FIC: Aresto Momentum (2/3) (Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger)
Title: Aresto Momentum (2/3)
Author: captainraychill
Characters: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Prompt Number: # 85
Word Count: ~24,750
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Alternate universe after mid-Book 6/EWE, angst, darker than prompt implies, explicit sexual situations, unabashed romance, infrequent but extreme profanity, alcohol consumption, reference to rape and murder.
Summary: Hermione fills her shopping cart with a jar of honey, a book and a bushel of apples. Why do these things remind her of a certain ferret? Aresto Momentum: a spell which slows down or stops the movement of an object… that which gives you pause and makes you reconsider your path.
Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, etc., this work of art is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to my Beta, you know who you are, for your wonderful input. BF Draco is for you! Thanks also to the Interhouse Mods for your quick answers and generous extensions. And to SnuggleLove54 for the fun and “random” prompt. I think I took it in an odd direction. Hope you like it.
Aresto Momentum (2/3)
CHAPTER FOUR
RECOLLECTION AND DIVINATION
“I said, out,” Hermione snapped.
His only answer was a smile. Her heartbeat stumbled a bit. Malfoy never smiled with good intent. There was always a smirk in it - an insult or insinuation. For some reason, he was smiling at her like a decadent young sultan inspecting a new harem girl, an impression only enhanced by the fact that she lay on a bed of silken pillows. She scrambled up into a sitting position as gracefully as she could.
He walked closer until one of his shiny black shoes almost touched her knee. She refused to squirm away but held her muscles rigidly locked in place as he stared down at her.
“I think I’ll stay,” he said. “I rather like you at my feet.”
She felt a little flutter in her stomach and frowned. This was Draco Malfoy, bully, bigot, ferret. The enemy. Harry actually thought he was a Death Eater, for Merlin’s sake, and even though that was ridiculous, she still shouldn’t be fluttering over him. It was just… she had been the target of his gaze for days. He looked at her across the Great Hall, during meals, as if he were trying to uncover a secret.
She didn’t understand why he had chosen to stay at school during winter break with his father in Azkaban and his mother at home alone. She didn’t understand why he was here right now.
Slowly, seemingly without thought, she pulled her wand out of her pocket and used it to turn the page of her book. She glanced up at Draco. He did not look impressed. He leaned down quickly, making her pulse jump in warning. His hand was reaching for shoulder. Before she could act, the threat was gone. He grabbed an apple off the table instead and took a crunching bite of it as he stepped back. He sat down in a red velvet armchair not two feet away.
Determined to ignore him, she found her place in her book and read, not taking in a single word s he ate her entire apple.
“Going hunting, Granger?” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“To kill a mockingbird.”
“No,” she answered. “In fact, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“What kind of Muggle tripe is that?”
“It means that it’s a sin to destroy the innocent. It’s a theme of the book.” She spoke very clearly as if she were teaching a potentially explosive potion to a dim First Year.
“Must be a difficult concept to grasp,” Draco said. “Since you haven’t turned a page in five minutes.”
“All right, that’s it,” Hermione snapped. She shut the book and slapped it down onto her thigh. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m bored,” he said. “Want to occupy my time?”
“No. And I mean, why are you here at Hogwarts at Christmas? Why do you keep staring at me?”
He answered her with another stare. After a long pause, he said softly, “I have my reasons.” His deep voice sent shivers down her arms.
He held out his hand and, for a wild moment, she had the urge to reach out and take it.
“Accio, Granger’s Muggle book,” Draco said.
To her consternation, the book shot out of her hand and flew into his. Had that been wandless? With relief, she noticed the fingers of his other hand moving smoothly away from the fabric of his shirt, from a hidden pocket or holster. He gazed at her soft, tattered paperback with disdain, opening it and thumbing through the yellowed pages. Hermione took the opportunity to study him.
He was such an arrogant git. Even if his looks might have changed over the summer, that had not. At the start of term, she couldn’t help but notice how attractive he’d become. Tall and strong and graceful. With those pale eyes, like mercury. His white-blond hair fell rakishly over his brow. And his voice…
But as the days grew colder and shorter, he was somehow diminishing. The smudge of gray shadows appeared under his eyes. He’d lost weight, his cheeks grown lean. He spent less time lording over his friends and more time wandering the corridors and grounds alone. She was observant, and she had seen it all.
And now, he was lying. He wasn’t bored at all. There was an edge of need behind his swagger. Hogwarts was nearly empty. He would have had to seek her out to find her. He was here, in this tower, because he wanted something from her. She gazed down at the honey pooled at the bottom of her teacup, surprised at how right this conclusion felt.
What could Draco Malfoy want from her?
“What’s a nickel?” he asked, without looking up from her book.
“Muggle money,” she said. “A small denomination.”
“What’s a chiffarobe?”
“A wardrobe, for storing clothes.”
“What’s a nigger?”
Hermione gasped, and Draco looked up sharply. She couldn’t help her reaction. That word still had the power to shock her. It was the one word that had made her understand how truly awful it was that Draco had called her a Mudblood in Second Year and so many times after that.
“What is it?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“A nigger is a Mudblood,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nigger is a highly insulting term to describe a black person. Very much like the use of the word Mudblood to describe a Muggle-born. “
“What’s wrong with black people?”
“Nothing,” Hermione said pointedly. “But in the Muggle world, prejudice is often a matter of race, of the color of someone’s skin or their religion. For hundreds of years, some white people thought black people were inferior to them, and they used this belief to justify atrocious crimes against them. Enslavement, torture, rape, murder.”
Hermione had expected Malfoy to roll his eyes or mock her or repeat some foul dogma about blood purity. But he didn’t do any of these things. He listened with a growing solemnity, and when she began listing the ways in which blacks had been persecuted, his eyes widened, and he looked away.
She sat forward slightly, in instinctive pursuit. She’d never seen such an unguarded look on Draco’s face before, unless he was angry. Without his mask, for just a moment, she’d seen fear in his eyes.
“The book is about prejudice,” she pressed on, looking directly at him, willing him to look at her. “It’s about the loss of innocence.”
He didn’t look up, but he did lean forward, just as she had. The quality of the silence between them changed, becoming tense and thick with an almost suffocating feeling of things unsaid.
“It’s about dignity and compassion and courage,” she continued. “And doing what’s right even when it’s difficult, even when it seems hopeless.”
Draco looked up at her then and his eyes were cold and hard. “Granger, sometimes it doesn’t seem hopeless. Sometimes it is hopeless. Why fight then?”
“Because you have to,” she said simply.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Evil must be resisted. We have a responsibility to defend the vulnerable.”
“Defend the vulnerable…” he sneered. “You are like… a children’s story.”
“Yes, defend the vulnerable. Pursue justice. Be a force for good.” Hermione felt her face flushing red. “If you can’t understand any of that, I don’t know what to say to you.”
“You’re so naïve, all of you,” Draco cried out, dropping the book as he stood. He stalked away, to the fireplace and stared down at the shifting flames. He gripped the mantle with white knuckles.
“We aren’t naïve,” she said. “We know the dangers.”
“You don’t know anything,” he said fiercely. “You don’t know anything about the danger in this world.”
Hermione was unprepared when Draco suddenly turned and walked toward her with long, aggressive strides. She dropped her teacup as she scrambled to stand. Her wand danced perilously against her fingertips, almost tumbling to the floor, before she steadied it and pointed it at his heart.
The threat didn’t stop him. He pressed forward until, acting on the irrational fear that her wand might puncture his chest, she bent her elbow. He moved quickly, both hands gripping her shoulders and pulling her roughly toward him. Her arms folded between their bodies, her wand now against the pulse in his neck. She knew dozens of spells to cast him away, to regain her power and escape. But she couldn’t make herself say a word.
“Hermione,” Draco said.
Her heart gave a great lurch. He’d never used her given name before. She stared up into his silver eyes, stunned by the desperation in them. His breath came hard and fast.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Would you fight-” His voice cracked, and she watched a blush color his pale cheeks. He closed his eyes. “Would you fight even if you knew you would die?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.
His fingers tightened on her shoulders. They would leave bruises, but she didn’t care. He kept his eyes closed tight, trying to hide whatever storm was raging inside him.
“You and your fucking crusades,” he whispered.
Minutes passed in silence as Hermione stood in Draco’s hard clasp. She feared what he wanted to say. She wondered what to say to him. Slowly, she reached up and touched the side of his face. The contact was electric, and she felt heat and a rush like adrenaline that left her fingertips tingling. Draco opened his eyes, staring at her in shock. Had he felt it too? She stroked her thumb along the shadow cast by his cheekbone. His skin was warm and smooth, shaved hours ago.
“Draco,” she said softly. “What did you come here to say to me?”
He gazed down at her, unblinking, and leaned forward infinitesimally. She smelled a faint scent, like incense, on his skin and grew dizzy. His finger pressed even more painfully into her shoulders. She couldn’t help but wince. That broke the spell. He released her and took a step back, looking down at his hands before dropping them to his sides.
