. He simply wanted to hold her, and be close to her, and it puzzled him because he had never had that particular desire with any other girl in the past.
At first, Hermione let out a small sigh of contentment in response to Draco's embrace, but then she suddenly stiffened and stepped out of the circle of his arms, turning to cast a searching glance over his face. Her brown eyes were full of confusion, and there were other emotions flickering beneath the surface that made him feel nervous.
"Draco…" she began.
"Perhaps I could give you a tour of the rest of the house?" Draco asked casually, cutting her off. He was eager to distract them both from the awkward moment that had just occurred.
"Sure," she said, following his lead and adopting a light tone.
They spent the next half hour with Draco showing Hermione the numerous delights of the Malfoy summer home, and he was pleased with her reaction to each room that he showed her. She loved the brightness of the parlor, painted in a light yellow hue, and she admired the rich mahogany furniture in the formal dining room. He saved the library for last, knowing that she would be more enthralled with that room than with any other. Her reaction did not disappoint.
"Wow, this is amazing!" Hermione breathed, drinking in the sight of the bookshelves lining the walls. It was not nearly as impressive as the collection at Malfoy Manor, but there were still a wide variety of texts housed in this room, including some rare and ancient tomes that Draco knew could only be found in a few other locations in the world.
He hesitated uncertainly for a moment before deciding to show Hermione the last part of the house that he had, as yet, kept secret from her.
"If I show you one more thing, do you promise you won't tell anyone about it?" Draco asked in a serious tone. "Do you promise you won't tell your Auror-in-training Potter or any of your other friends at the Ministry?"
Hermione frowned at his request, but then nodded.
"Alright, I promise."
Draco scanned her face for a few seconds, just to make sure she was speaking the truth, and then he turned to one of the bookshelves lining the walls of the library. He tapped a particular book three times with his wand, muttering the proper incantation under his breath. As he finished the incantation, the bookshelf suddenly swung open, revealing a large stone archway in the wall behind it.
Hermione gasped.
"A secret tunnel?" she whispered, as she gazed into the darkness beyond.
"Yes," Draco said, lighting his wand as he prepared to step through the archway. "You may have heard of the ancient tunnels behind the cliffs of Dover?"
"Ah, so that's where we are! Yes I've heard of them. They were dug out beneath the cliffs during the Middle Ages, right? As a place to hide troops and supplies for the armies that guarded the coast from invasion?"
Draco nodded, stepping into the tunnel and gesturing for her to follow. She did so with only the slightest hint of reluctance, lighting her own wand as they began to descend a narrow, circular stone staircase into the blackness below.
"This is only a part of the tunnels, of course," Draco continued as they descended. "It's separate from the other tunnels that the Muggles know about. This house has been in the Malfoy family for generations, and my great-grandfather had the tunnels enlarged to create a labyrinth of sorts. My father has used it in the past to hide some of his...um, less politically acceptable belongings."
Hermione raised her eyebrows at this, but made no comment. After a few minutes, the staircase finally ended in a small chamber with three other tunnels leading off of it. The air was cool and damp down here and made Draco shiver somewhat. He tried, with little success, to hide his nervousness as he decided which tunnel to lead Hermione into first. Of course, Hermione noticed his unease.
"You don't like it down here in the dark, do you?" she asked.
"It's...not the dark that bothers me," he muttered, and Hermione's eyes widened as she finally understood.
"You're claustrophobic?"
Draco's brow creased into a frown, and he recalled his father's constant warnings over the years, telling him never to reveal his fears to another person, because fear was a weakness that could, in the wrong hands, be used as a weapon against him. Still, he found himself compelled to be honest with Hermione.
"I wouldn't call it claustrophobia," Draco muttered, leading her through the first of the three tunnel entrances. "Once, when I was five years old, I got lost for hours in the labyrinth until my father finally found me. He was livid because I wasn't supposed to be down here by myself. Ever since then, I have an extreme dislike of enclosed spaces. I don't like feeling confined, but I wouldn't call it my greatest fear."
Hermione nodded in understanding.
"Well, if your fear of small spaces isn't your greatest fear, then what is?" she asked.
Draco rolled his eyes when he realized she had decided to resume her earlier game of "twenty questions".
"I don't know," he replied, quite honestly. If he would have been asked during his fourth year at Hogwarts, he would have said it was Mad-Eye Moody. After all, being turned into a ferret was an experience that one did not get over easily. If someone would have asked him during his sixth or seventh year, he would have said that his greatest fear was that Voldemort would kill him and his family. Now, with Voldemort dead and gone, Draco really could not say what his greatest fear was.