He turned away. The moment was lost. He wouldn’t confide in her. She expected him to leave.
Instead, he walked halfway across the room to a low table ringed by pillows and dropped to his knees. His face wore its mask again, haughty and aristocratic. But through it, she saw a grim, new resolve in his eyes. He slipped a small, silver cuff link from one of the cuffs of his black shirt and laid his hand on the table, palm down.
“I want you to tell my fortune, Granger.”
She stared at him, at his left hand.
Draco was right-handed. She knew this because she always noticed when someone was not. He would never lead with his left unless he had a reason to. Hermione’s heart began to tremble frantically inside her chest.
She could turn away now, leave the room. The coward in her desperately wished to. Instead, she walked slowly toward him, kneeling on the other side of the table. She kept her hands folded together in her lap.
“That’s your passive hand,” she said. “Its reading will tell us your inherent characteristics.”
“I thought you hated Divination.”
“I do. As do you. But I’d read the textbook before I realized that.”
“Of course you did.”
“Your right hand is your active hand,” she continued crisply. “Its reading will tell us about the changes that have occurred in your inherent traits due to conscious action on your part.”
“This one first,” he murmured.
After a pause, she unfolded her hands and reached across the table.
Draco’s hand was much larger than hers. Pale like the rest of him, refined, but also masculine and strong. She knew his hands could bruise and destroy like any brute’s. She also knew they had mastered delicate wand work and complex potion making with a degree of skill and elegance that few students achieved.
She touched the back of his hand and felt a rush of feeling and heat again but refused to look into his eyes. She stroked her fingertips lightly over the pattern of bone under his skin and heard his breathing grow ragged. Her own breathing changed, too. She turned his hand over, and he obeyed her slight touch, his palm raised up now, as if in supplication.
She traced the creases in his palm, the major lines of heart, head, life and fate. Her fingers moved forward, over the border of his wrist, to touch the skin over his faint, blue veins. Blood just like hers, if only he would realize it. Her fingers trailed a centimeter higher, under the loosened cuff of his black shirt.
She glanced up and saw him gazing at their joined hands.
Holding her breath, Hermione grabbed Draco’s cuff and pulled his sleeve up to his elbow, revealing the Dark Mark viciously burned into his forearm.
A second later, she collapsed back onto the floor, screaming in terror, her eyes wide and sightless.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CAVE BY THE SEA
Hermione thought she had been prepared. That she was brace and strong. But it was more horrifying than she could have ever imagined.
The Mark looked like it had been seared into Draco’s pale skin with a large brand. Its lines were a deep black edged with the inflamed red of infection. The snake slithered out the skull’s grinning mouth, hideously coiled. Its scales seemed to shimmer and move.
When she looked into the snake’s red eyes, the waking nightmare began.
She went blind and opened her eyes wide, searching for light. Somehow, she knew she was in the depths of a cave, in total blackness. She smelled salt and heard the distant roar of the sea. It was cold, and she was naked. Something slithered over her bare feet. She stumbled back in panic, falling, expecting the impact of hard rock against her spine. Instead, she tumbled into a disorienting softness, like cool cushions.
She sighed in relief. And then her bed began to shift and writhe beneath her. Snakes. She was sinking into a pit of snakes.
They were everywhere. Hundreds of them. They smelled her with their forked tongues and hissed in her ears. They coiled their long bodies against her skin, slithering over her legs and belly. Her breasts. She pressed her thighs together with all her strength and screamed. Her hands clawed the air, hopelessly reaching up, for someone to save her, before she was consumed.
A snake crawled over her eyes. As she shut them, sobbing, a hand caught her wrist.
“Hermione!”
The voice called from a great distance, sounding like an echo. It was Draco.
“Draco, help me!” she cried.
“Hermione!”
She felt a sharp pain as tiny fangs sank into her ankle and then her neck and then everywhere. One hundred vipers struck, piercing her skin and pumping venom into her blood. She was on fire with pain. Her screams became shrieks.
“HERMIONE!”
When she thought she would rather die than bear another second, the pain stopped. Her cries ended on a gasp and then disintegrated into sobs. The snakes were gone, but she shuddered uncontrollably, her skin still crawling with the memory of them. Her eyes were shut so tight her eyelids hurt.
“Hermione, you’re safe now. Open your eyes.”
“Draco?” she whispered.
“I’m here,” he said. She felt his hand in her hair.
“The Mark…” she said.
“I covered it.”
She realized she could see light through her eyelids. She wasn’t in the cave anymore. The weight and warmth of clothes touched her body. She opened her eyes to the late afternoon sunlight in the Divination classroom and found herself lying on a pile of silky pillows, entwined in Draco’s arms like a lover. His face was centimeters from hers, and he gazed at her with raw concern and regret.
“Was it the cave?” he asked.
When she nodded, he groaned and pulled her close to him.
“Hermione, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”
He whispered a dozen apologies against her skin, placing sorrowful kisses on her brow, as his hands tenderly stroked her hair and the curve of her back.
“Forgive me,” he repeated over and over. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Hermione felt as if she had been transported from a nightmare to a dream.
Was this the real Draco Malfoy? Artifice stripped away, arrogance and hatred and schemes forgotten? He was repentant and earnest and sweet. The tremors shaking her finally subsided, and she sighed as her body unclenched and melted against his.
“I’m all right,” she whispered. She touched his chest, through his shirt, and closed her eyes.
She had no idea how long they lay like that. It could have been hours. She might have slept. When she opened her eyes again, the room seemed slightly darker. Draco was looking at her, his gray eyes sad. She felt a pain in her chest, a needle piercing her heart for the choice he had made.
“Draco,” she said. “What have you done?”
He looked down and began to move away from her. On instinct, she curled her hand around the back of his neck. His pale hair was soft and sleek beneath her fingers.
“Please, don’t leave me,” she said. “Not yet.”
Draco complied without hesitation, settling back into the pillows and holding her against him.
She knew it made no sense to stay in his embrace. They hated each other. But despite that, his nearness filled her with an almost narcotic pleasure, strange and soothing. And she was afraid that he would shut down if she let him move away.
So she waited. It was not in her nature to be patient, but somehow, she knew silence was critical now. Finally, Draco began to speak, his eyes cast down.
“I visited my father in Azkaban early in July. He’d only been there a few weeks, but the dementors had already broken him. He… told me to take the Mark, for the family, to regain the favor of the Dark Lord.”
“Told you?” Hermione prompted gently, hearing the hesitation in his words.
Draco glanced at her with a look halfway between admiration and exasperation.
“He begged me to do it,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen him so desperate. He had always been so strong and proud. But I was his only way out. His only way to save himself and all of us.”
He paused and touched a strand of Hermione’s hair, twining the curl around his finger. She realized her braid had become completely unraveled.
“My mother didn’t want me to take the Mark,” he said. “She cares so much for me she was willing to deny my father this hope. But I couldn’t. And I knew it wouldn’t matter anyway. By then, the Brockdale Bridge had fallen. Bones and Vance were dead. The dementors were breeding, and the mist and the cold were everywhere. I could pretend their power, the sense of hopelessness, influenced my decision. But that would be a lie. Voldemort wanted me, and I never had any other choice.”
“Can you cast a Patronus?” Hermione asked softly.
“No,” Draco said. “Dark wizards can’t do that.”
Impulse told her to argue that he wasn’t dark. That there was always choice and hope. But she remained silent again, waiting for him to continue.
“He gave me to Mark on July 15th. The ritual was… horrible. The things I had to do…” He closed his eyes, unable to continue. His jaw was rigid as he fought against some powerful emotion.
“Tell me,” she pressed, knowing he wanted to confess.
“No,” he said forcefully. He opened his eyes and gave her an almost hateful look. “I will never tell you that. I will never tell anyone that.”
He tried to pull away again, but she reached out and kept him close, her hand holding the collar of his shirt. He reached up to untangle her fingers, and she gave a little whimper and entwined her fingers with his. It was devious, but it worked, appealing to Draco’s chivalry. A quality she never would have attributed to him before today.
He was silent for a long moment, holding her hand, before he began to speak again.
“I had the visions,” he said. “The cave and the snakes. And more… it took a day to wake up.”
“A day?” she gasped. “You endured a day of that?” He didn’t answer her.
The cave and the snakes. And more. For hours and hours. How did the nightmare progress? She remembered Harry’s story after his second lesson with Dumbledore, about the Pensieve and Tom Riddle as an orphan and the children he took into the cave by the sea. This is what he did to them, she thought. This was why they were never the same afterward.
“When I regained consciousness,” Draco said, “I had the Dark Mark, and I was a Death Eater.”
He pulled away a third time, and Hermione let him go. She sat up and watched him as he stood, looking a little lost and bewildered. A Death Eater in Trelawney’s nest. A Slytherin telling his darkest secrets to a Gryffindor. It was bewildering to her as well.