"What's your greatest fear?" Draco asked, deciding to turn the tables on Hermione for once.
"Heights," she responded automatically. "I'm deathly afraid of heights. I've had enough experiences over the past several years to cement that fear in me - having to ride Buckbeak when Harry and I rescued Sirius, riding a thestral to the Ministry of Magic in our fifth year..." She shuddered at that particular memory. "...and the thestral was invisible to me at the time, too. It was very disconcerting to be floating high above the earth without being able to see what was keeping me aloft. And then there was that dragon we had to hitch a ride with to escape from Gringott's last year..."
Draco shook his head in amazement at just how many harrowing events Hermione had been involved in during the past seven years. She had told him some of the stories, but there were still a few that he would like to hear more about in the future - particularly that daring escape from Gringott's Bank. He had to admit that, despite his persistent dislike of Potter and Weasley, the trio had had some awe-inspiring adventures.
Draco spent the next hour giving Hermione a tour of the labyrinth, showing her the other, less savory books that were secreted there, which yielded an amusing reaction from Hermione, causing her lip to curl with disgust while her eyes flashed with begrudged interest. He also showed her the stone chamber in which Lucius Malfoy had hidden the remains of his Dark Arts collection. Although he greatly respected his father, the rebellious streak in Draco found it entertaining to imagine what Lucius would think of his own son leading a Muggle-born witch through these tunnels, showing her his secret stash of magical contraband items. Hermione shook her head and clucked her tongue at the impressive display of dangerous and potentially lethal artifacts.
"Don't worry," Draco said, sensing Hermione's trepidation, "I don't think my father has any intention of ever using this stuff again. He just likes to collect these items, and admire the power behind them, that's all."
"Yes, but these things are still dangerous and he should really turn them over to the Ministry...What's this?" she asked suddenly, reaching out to touch a solid glass box containing a tiny vial of glowing green liquid. Draco instantly seized her hand and dragged it away from the object.
"I wouldn't touch that if I were you. It's a sample of Dragon's Breath."
Hermione's eyes widened when he told her this.
"Your father has a vial of Dragon's Breath here, stashed beneath your family's summer home? Has he completely lost his mind? That substance is really volatile - they say that one drop is the equivalent of three Reducto Curses. If it was activated, it could bring half of these tunnels crashing down on our heads. Where on earth did he get it from? It's supposed to be incredibly rare."
"Yes, ancient Chinese wizards invented it ages ago, but the recipe has been lost over time, and no one knows how to make it anymore," Draco said. "So that's a very old sample. My mother's father, Cygnus Black, managed to procure this vial from one of his shady connections in Shanghai, and he gave it to my parents as part of their wedding present. There's a protective charm placed over the glass box, so only a special password can remove it. You could drop an anvil on that box and it wouldn't shatter - that's what keeps it safe."
Hermione shook her head, an expression of disbelief on her face.
"Only in your family would an explosive device be considered an appropriate wedding gift," she mused. "What's the password to unlock it?"
"I don't know," Draco said with a shrug. "My Grandfather had the protective box made for it, and I assume he told my parents the password. For some reason, they never trusted me enough to share it with me."
"I wonder why?" Hermione said with a sarcastic snort, and Draco couldn't help but grin in response.
"Come on, there's one last thing I want to show you," he said, leading her back out into the dark, winding tunnels. "I think you'll like this."
The way became narrower and darker as they walked into the oldest and deepest portion of the tunnels, which had been carved out in ancient times. The ceiling was so low here, that Draco had to duck his head at times to keep from hitting it on the stone surface, and he found his breath quicken as the walls closed in on either side of him.
To Draco's surprise, Hermione suddenly reached over and slipped her hand into his, giving him a reassuring squeeze as they made their journey through the darkness. Draco was even more surprised that he allowed her to continue holding his hand. He had never been the hand-holding type, and remembered all the arguments this had generated between him and Pansy during their sixth year. Now, however, he liked the feeling of Hermione's small hand enveloped in his larger one, and it somehow made him feel less nervous about the tight space surrounding them.
Suddenly, the tunnel reached a dead end, and the two of them stepped into a pitch-black cave that was too massive for their meager wand-light to fully illuminate. Draco waved his wand over a cistern to the right of the cave entrance and with a muttered "Incendio," a dozen cisterns throughout the chamber were suddenly alight with flames. Hermione gasped and stared in awe at what the firelight revealed.
The cave walls were smooth and black, covered with hundreds of ancient drawings that seemed to sparkle as if they were painted on with a paste made of crushed diamonds. More interesting than that, the images actually moved, much like the paintings at Hogwarts did. As it always happened when he entered this space, Draco felt a shiver run down his spine, letting him know that he was in the presence of powerful magic.
"It's like the Cave of Lascaux," Hermione murmured. When Draco looked at her blankly, she added, "It's a cave in France that has drawings like these...but those were made by Muggles, so they don't move. These drawings must have been made by ancient wizards."
She walked around the cave, and then paused beside a large stone altar that was placed in the center of the cave.
"Ah, so there is an altar in the Malfoy summer home," she said, her mouth quirking into an odd little smirk. "Although there are no bloodstains on it, I see."
"What are you on about?" Draco asked, staring at her in bewilderment.
"Never mind," Hermione said with a shake of her head. She wandered around the room, tracing her hand over the pictures on the walls.
"I think this was a handfasting temple," she whispered.
"Handfasting?" Draco repeated. The term sounded vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't quite recall where he had heard it before. It surprised him that a Muggle-born witch knew something about ancient Wizarding history that he did not. Well, maybe it wasn't that surprising, considering the Muggle-born witch in question.
"Handfasting is an ancient marriage ritual," Hermione explained. "It went out of vogue a few generations ago in the Wizarding World, but some Muggle couples still practice it."
"Ah." Well that explained why Draco didn't know about handfasting. Despite his relatively in-depth knowledge of wizard history, he had never taken interest in any topics related to love and marriage.
"See, here's a drawing showing a couple standing in front of an altar," Hermione continued, pointing to one of the sketches on the wall. "The priest or priestess would draw a circle in the ground and call upon the four elements prior to performing the ceremony."
She moved on to point to a drawing that showed a bearded, robed man standing in front of a couple, holding his hands over them as if in blessing.
"Then the couple would have their hands tied to each other's with a piece of cloth or a cord to demonstrate the bond they were creating between them," she continued, pausing before one picture that showed a man and a woman standing with their wrists bound together. "Sometimes the bonds were removed at the end of the ceremony, and other times not until after the marriage was...erm, consummated. It's my guess that the couple was left alone in this cave after the ceremony was over, in order to seal the new bond between them."
Hermione's cheeks flushed somewhat as she noticed a series of drawings that showed couples moving together in various erotic positions. She quickly moved on to a large symbol that was drawn on the wall with glowing white paint. It looked like a figure-eight, and there were at least a dozen others like it, drawn in various locations in the cave.
"When the married couple's hands were bound together during the handfasting, they formed two interlocking circles, like this," Hermione said. "It's the mathematical symbol for infinity, and also symbolizes the sun and the moon, and male and female."
In addition to the infinity symbols, there were numerous outlines of hands on the walls, usually two hands overlapping in various ways, with one hand being larger than the other. Draco assumed they were probably the handprints of the couples who had been married in this cave. He watched as Hermione pressed her own hand into one of these imprints, and then ran her fingers along a row of words that were written just above eye level along the back wall of the cave.
"My Latin is terrible," she said, "but I think this says - "
"‘The circle is open but ever unbroken'", Draco read automatically, shrugging at the look of surprise that Hermione gave him. "My parents made sure I was tutored in Latin before beginning at Hogwarts, since the spells we learn are usually Latin-based. It's a common practice in the Pureblood families. What does that phrase really mean, anyway: ‘open but ever unbroken'?"
"Well, it's a common line used to close a pagan ceremony. The bit about the circle being open generally means that the magic that we draw upon is available wherever we go, and the part about the circle being unbroken means that the power is always carried within us. However, I think that in this case, the ancient wizards were also referring to love - it is open because it is always available to us, if we're willing to let it in, and it is unbroken because of its infinite power."
"You sound like Professor Hong, going on and on about how ‘love is the most powerful force in the world", Draco said, rolling his eyes to make sure Hermione understood how ridiculous he thought this theory was.
"I think it's true," Hermione said slowly, her brow lowering into a frown. "Love is the most powerful force in the world. Love is what saved Harry from Voldemort's attack all those years ago, when his mother died to save him. Love is what allowed Harry to walk into the Forbidden Forest and hand his life over to Voldemort seventeen years after that. And love for Harry's mother is what enabled Severus Snape to turn to the light and help Dumbledore protect Harry..."
Draco snorted at this last statement, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Even if that were true, Lily Potter didn't love Snape in return. She chose another man - married that other man and had a child with him. Then she died, and Snape still went on carrying a torch for her, and sacrificed his life, but for what? A ghost? The memory of a woman who never wanted him? That doesn't sound like love to me. Sounds more like lunacy."
"You've never been in love before, have you?" Hermione asked suddenly, and Draco felt extremely uncomfortable beneath the weight of her question and the knowing look she was now giving him.