He walked back to the red velvet chair and sat down. He wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t finished yet.
Hermione noticed that the low table that had been between them was gone. She saw it, overturned, halfway across the room. She saw her wand near her hand. Sliding it in her back pocket, she stood, walked toward Draco and sat on an ottoman near him.
“Voldemort gave you a mission,” she said. “That’s why there are shadows under your eyes. That’s why you’re here during Christmas break.”
“Yes,” he said. “What do you know about it?”
“Harry, Ron and I followed you to Borgin and Burkes that day we saw you in Diagon Alley. We heard you talking about repairing an object and that its twin was in the shop. That you didn’t want Borgin to sell it.”
“Vanishing cabinets, a pair of them. A broken one is in the Room of Hidden Things. I’ve been trying to repair it. Unsuccessfully.”
“To create a pathway,” Hermione said as a chill ran down her arms. “To let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts.”
As he nodded, she imagined him standing before the tall cabinet as it opened and a line of Death Eaters walking out, in silver masks and hoods. She could see them striding through the dark corridors of the castle at midnight, while children slept in their beds, like some horrible scene from a fairy tale.
“That’s an important mission,” she said. “Voldemort must think highly of you.”
“No,” he said with a bitter laugh. “He doesn’t. My mission has two parts.”
“What else has he ordered you to do?”
Draco looked at her with an intensity that took her breath away.
“Kill Dumbledore,” he said.
Hermione recoiled, her eyes wide. The Vanishing Cabinets, that had been a solid plan. Clever. She’d felt a grudging admiration. But to kill Professor Dumbledore? The enormity of it… It couldn’t be done.
“The opal necklace,” she said. “Katie Bell.”
“Yes.”
“That was stupid,” she snapped. “And dangerous.”
“I know,” he snapped back.
“He wants you to fail,” Hermione whispered. “He wants you to die, as vengeance for your father’s failure at the Ministry.”
Draco nodded, staring at the black sleeve over his left forearm.
“I joke about Dumbledore being a useless, old man,” he said. “But I know it’s not true. That time he saved Potter, in the storm, when he was falling onto the Quidditch pitch…”
”Aresto Momentum,” Hermione said.
“Yes. I’ve never felt so much power resonate from a wizard before. It was - ”
“Electric,” she interrupted, remembering the surge of energy she’d felt hit her sternum like a fist and the static that had raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
“I don’t know anything about electricity,” Draco said. “It felt like he became part of the storm and the lightning and the rain. Like he harnessed all that power in his hands. He didn’t even use a wand. Damn it, Granger…” His voice was bleak and hopeless. “I’m dead.”
This was it.
This was the moment this entire encounter had been leading to. Hermione leaned forward, thankful there was no barrier between them now.
“Draco,” she said. He looked at her, mesmerized by the fierce expression in her eyes. “Professor Dumbledore won’t kill you.”
“He will if I face him. And I have to face him. You don’t understand.”
“Dumbledore would never kill you. Not even then. He can help you.”
“No one can help me,” Draco whispered.
Hermione stood up, walked the three steps between them and dropped to her knees in front of him. He looked down at her with alarm. When she placed her palms on his knees and leaned forward between his legs, he flinched and made a hissing noise, his eyes flaring with fury.
She didn’t care. She didn’t care about his stupid prejudice. That he couldn’t stand to be touched by someone like her, his earlier gallantry forgotten. She would say what needed to be said.
“You can’t believe there’s no hope, or you wouldn’t have told me all of this,” she said, her eyes never wavering from his. “You wouldn’t have shown me the Mark. You came to me because you knew I would try to stop you, and you want to be stopped.”
“No.”
“I can’t unsee of what I’ve seen, Draco.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I won’t!”
Her fingers flexed into the hard muscles of his legs. He moved his left hand over her right, his long fingers lightly encircling her wrist, like a bracelet.
“Hermione.”
He whispered her name without a hint of menace as his grip tightened around her wrist, becoming a vise. She realized he held his wand in his right hand, at ready.
In the moment of shock before she could act, Draco said, “Incarcerous.” With a shower of white sparks, thin cords of silk flew out of his wand and wrapped themselves tightly around her wrists and into a firm knot.
“You fucking snake!” Hermione screamed.
She stumbled backwards, trying to rise, but he stood and grabbed a loose tail of the cord like a leash. With a sharp tug, he pulled her against him and wrapped one strong arm around her waist, trapping her bound hands between them. She struggled, but his hold only tightened, like a constrictor’s. She felt her wand sliding out of her back pocket and watched helplessly as it disappeared into the almost invisible sheath sewn into Draco’s shirt.
“Don’t bother trying to retrieve it,” he said. “There are wards.”
“What are you doing?” she asked furiously.
“The reason I showed you the Mark,” Draco said calmly. “The reason I told you all of this is because I knew I could make you forget it.”
He lifted his wand and placed the sharp tip of it against her temple.
Hermione should have been terrified. She should have begged for him to stop. But instead, a virulent anger burned up her spine. How dare he? When she spoke, it was in the stern voice she’d once used to chastise a giant.
“Draco Lucius Malfoy, don’t you dare Obliviate me!”
Draco looked down at her, his eyebrows raised. The determination in his face had shifted to curiosity. “How do you know my middle name?”
“Oh please, it was either that or Narcissus, since both of your parents are raving egomanics.”
“My mother does not rave,” he said, clearly fighting a smile. “Do you know you are very domineering for a witch who’s tied up?”
“Don’t you laugh at me,” she snapped. “This is very serious. You are talking about my brains!”
“Afraid you’ll get Trolls on your N.E.W.T.s?” he teased.
“Yes! Among other things. You can’t be very good at it.”
“Oh, not good at it?” Draco said defensively. “I’ll have you know I’m very good at it.”
“It’s not taught at Hogwarts.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not taught elsewhere. Not everything is learned in class.”
Hermione realized that sometime during the course of this odd conversation, Draco had removed his wand from her head and placed it back in his shirt pocket, next to hers. His active hand had joined his passive hand, and both were stroking the small of her back. It felt wonderful. Peaceful. Like falling into a soft bed after a long, exhausting day. She resisted the urge to arch her back and press against his body.
She did not resist, however, could not resist, twisting her wrists within their bindings, until she could place her palms against Draco’s chest. She felt his heartbeat against her fingers, a rhythm that grew faster with each passing second. She looked up at him and was surprised to see an ardent heat in his silver eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Because I’ve made a decision.”
“What decision?”
“If I’m going to Obliviate you anyway, with my great talent for Obliviation, I might as well confess everything.”
Hermione blinked in amazement. “How could there possibly be more?”
“I’m a Slytherin,” Draco said, his voice low. “We’re made of secrets.”
And then he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers.
CHAPTER SIX
MADE OF SECRETS
Draco’s kiss was soft and gentle, and Hermione’s eyelids fluttered closed like someone surrendering to sleep and dreams. Anyone who saw them would think the exchange was sweet, almost chaste.
But then they couldn’t have felt what she felt.
His hands against her back, pulling her close against his body, his heat. His heartbeat racing under her bound hands, his erection pressing hard against her stomach. She breathed in his breath and his scent, a seductive smell she couldn’t name, like spice or smoky incense. He tasted like apples. Dizziness surged, invisible, inside her head, and she gripped the front of Draco’s shirt.
She realized, at seventeen, that she’d never been snogged before. Not really. Viktor Krum had been a gentleman, his advances respectful and almost formal. She had pulled away from him, with bashful uncertainty.
The last thing she wanted to do was pull away from Draco. She wanted to surrender completely to this glorious, swaying feeling and curl around him like a vine. If her hands weren’t bound, she would be touching him, her fingers in his soft hair, pulling him closer.
It was like a dream, this kiss and this whole afternoon. Any moment, she would wake up, alone, with a cold cup of tea and the pattern of a pillow’s embroidery imprinted on her cheek.
If she were dreaming, Draco wouldn’t really be a Death Eater. She wouldn’t have to wonder why he was kissing her or analyze her surprising compulsion to kiss him back. She wouldn’t have to realize she had wanted this to happen for much longer than she cared to confess.
“You taste like honey,” Draco murmured against her lips.
“You taste like apples.”
It was too seductive, to pretend this wasn’t real, to dream just a little longer.
Impulsively, Hermione opened her mouth and licked Draco’s bottom lip. He gasped and froze, his entire body tensing. She froze, too, afraid he would push her away.
And then, with a desperate groan, his hands fisted in the back of her jumper, and the kiss grew wild.
Draco’s mouth slanted over Hermione’s, hot and aggressive, his tongue sliding against hers in luscious sweeps. She felt a stab of desire low in her belly and moaned. The sound enflamed Draco. His hands moved over her back, searching, frantic, until he gripped the hair at the nape of her neck and held her hard against his fervent kiss. A violent tremor ran through her.