"What, you mean cupids and valentines and all that tripe?" he asked in a disgusted tone.
"Well, that answers my question," Hermione said, shaking her head and turning away from him.
"What do you mean by that?" Draco said testily, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to face him again. She squirmed out of his grip, scowling up at him.
"I mean that if you had ever really been in love you'd realize it was more than ‘cupids and valentines and all that tripe'", she said fiercely, and Draco was surprised to see tears springing to her eyes. "You would know...you would know what it really is."
"And what is it really, Hermione?" Draco asked harshly, experiencing a sudden, irrational surge of anger. "What makes you think you know so much more about love than I do?"
He was shocked when Hermione burst into tears. He stood there for a moment, his anger waning in the face of his friend's obvious distress. With a sigh, he went to hug her, but to his surprise, she pushed him away.
"Please, don't," she wrenched out. "I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry."
Draco just stared at her, utterly puzzled and wondering what Hermione was trying to apologize for. Finally it dawned on him, and he felt a sickening feeling in his stomach, almost as if his intestines had turned to ice.
"You still love him, don't you?" he murmured. He did not need to specify which "him" he was referring to. Hermione's sobs grew in intensity.
"I'm so sorry," she repeated. "It's just that Ron didn't want me...but you did."
Draco froze, feeling a fresh wave of anger wash over him at these words.
"So you just used me, is that it?" he spat out. It was a cruel sort of irony, he thought, considering all of those women he had used throughout the years. Hermione shook her head vehemently in response to his question.
"N-no!" she stammered. "That's not it at all! I...I wanted you in return, I really did. I think maybe I still do. I like being with you, Draco, but this is all happening so fast..."
Now Draco had no idea what to feel. Part of him still felt angry about how Hermione had slept with him, even though she still had feelings for Weasley. Then part of him felt guilty, because after all, hadn't he forced her to make a decision, even though it was only one month since she had broken up with someone she had clearly loved for a long time? He also felt confused because he couldn't understand why her persistent love for Weasley bothered him so much. Did this mean that he wanted her to love him instead? He shook his head, deciding that that line of thought was one he should not pursue at the present moment.
The final emotion Draco experienced was, for him, the strangest one of all: compassion. His whole life he had been trained to shut down compassion. His father had always told him that compassion, like fear, was a weakness that could be exploited by an enemy, and so Draco had learned to lock that emotion away behind some hidden door in his heart. He thought he had thrown away the key to that door many years ago, but somehow, this curly-haired witch had found a way to unlock it and open it just enough for some compassion to slip through the cracks at last.
"Merlin, Granger, I think you're going to be the death of me," Draco muttered, and ignoring Hermione's protests, he wrapped his arms around her heaving shoulders and held her to him tightly. He rubbed his hands soothingly over her back and murmured "It's okay", over and over again, thinking that maybe if he said it enough, it would actually come true. Finally, her sobs slowed and she backed away from him, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper and sniffling.
"I think we should go back to Hogwarts now," he said to Hermione. "We can talk more about this later."
Hermione nodded and they turned to exit the cave. At the stone archway leading out into the tunnels, Draco raised his wand, preparing to snuff out the flames in the cisterns lining the handfasting temple. He paused, taking in the sight of all the conjoined couples drawn on the walls, the overlapping hands, the figure-eight symbols that represented infinite love. A small, slowly-awakening part of him wondered if he could ever experience that sort of love.
Feeling more miserable than he had felt in a long time, Draco flicked his wand, plunging the cave into darkness once more. He turned to lead Hermione out of the labyrinth, thinking that perhaps he knew what his greatest fear was after all.
A/N: Just a little history lesson, for those interested: There actually were secret tunnels dug out behind the cliffs of Dover, during the Middle Ages. Oddly enough, I discovered this after I had already come up with the concept of having Draco's summer home be in Dover, and have a labyrinth beneath it, so the real-life history of the area melded perfectly with my ideas for this chapter! Weeeird.
The Cave of Lascaux that Hermione mentions also exists in real life, in France, with cave paintings drawn by Paleolithic humans. Here are some pictures of the paintings on Google Images. These are how I imagine the paintings in the Malfoys' handfasting temple would look, except in motion because they were made by ancient wizards, rather than Muggles. :)
As for the handfasting rituals and symbols, all of those are also real. I researched handfasting and related pagan rituals at this site here: Handfasting info. Interesting stuff. The ancient rituals usually took place outdoors, but I've modified it to allow for indoor ceremonies that used to occur in the cave beneath the Malfoy summer home. Besides, who's to say that ancient wizards didn't do things a little differently? ;)
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