Draco pulled back suddenly, leaving her gasping. His fingers stroked the little cove behind her ear, and she made a small sound in her throat and shut her eyes. When she opened them, she saw a knowing glint in Draco’s gaze. He had discovered a secret about pleasuring her that even she hadn’t suspected. And he was smirking about it.
“Oh, shut it,” she said.
“You, shut it, Granger. Unless you want to tell me where else you’re so sensitive.”
She was silent.
“No?” he teased. “What about here?”
He touched her chin and then, experimentally, let the pad of his thumb slide very slowly down the center of her throat until it rested in the delicate hollow between her collarbones. She felt warm tingles spread through her but refused to react.
“Or perhaps here,” he murmured, leaning close to place gentle kisses along the curve of her ear.
She shivered and felt him smile. He sucked her earlobe into his mouth, his tongue teasing her pearl earring with slow, wet, wanton circles. She moaned and gripped his shirt even tighter. Tremors raced over her entire body, chasing each other, layering, until she felt as if her skin were shimmering.
“Yes,” he whispered, his breathing rough. “I always dreamed you’d be this responsive.”
He’d always dreamed…
This wasn’t a dream, Hermione thought through a daze of bliss. He is a Death Eater. He almost killed Katie. Harry was right about everything. What am I thinking?
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, pushing away from him. He refused to let her go and held her trapped in the circle of his arms. “Why? You hate me.”
“Hate you?” he said, his voice mocking. He shook his head and seemed to consider something before speaking.
“I’m doing this, Hermione Jean Granger, because my greatest secret is that I’ve wanted you since Fourth Year. Since the night of the Yule Ball.”
Hermione’s eyes widened in shock.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“It’s true,” he said solemnly. “You wore these pearl earrings and periwinkle blue robes with pleats on the sleeves. Your shoes were silver, and you took them off on the stairs when your feet hurt. Your hair was straight and up in a twist with a white ribbon. You were so beautiful. You are so beautiful.”
Hermione had forgotten about the white ribbon. She looked at Draco in amazement.
He continued softly, “I lost my virginity to Pansy that night, in the Astronomy Tower, but when I came, I looked up and I thought of you.”
“Looked up at what?” she asked.
He broke their gaze, looking down, and said, “At the sky.”
At the stars.
That was just the sort of romantic line that a silly girl like Lavender Brown would fall for, after waking up from her swoon over a baby unicorn. But it wasn’t a line. He hadn’t even said it. It was the truth. She could tell by Draco’s downcast eyes and the faint blush staining his face.
Hermione imagined Pansy Parkinson moaning beneath Draco, and a wave of dark jealousy struck her. She had never wanted to rip out that cow’s beautiful hair so much in her life. She wanted to be the one beneath him in that moment. Chilled by winter winds and burning where they were connected. His pale body above her and the stars above him. She wouldn’t have let him look away from her when he came.
Hermione felt a soft gush of wet heat in her knickers and pushed aside all reason.
“Unbind my hands,” she whispered recklessly.
“Don’t tempt me,” he said. “You know I can’t.”
“Draco…”
He kissed her again, to silence her. That was not the right answer. Hermione bit down hard on his lower lip, and Draco jerked back with a hiss.
“Bitch,” he growled, his eyes flaring with excitement.
She tasted a flavor like copper on her tongue and saw a gloss of red on his lips. She’d drawn his so-called pure blood. A thrill coursed through her, and she knew the fire in her eyes was as hot as his.
“Unbind me!”
“No!”
She stood up on her tiptoes, grabbed his shirt and yanked him down to her. Her kiss was as fierce as his had been. She sucked on his bottom lip, licking the blood off and tangling her tongue with his. Draco moaned into her mouth, a tortured sound filled with longing, and his arms crushed her against him. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“Draco, please,” she begged. “I need to touch you.”
He was still for a second, and then Hermione felt a shudder shake his entire body. He roughly pushed her away and grabbed his wand, his decision made.
“Finite!”
With a surge of triumph, Hermione watched the cords twist off her wrists and slither to the floor. She reached for him as he reached for her. They collided with a wild, graceless passion, her arms winding tightly around his shoulders. He bent her back with the force of his kiss, so far that she would fall if his arms released her.
Suddenly, she was falling. One moment, she was lifted up in Draco’s arms, and the next, she lay on a carpet on the floor. He leaned over her, breathing hard and straddling her right thigh. His hand cradled her head.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
She threaded her fingers through the silky hair at the nape of his neck and pulled him down to her. Their lips met eagerly. They kissed until she felt like her bones were melting. Until all her inhibitions were incinerated in the blaze. She arched her body up, demanding more, her thigh pressing boldly against Draco’s erection.
Something inside him snapped. Some restraint that had kept his ardor under control. He pulled back, his chest heaving, and gazed down at Hermione with such scorching sensuality she was surprised her clothes didn’t instantly burst into flames and fall into powdery ash. An instant later, he took action, moving with a Seeker’s speed and confidence. She felt his left leg join his right, sliding between both of hers. His fingers gripped the hook of her knee. He spread her legs wide and lunged forward, with a possessive growl, shoving the ridge of his arousal against the softest, most intimate part of her body.
She should have been appalled by the sound she made. A sort of whimpering sob. But she was mindless with voluptuous sensation and didn’t care. Not when Draco was so beautiful above her, his hair white in the lamplight, a look like adoration in his eyes. Instinctively, she pulled her knees up, opening her femininity to him and creating a cove for his body.
He began to move his hips, grinding his hardness against her. She thrust up to meet him. Even through their clothing, it felt wonderful. Except… his rhythm was too slow. She kept outpacing him.
Frustrated, she finally snapped, “You’re doing it wrong.”
Draco laughed softly. “I am not, you know-it-all virgin.”
He punctuated the end of his sentence with a slow, firm, absolutely exquisite thrust that pushed her several centimeters across the carpet. Hermione threw her head back and sobbed again, her eyelids fluttering shut.
Before she even realized her hair had been pulled tight beneath her shoulder blades, Draco scooped her body up in one arm and swept the long, curly locks out from under her. He tumbled back to the ground with her, claiming her lips with a searing kiss. His hand on her hip, guiding her, he rubbed his erection against her with deliberate possession. She submitted to him this time, moving at his bidding until her motions perfectly complemented his.
Oh, God.
Stunning new sensations bloomed inside her. Like a swoon, except that instead of falling, she was rising, every nerve in her body desperately reaching up for something rapturous.
Her world was reduced to just the two of them, their bodies, their rhythm. His maddening scent. The flavor of his tongue. She felt suffused with fever. An intense trembling deep inside her threatened to spill out as ravishing, little waves made her hips twitch uncontrollably. She needed more. She felt Draco’s hand touch the side of her face.
Insensible, she turned and bit the base of his thumb. Just inside the curve of his lifeline.
“Hermione,” he pleaded, his voice tormented.
It was only one word, her name, not even a question, but she knew what he was asking for. She wanted to give it to him, greedy for all the pleasures he knew about that she did not. It would be so easy. Buttons and zippers undone, a slide of soft, wet fabric. A slide through soft, wet skin…
How would his cock feel deep inside her?
Draco stopped breathing as she reached for the top button of his shirt.
CHAPTER SEVEN
REMEMBER
When Hermione touched the button, a wave of nausea rolled up from her stomach. She smelled salt and heard the sea. Disoriented, she almost closed her eyes, but at the last moment, before darkness, she opened them wide, afraid of being consumed by the black cave.
Draco held himself above her, waiting, his body pressing her into silky pillows. Through the odor of salt, she could smell apples. She wanted him so much. She ached for him.
But she also felt it crawling slowly across her throat, its body long and dry and heavy. All the heat drained out of her. She stared hard at her fingers, holding very still, terrified that if she moved at all she would see the snake.
It’s not real. It’s just a vision. It is not real.
Something tickled the tender skin under the hinge of her jaw and didn’t know what it was.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
She tried to push Draco away, but he resisted. A thrill of panic ran through her. He felt as solid as the castle walls. In the next instant, with a rough sound, he relented, rolling off her and onto his back.
Hermione forced herself to stand quickly, on shaky legs, and move across the room before turning back to look at him. He was still aroused and unashamed of it. He stared with intense concentration at a point on the ceiling as he fought to regain control. She sat down on the edge of the red velvet chair, willing her own racing heart to slow. Her dread was fading.
I understand,” Draco said quietly.
He thought her refusal was about her virginity, and for once in her life, she didn’t correct someone who was wrong.
Long minutes passed without a word. She didn’t know what to say. She should just leave. Finally, Draco broke the awkward silence, turning his gray eyes to her and speaking with a vulnerability that stunned her.
“After the Yule Ball, I watched you in class, in the library, everywhere. I couldn’t help myself. I watched how your mind worked and realized how bloody brilliant you were… how brilliant you are.”
“But you were so awful to me,” she murmured.
“It made me furious, how much I started to admire you. It went against everything I had been taught about what was right and decent - to have respect for a Muggle-born. I couldn’t let you know. I couldn’t let anyone know.”
Hermione had braced herself, expecting to be called a Mudblood and knowing it would hurt more keenly now than ever. She had felt a strange sense of imbalance when he didn’t use the word. Then she realized she couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her that.
“Every time I provoked you, you fought back,” Draco continued. “Every time. Your eyes would flash… You have no idea how much it excites me to fight with you. I’ve been grateful for the fullness of school robes more than once.”
Hermione blushed and bowed her head, letting a cluster of thick curls fall forward to shield her face. She’d felt it too when they fought, that flutter in her stomach, an anxious energy. And then she remembered. Draco had called her a Mudblood months ago, the day she’d seen him at Madam Malkin’s being fitted for his dark green school robes. With his mother to witness the slur. That day seemed like such a long time ago.
This morning seemed like such a long time ago.
“I visited you in the hospital wing,” Draco said softly.
Hermione glanced up at him, astonished. He was sitting up now, his elbow resting casually on one upraised knee.
“After Dolohov cursed me?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Every night, after you were asleep. You looked so pale… My father was already in Azkaban. I hated Potter. I still hate him. And I knew you had fought by his side. But I couldn’t stop myself from needing to see you. I had to know you were all right.”
This was more than a confession of desire.
Draco Malfoy cared for her.
Hermione’s heart gave a painful, little clinch of longing for all the lost possibilities. If he had been taught differently as a child. If he had told her these things before now… It alarmed her how much she might have cared for him, too.
“And this summer,” he said. “In Diagon Alley, when I saw your eye blacked, I wanted to kill the person who’d hit you.”
“You said you wanted to send them flowers.”
“Who hit you, Granger?” Draco said in a quiet, menacing voice.
“A Weasley punching telescope.”
His expression was incredulous for a moment and then he burst into the kind of laughter she had never heard from him before. Free and a little wild. His elegant poise was lost. He looked boyish, and she was enchanted into a smile.
“Then I want to kill that telescope,” he said. “I want to tear it apart.”
“My hero.”
They both grew quiet at Hermione’s words, their smiles fading. The unintentional insult, the irony, was not lost upon either of them. Draco was no hero. Nor was he a pawn, because he had made a choice. He was, in fact, a villain.
He had come to her to confess, and some part of him wanted her to stop him. But in the end, he wouldn’t let her. He wouldn’t have told her any of these secrets unless he planned to make her forget them like a dream lost upon waking.
The room was dim now as the fire flickered low. The lamps glowed. The sky outside the window was deepest blue and winked with the winter night’s first stars, the brightest of which was Sirius. Hermone thought of Sirius Black falling through a veiled archway and disappearing forever. Harry hadn’t told her about the veil but Neville had. She felt weary with a deep sense of sadness and loss.
“You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?” she said.
“I have to,” he answered. He stood up and gave her a lingering look that felt like goodbye.
“Draco, I need to tell you something.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” he interrupted softly.
“No, listen to me. Even if I won’t remember today, you will. Remember that you don’t have to do what Voldemort has ordered you to.”
“Granger, stop it.”
“Go to Dumbledore,” she implored, standing up. “He can protect you. He can protect your mother.”
“And my father?” he challenged.
“I don’t know,” she said desperately. How could she convince him? Was Lucius Malfoy already beyond the help of the Order?
“If anyone has the power to protect him, it’s Dumbledore” she said with confidence. “Aresto Momentum, do you remember?”
He took three steps toward her, agitated, his hands gripped into fists.
“Hermione, you don’t understand. Voldemort would do… unspeakable things to my mother if I defected. He would kill my father. I can’t risk that. They’re my family! I don’t have any choice.”
“You do. There is always a choice.”
“Don’t you dare say there is always hope,” he said viciously.
His face grew hard, and he walked toward her with determination. She could have defended herself if she’d her wand, but without it, she knew it was useless to run. Instead, she faced him with calm defiance and returned his unwavering gaze. She saw a flicker of admiration in his eyes. He quickly extinguished it, stopping so close to her she had to lift her chin to keep eye contact.
“Draco,” she said. Her voice was strong. “Has anyone seen your Mark, other than me and the other Death Eaters?”
If he was surprised by her question, he didn’t show it. His mask of cold control was back.
“My mother,” he answered.
“Did it attack her?”
“No,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
Hermione shivered at the thought of a horrible possibility. Ironic, that Draco and the other Death Eaters were essentially branded, like slaves. And Muggle-borns were not. Yet.
“The Mark didn’t hurt your mother because she’s a pureblood,” she said. “It binds you to Voldemort, but it also identifies Muggle-borns by their reaction to it. It is part of a larger plan. He will order you to find us and commit crimes against us… if he hasn’t already. Atrocious crimes. Enslavement, torture…”
Rape.
Murder.
Draco’s mask splintered. Hermione saw that he remembered her earlier words. He gazed into an unseen distance now, his eyes haunted.
“Draco,” she said firmly. He looked at her. She saw his eyes clear and knew she didn’t have much time.
“I don’t know what Voldemort made you witness or what he made you do,” she said. “But I know this… it is only the beginning. Obliviate me, but when it becomes too much to bear, find the courage to go to Dumbledore. Please.”
Draco reached up with his left hand and tenderly slipped it around her neck to cradle the back of her head. For a moment, she thought Draco would kiss her. He made a fist, instead, gripping her hair tightly, just until it hurt.
For the second time that day, he placed the tip of his wand upon her temple.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
“No,” she said, gazing up at him. “Remember what I’ve said. Remember.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Remember.”
“Silencio.”
Hermione had never been Silenced before. She felt a tingling inside her mouth and then tasted a bittersweet flavor, like dark chocolate, which faded as numbness slid down her throat. Even knowing it was stupid, she opened her mouth to speak. No sound came out.
Remember.
Remember.
She chanted the word over and over in her mind, staring up at Draco with a steadfast intensity, willing him to hear her silent command. She would brand the word into his memory. She would never let him forget it.
Remember.
The tears brimming in her eyes surprised her. Normally, she would have felt a tight heat in her throat before she cried, but the numbness of the Silencing spell must have suppressed it. Her cheek was hot, but the tear rolling down it was strangely cold.
Draco’s eyes widened, looking more silver than ever before.
“Hermione…”
He wiped his thumb across her wet cheek, and she saw, against his skin, that her tear was a luminous white.
She didn’t know how she’d worked the spell. The chanting of the word, the power of her wish. Silenced, she couldn’t tell Draco about bottled memories and Pensieves. The tear was gone, and she didn’t know how to recreate it. Soon, Draco would be gone, too. Lost in darkness and unable to find his way.
Fighting nausea, Hermione took his face in both her hands and pulled his mouth down to hers. She spoke her silent entreaty against his lips until the word became a farewell kiss.
The wand against her head began to shake as Draco’s hand trembled. She pulled back and wrapped her hand around his to steady it, gazing at him, unblinking, as he spoke the incantation.
”Obliviate.”
A flash of blue-green light illuminated Hermione’s face.
”Somnus,” Draco whispered. The light turned purple before fading away.
She fell asleep on her feet, her body swaying. He caught her against him, one large hand on her spine, before gently laying her back into the red velvet chair.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hermione, in her Scourgified boots and Harry’s oversized clothes, watched the scene, enthralled by Draco’s tenderness.
The moment he had cast the memory charm, she had felt a little snap in her chest, like a thread being broken, between her and her younger self. She felt no connection to the rosy-cheeked girl anymore. What happened now was beyond her memory or experience.
She watched Draco’s secret made manifest as he tended to the girl’s comfort. He placed her sock-clad feet on an ottoman, tucked a pillow behind her head and gestured to the fireplace with his wand. Its fire blazed with renewed energy. He retrieved her wand from his pocket and placed it beside her. He retrieved her book from the floor, and after gazing at the black silhouette of a bird on its cover for a long moment, he placed it in her lap. His touch lingered on her knee.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
The sky outside the tower window was black now and glittered with thousands of stars.
Draco leaned down and kissed the sleeping girl, but she didn’t wake from the wizard’s spell. She wouldn’t wake from his spell for almost six years.
Hermione felt herself floating up from the floor. The last thing she saw as she rose out of the Divination classroom was Draco leaning down once more to whisper something in the girl’s ear. And then, they were gone. She was spinning up through freezing blackness, her stomach slowly flipping inside her. With a dizzy lurch, she landed on a stone floor, surrounded by light in the Chamber of Memories.
She was not alone.
Part One | Part Three
Author: captainraychill
Characters: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Prompt Number: # 85
Word Count: ~24,750
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Alternate universe after mid-Book 6/EWE, angst, darker than prompt implies, explicit sexual situations, unabashed romance, infrequent but extreme profanity, alcohol consumption, reference to rape and murder.
Summary: Hermione fills her shopping cart with a jar of honey, a book and a bushel of apples. Why do these things remind her of a certain ferret? Aresto Momentum: a spell which slows down or stops the movement of an object… that which gives you pause and makes you reconsider your path.
Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, etc., this work of art is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to my Beta, you know who you are, for your wonderful input. BF Draco is for you! Thanks also to the Interhouse Mods for your quick answers and generous extensions. And to SnuggleLove54 for the fun and “random” prompt. I think I took it in an odd direction. Hope you like it.
Aresto Momentum (2/3)
CHAPTER FOUR
RECOLLECTION AND DIVINATION
“I said, out,” Hermione snapped.
His only answer was a smile. Her heartbeat stumbled a bit. Malfoy never smiled with good intent. There was always a smirk in it - an insult or insinuation. For some reason, he was smiling at her like a decadent young sultan inspecting a new harem girl, an impression only enhanced by the fact that she lay on a bed of silken pillows. She scrambled up into a sitting position as gracefully as she could.
He walked closer until one of his shiny black shoes almost touched her knee. She refused to squirm away but held her muscles rigidly locked in place as he stared down at her.
“I think I’ll stay,” he said. “I rather like you at my feet.”
She felt a little flutter in her stomach and frowned. This was Draco Malfoy, bully, bigot, ferret. The enemy. Harry actually thought he was a Death Eater, for Merlin’s sake, and even though that was ridiculous, she still shouldn’t be fluttering over him. It was just… she had been the target of his gaze for days. He looked at her across the Great Hall, during meals, as if he were trying to uncover a secret.
She didn’t understand why he had chosen to stay at school during winter break with his father in Azkaban and his mother at home alone. She didn’t understand why he was here right now.
Slowly, seemingly without thought, she pulled her wand out of her pocket and used it to turn the page of her book. She glanced up at Draco. He did not look impressed. He leaned down quickly, making her pulse jump in warning. His hand was reaching for shoulder. Before she could act, the threat was gone. He grabbed an apple off the table instead and took a crunching bite of it as he stepped back. He sat down in a red velvet armchair not two feet away.
Determined to ignore him, she found her place in her book and read, not taking in a single word s he ate her entire apple.
“Going hunting, Granger?” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“To kill a mockingbird.”
“No,” she answered. “In fact, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“What kind of Muggle tripe is that?”
“It means that it’s a sin to destroy the innocent. It’s a theme of the book.” She spoke very clearly as if she were teaching a potentially explosive potion to a dim First Year.
“Must be a difficult concept to grasp,” Draco said. “Since you haven’t turned a page in five minutes.”
“All right, that’s it,” Hermione snapped. She shut the book and slapped it down onto her thigh. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m bored,” he said. “Want to occupy my time?”
“No. And I mean, why are you here at Hogwarts at Christmas? Why do you keep staring at me?”
He answered her with another stare. After a long pause, he said softly, “I have my reasons.” His deep voice sent shivers down her arms.
He held out his hand and, for a wild moment, she had the urge to reach out and take it.
“Accio, Granger’s Muggle book,” Draco said.
To her consternation, the book shot out of her hand and flew into his. Had that been wandless? With relief, she noticed the fingers of his other hand moving smoothly away from the fabric of his shirt, from a hidden pocket or holster. He gazed at her soft, tattered paperback with disdain, opening it and thumbing through the yellowed pages. Hermione took the opportunity to study him.
He was such an arrogant git. Even if his looks might have changed over the summer, that had not. At the start of term, she couldn’t help but notice how attractive he’d become. Tall and strong and graceful. With those pale eyes, like mercury. His white-blond hair fell rakishly over his brow. And his voice…
But as the days grew colder and shorter, he was somehow diminishing. The smudge of gray shadows appeared under his eyes. He’d lost weight, his cheeks grown lean. He spent less time lording over his friends and more time wandering the corridors and grounds alone. She was observant, and she had seen it all.
And now, he was lying. He wasn’t bored at all. There was an edge of need behind his swagger. Hogwarts was nearly empty. He would have had to seek her out to find her. He was here, in this tower, because he wanted something from her. She gazed down at the honey pooled at the bottom of her teacup, surprised at how right this conclusion felt.
What could Draco Malfoy want from her?
“What’s a nickel?” he asked, without looking up from her book.
“Muggle money,” she said. “A small denomination.”
“What’s a chiffarobe?”
“A wardrobe, for storing clothes.”
“What’s a nigger?”
Hermione gasped, and Draco looked up sharply. She couldn’t help her reaction. That word still had the power to shock her. It was the one word that had made her understand how truly awful it was that Draco had called her a Mudblood in Second Year and so many times after that.
“What is it?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“A nigger is a Mudblood,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nigger is a highly insulting term to describe a black person. Very much like the use of the word Mudblood to describe a Muggle-born. “
“What’s wrong with black people?”
“Nothing,” Hermione said pointedly. “But in the Muggle world, prejudice is often a matter of race, of the color of someone’s skin or their religion. For hundreds of years, some white people thought black people were inferior to them, and they used this belief to justify atrocious crimes against them. Enslavement, torture, rape, murder.”
Hermione had expected Malfoy to roll his eyes or mock her or repeat some foul dogma about blood purity. But he didn’t do any of these things. He listened with a growing solemnity, and when she began listing the ways in which blacks had been persecuted, his eyes widened, and he looked away.
She sat forward slightly, in instinctive pursuit. She’d never seen such an unguarded look on Draco’s face before, unless he was angry. Without his mask, for just a moment, she’d seen fear in his eyes.
“The book is about prejudice,” she pressed on, looking directly at him, willing him to look at her. “It’s about the loss of innocence.”
He didn’t look up, but he did lean forward, just as she had. The quality of the silence between them changed, becoming tense and thick with an almost suffocating feeling of things unsaid.
“It’s about dignity and compassion and courage,” she continued. “And doing what’s right even when it’s difficult, even when it seems hopeless.”
Draco looked up at her then and his eyes were cold and hard. “Granger, sometimes it doesn’t seem hopeless. Sometimes it is hopeless. Why fight then?”
“Because you have to,” she said simply.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Evil must be resisted. We have a responsibility to defend the vulnerable.”
“Defend the vulnerable…” he sneered. “You are like… a children’s story.”
“Yes, defend the vulnerable. Pursue justice. Be a force for good.” Hermione felt her face flushing red. “If you can’t understand any of that, I don’t know what to say to you.”
“You’re so naïve, all of you,” Draco cried out, dropping the book as he stood. He stalked away, to the fireplace and stared down at the shifting flames. He gripped the mantle with white knuckles.
“We aren’t naïve,” she said. “We know the dangers.”
“You don’t know anything,” he said fiercely. “You don’t know anything about the danger in this world.”
Hermione was unprepared when Draco suddenly turned and walked toward her with long, aggressive strides. She dropped her teacup as she scrambled to stand. Her wand danced perilously against her fingertips, almost tumbling to the floor, before she steadied it and pointed it at his heart.
The threat didn’t stop him. He pressed forward until, acting on the irrational fear that her wand might puncture his chest, she bent her elbow. He moved quickly, both hands gripping her shoulders and pulling her roughly toward him. Her arms folded between their bodies, her wand now against the pulse in his neck. She knew dozens of spells to cast him away, to regain her power and escape. But she couldn’t make herself say a word.
“Hermione,” Draco said.
Her heart gave a great lurch. He’d never used her given name before. She stared up into his silver eyes, stunned by the desperation in them. His breath came hard and fast.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Would you fight-” His voice cracked, and she watched a blush color his pale cheeks. He closed his eyes. “Would you fight even if you knew you would die?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.
His fingers tightened on her shoulders. They would leave bruises, but she didn’t care. He kept his eyes closed tight, trying to hide whatever storm was raging inside him.
“You and your fucking crusades,” he whispered.
Minutes passed in silence as Hermione stood in Draco’s hard clasp. She feared what he wanted to say. She wondered what to say to him. Slowly, she reached up and touched the side of his face. The contact was electric, and she felt heat and a rush like adrenaline that left her fingertips tingling. Draco opened his eyes, staring at her in shock. Had he felt it too? She stroked her thumb along the shadow cast by his cheekbone. His skin was warm and smooth, shaved hours ago.
“Draco,” she said softly. “What did you come here to say to me?”
He gazed down at her, unblinking, and leaned forward infinitesimally. She smelled a faint scent, like incense, on his skin and grew dizzy. His finger pressed even more painfully into her shoulders. She couldn’t help but wince. That broke the spell. He released her and took a step back, looking down at his hands before dropping them to his sides.
He turned away. The moment was lost. He wouldn’t confide in her. She expected him to leave.
Instead, he walked halfway across the room to a low table ringed by pillows and dropped to his knees. His face wore its mask again, haughty and aristocratic. But through it, she saw a grim, new resolve in his eyes. He slipped a small, silver cuff link from one of the cuffs of his black shirt and laid his hand on the table, palm down.
“I want you to tell my fortune, Granger.”
She stared at him, at his left hand.
Draco was right-handed. She knew this because she always noticed when someone was not. He would never lead with his left unless he had a reason to. Hermione’s heart began to tremble frantically inside her chest.
She could turn away now, leave the room. The coward in her desperately wished to. Instead, she walked slowly toward him, kneeling on the other side of the table. She kept her hands folded together in her lap.
“That’s your passive hand,” she said. “Its reading will tell us your inherent characteristics.”
“I thought you hated Divination.”
“I do. As do you. But I’d read the textbook before I realized that.”
“Of course you did.”
“Your right hand is your active hand,” she continued crisply. “Its reading will tell us about the changes that have occurred in your inherent traits due to conscious action on your part.”
“This one first,” he murmured.
After a pause, she unfolded her hands and reached across the table.
Draco’s hand was much larger than hers. Pale like the rest of him, refined, but also masculine and strong. She knew his hands could bruise and destroy like any brute’s. She also knew they had mastered delicate wand work and complex potion making with a degree of skill and elegance that few students achieved.
She touched the back of his hand and felt a rush of feeling and heat again but refused to look into his eyes. She stroked her fingertips lightly over the pattern of bone under his skin and heard his breathing grow ragged. Her own breathing changed, too. She turned his hand over, and he obeyed her slight touch, his palm raised up now, as if in supplication.
She traced the creases in his palm, the major lines of heart, head, life and fate. Her fingers moved forward, over the border of his wrist, to touch the skin over his faint, blue veins. Blood just like hers, if only he would realize it. Her fingers trailed a centimeter higher, under the loosened cuff of his black shirt.
She glanced up and saw him gazing at their joined hands.
Holding her breath, Hermione grabbed Draco’s cuff and pulled his sleeve up to his elbow, revealing the Dark Mark viciously burned into his forearm.
A second later, she collapsed back onto the floor, screaming in terror, her eyes wide and sightless.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CAVE BY THE SEA
Hermione thought she had been prepared. That she was brace and strong. But it was more horrifying than she could have ever imagined.
The Mark looked like it had been seared into Draco’s pale skin with a large brand. Its lines were a deep black edged with the inflamed red of infection. The snake slithered out the skull’s grinning mouth, hideously coiled. Its scales seemed to shimmer and move.
When she looked into the snake’s red eyes, the waking nightmare began.
She went blind and opened her eyes wide, searching for light. Somehow, she knew she was in the depths of a cave, in total blackness. She smelled salt and heard the distant roar of the sea. It was cold, and she was naked. Something slithered over her bare feet. She stumbled back in panic, falling, expecting the impact of hard rock against her spine. Instead, she tumbled into a disorienting softness, like cool cushions.
She sighed in relief. And then her bed began to shift and writhe beneath her. Snakes. She was sinking into a pit of snakes.
They were everywhere. Hundreds of them. They smelled her with their forked tongues and hissed in her ears. They coiled their long bodies against her skin, slithering over her legs and belly. Her breasts. She pressed her thighs together with all her strength and screamed. Her hands clawed the air, hopelessly reaching up, for someone to save her, before she was consumed.
A snake crawled over her eyes. As she shut them, sobbing, a hand caught her wrist.
“Hermione!”
The voice called from a great distance, sounding like an echo. It was Draco.
“Draco, help me!” she cried.
“Hermione!”
She felt a sharp pain as tiny fangs sank into her ankle and then her neck and then everywhere. One hundred vipers struck, piercing her skin and pumping venom into her blood. She was on fire with pain. Her screams became shrieks.
“HERMIONE!”
When she thought she would rather die than bear another second, the pain stopped. Her cries ended on a gasp and then disintegrated into sobs. The snakes were gone, but she shuddered uncontrollably, her skin still crawling with the memory of them. Her eyes were shut so tight her eyelids hurt.
“Hermione, you’re safe now. Open your eyes.”
“Draco?” she whispered.
“I’m here,” he said. She felt his hand in her hair.
“The Mark…” she said.
“I covered it.”
She realized she could see light through her eyelids. She wasn’t in the cave anymore. The weight and warmth of clothes touched her body. She opened her eyes to the late afternoon sunlight in the Divination classroom and found herself lying on a pile of silky pillows, entwined in Draco’s arms like a lover. His face was centimeters from hers, and he gazed at her with raw concern and regret.
“Was it the cave?” he asked.
When she nodded, he groaned and pulled her close to him.
“Hermione, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”
He whispered a dozen apologies against her skin, placing sorrowful kisses on her brow, as his hands tenderly stroked her hair and the curve of her back.
“Forgive me,” he repeated over and over. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Hermione felt as if she had been transported from a nightmare to a dream.
Was this the real Draco Malfoy? Artifice stripped away, arrogance and hatred and schemes forgotten? He was repentant and earnest and sweet. The tremors shaking her finally subsided, and she sighed as her body unclenched and melted against his.
“I’m all right,” she whispered. She touched his chest, through his shirt, and closed her eyes.
She had no idea how long they lay like that. It could have been hours. She might have slept. When she opened her eyes again, the room seemed slightly darker. Draco was looking at her, his gray eyes sad. She felt a pain in her chest, a needle piercing her heart for the choice he had made.
“Draco,” she said. “What have you done?”
He looked down and began to move away from her. On instinct, she curled her hand around the back of his neck. His pale hair was soft and sleek beneath her fingers.
“Please, don’t leave me,” she said. “Not yet.”
Draco complied without hesitation, settling back into the pillows and holding her against him.
She knew it made no sense to stay in his embrace. They hated each other. But despite that, his nearness filled her with an almost narcotic pleasure, strange and soothing. And she was afraid that he would shut down if she let him move away.
So she waited. It was not in her nature to be patient, but somehow, she knew silence was critical now. Finally, Draco began to speak, his eyes cast down.
“I visited my father in Azkaban early in July. He’d only been there a few weeks, but the dementors had already broken him. He… told me to take the Mark, for the family, to regain the favor of the Dark Lord.”
“Told you?” Hermione prompted gently, hearing the hesitation in his words.
Draco glanced at her with a look halfway between admiration and exasperation.
“He begged me to do it,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen him so desperate. He had always been so strong and proud. But I was his only way out. His only way to save himself and all of us.”
He paused and touched a strand of Hermione’s hair, twining the curl around his finger. She realized her braid had become completely unraveled.
“My mother didn’t want me to take the Mark,” he said. “She cares so much for me she was willing to deny my father this hope. But I couldn’t. And I knew it wouldn’t matter anyway. By then, the Brockdale Bridge had fallen. Bones and Vance were dead. The dementors were breeding, and the mist and the cold were everywhere. I could pretend their power, the sense of hopelessness, influenced my decision. But that would be a lie. Voldemort wanted me, and I never had any other choice.”
“Can you cast a Patronus?” Hermione asked softly.
“No,” Draco said. “Dark wizards can’t do that.”
Impulse told her to argue that he wasn’t dark. That there was always choice and hope. But she remained silent again, waiting for him to continue.
“He gave me to Mark on July 15th. The ritual was… horrible. The things I had to do…” He closed his eyes, unable to continue. His jaw was rigid as he fought against some powerful emotion.
“Tell me,” she pressed, knowing he wanted to confess.
“No,” he said forcefully. He opened his eyes and gave her an almost hateful look. “I will never tell you that. I will never tell anyone that.”
He tried to pull away again, but she reached out and kept him close, her hand holding the collar of his shirt. He reached up to untangle her fingers, and she gave a little whimper and entwined her fingers with his. It was devious, but it worked, appealing to Draco’s chivalry. A quality she never would have attributed to him before today.
He was silent for a long moment, holding her hand, before he began to speak again.
“I had the visions,” he said. “The cave and the snakes. And more… it took a day to wake up.”
“A day?” she gasped. “You endured a day of that?” He didn’t answer her.
The cave and the snakes. And more. For hours and hours. How did the nightmare progress? She remembered Harry’s story after his second lesson with Dumbledore, about the Pensieve and Tom Riddle as an orphan and the children he took into the cave by the sea. This is what he did to them, she thought. This was why they were never the same afterward.
“When I regained consciousness,” Draco said, “I had the Dark Mark, and I was a Death Eater.”
He pulled away a third time, and Hermione let him go. She sat up and watched him as he stood, looking a little lost and bewildered. A Death Eater in Trelawney’s nest. A Slytherin telling his darkest secrets to a Gryffindor. It was bewildering to her as well.
He walked back to the red velvet chair and sat down. He wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t finished yet.
Hermione noticed that the low table that had been between them was gone. She saw it, overturned, halfway across the room. She saw her wand near her hand. Sliding it in her back pocket, she stood, walked toward Draco and sat on an ottoman near him.
“Voldemort gave you a mission,” she said. “That’s why there are shadows under your eyes. That’s why you’re here during Christmas break.”
“Yes,” he said. “What do you know about it?”
“Harry, Ron and I followed you to Borgin and Burkes that day we saw you in Diagon Alley. We heard you talking about repairing an object and that its twin was in the shop. That you didn’t want Borgin to sell it.”
“Vanishing cabinets, a pair of them. A broken one is in the Room of Hidden Things. I’ve been trying to repair it. Unsuccessfully.”
“To create a pathway,” Hermione said as a chill ran down her arms. “To let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts.”
As he nodded, she imagined him standing before the tall cabinet as it opened and a line of Death Eaters walking out, in silver masks and hoods. She could see them striding through the dark corridors of the castle at midnight, while children slept in their beds, like some horrible scene from a fairy tale.
“That’s an important mission,” she said. “Voldemort must think highly of you.”
“No,” he said with a bitter laugh. “He doesn’t. My mission has two parts.”
“What else has he ordered you to do?”
Draco looked at her with an intensity that took her breath away.
“Kill Dumbledore,” he said.
Hermione recoiled, her eyes wide. The Vanishing Cabinets, that had been a solid plan. Clever. She’d felt a grudging admiration. But to kill Professor Dumbledore? The enormity of it… It couldn’t be done.
“The opal necklace,” she said. “Katie Bell.”
“Yes.”
“That was stupid,” she snapped. “And dangerous.”
“I know,” he snapped back.
“He wants you to fail,” Hermione whispered. “He wants you to die, as vengeance for your father’s failure at the Ministry.”
Draco nodded, staring at the black sleeve over his left forearm.
“I joke about Dumbledore being a useless, old man,” he said. “But I know it’s not true. That time he saved Potter, in the storm, when he was falling onto the Quidditch pitch…”
”Aresto Momentum,” Hermione said.
“Yes. I’ve never felt so much power resonate from a wizard before. It was - ”
“Electric,” she interrupted, remembering the surge of energy she’d felt hit her sternum like a fist and the static that had raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
“I don’t know anything about electricity,” Draco said. “It felt like he became part of the storm and the lightning and the rain. Like he harnessed all that power in his hands. He didn’t even use a wand. Damn it, Granger…” His voice was bleak and hopeless. “I’m dead.”
This was it.
This was the moment this entire encounter had been leading to. Hermione leaned forward, thankful there was no barrier between them now.
“Draco,” she said. He looked at her, mesmerized by the fierce expression in her eyes. “Professor Dumbledore won’t kill you.”
“He will if I face him. And I have to face him. You don’t understand.”
“Dumbledore would never kill you. Not even then. He can help you.”
“No one can help me,” Draco whispered.
Hermione stood up, walked the three steps between them and dropped to her knees in front of him. He looked down at her with alarm. When she placed her palms on his knees and leaned forward between his legs, he flinched and made a hissing noise, his eyes flaring with fury.
She didn’t care. She didn’t care about his stupid prejudice. That he couldn’t stand to be touched by someone like her, his earlier gallantry forgotten. She would say what needed to be said.
“You can’t believe there’s no hope, or you wouldn’t have told me all of this,” she said, her eyes never wavering from his. “You wouldn’t have shown me the Mark. You came to me because you knew I would try to stop you, and you want to be stopped.”
“No.”
“I can’t unsee of what I’ve seen, Draco.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I won’t!”
Her fingers flexed into the hard muscles of his legs. He moved his left hand over her right, his long fingers lightly encircling her wrist, like a bracelet.
“Hermione.”
He whispered her name without a hint of menace as his grip tightened around her wrist, becoming a vise. She realized he held his wand in his right hand, at ready.
In the moment of shock before she could act, Draco said, “Incarcerous.” With a shower of white sparks, thin cords of silk flew out of his wand and wrapped themselves tightly around her wrists and into a firm knot.
“You fucking snake!” Hermione screamed.
She stumbled backwards, trying to rise, but he stood and grabbed a loose tail of the cord like a leash. With a sharp tug, he pulled her against him and wrapped one strong arm around her waist, trapping her bound hands between them. She struggled, but his hold only tightened, like a constrictor’s. She felt her wand sliding out of her back pocket and watched helplessly as it disappeared into the almost invisible sheath sewn into Draco’s shirt.
“Don’t bother trying to retrieve it,” he said. “There are wards.”
“What are you doing?” she asked furiously.
“The reason I showed you the Mark,” Draco said calmly. “The reason I told you all of this is because I knew I could make you forget it.”
He lifted his wand and placed the sharp tip of it against her temple.
Hermione should have been terrified. She should have begged for him to stop. But instead, a virulent anger burned up her spine. How dare he? When she spoke, it was in the stern voice she’d once used to chastise a giant.
“Draco Lucius Malfoy, don’t you dare Obliviate me!”
Draco looked down at her, his eyebrows raised. The determination in his face had shifted to curiosity. “How do you know my middle name?”
“Oh please, it was either that or Narcissus, since both of your parents are raving egomanics.”
“My mother does not rave,” he said, clearly fighting a smile. “Do you know you are very domineering for a witch who’s tied up?”
“Don’t you laugh at me,” she snapped. “This is very serious. You are talking about my brains!”
“Afraid you’ll get Trolls on your N.E.W.T.s?” he teased.
“Yes! Among other things. You can’t be very good at it.”
“Oh, not good at it?” Draco said defensively. “I’ll have you know I’m very good at it.”
“It’s not taught at Hogwarts.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not taught elsewhere. Not everything is learned in class.”
Hermione realized that sometime during the course of this odd conversation, Draco had removed his wand from her head and placed it back in his shirt pocket, next to hers. His active hand had joined his passive hand, and both were stroking the small of her back. It felt wonderful. Peaceful. Like falling into a soft bed after a long, exhausting day. She resisted the urge to arch her back and press against his body.
She did not resist, however, could not resist, twisting her wrists within their bindings, until she could place her palms against Draco’s chest. She felt his heartbeat against her fingers, a rhythm that grew faster with each passing second. She looked up at him and was surprised to see an ardent heat in his silver eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Because I’ve made a decision.”
“What decision?”
“If I’m going to Obliviate you anyway, with my great talent for Obliviation, I might as well confess everything.”
Hermione blinked in amazement. “How could there possibly be more?”
“I’m a Slytherin,” Draco said, his voice low. “We’re made of secrets.”
And then he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers.
CHAPTER SIX
MADE OF SECRETS
Draco’s kiss was soft and gentle, and Hermione’s eyelids fluttered closed like someone surrendering to sleep and dreams. Anyone who saw them would think the exchange was sweet, almost chaste.
But then they couldn’t have felt what she felt.
His hands against her back, pulling her close against his body, his heat. His heartbeat racing under her bound hands, his erection pressing hard against her stomach. She breathed in his breath and his scent, a seductive smell she couldn’t name, like spice or smoky incense. He tasted like apples. Dizziness surged, invisible, inside her head, and she gripped the front of Draco’s shirt.
She realized, at seventeen, that she’d never been snogged before. Not really. Viktor Krum had been a gentleman, his advances respectful and almost formal. She had pulled away from him, with bashful uncertainty.
The last thing she wanted to do was pull away from Draco. She wanted to surrender completely to this glorious, swaying feeling and curl around him like a vine. If her hands weren’t bound, she would be touching him, her fingers in his soft hair, pulling him closer.
It was like a dream, this kiss and this whole afternoon. Any moment, she would wake up, alone, with a cold cup of tea and the pattern of a pillow’s embroidery imprinted on her cheek.
If she were dreaming, Draco wouldn’t really be a Death Eater. She wouldn’t have to wonder why he was kissing her or analyze her surprising compulsion to kiss him back. She wouldn’t have to realize she had wanted this to happen for much longer than she cared to confess.
“You taste like honey,” Draco murmured against her lips.
“You taste like apples.”
It was too seductive, to pretend this wasn’t real, to dream just a little longer.
Impulsively, Hermione opened her mouth and licked Draco’s bottom lip. He gasped and froze, his entire body tensing. She froze, too, afraid he would push her away.
And then, with a desperate groan, his hands fisted in the back of her jumper, and the kiss grew wild.
Draco’s mouth slanted over Hermione’s, hot and aggressive, his tongue sliding against hers in luscious sweeps. She felt a stab of desire low in her belly and moaned. The sound enflamed Draco. His hands moved over her back, searching, frantic, until he gripped the hair at the nape of her neck and held her hard against his fervent kiss. A violent tremor ran through her.
Draco pulled back suddenly, leaving her gasping. His fingers stroked the little cove behind her ear, and she made a small sound in her throat and shut her eyes. When she opened them, she saw a knowing glint in Draco’s gaze. He had discovered a secret about pleasuring her that even she hadn’t suspected. And he was smirking about it.
“Oh, shut it,” she said.
“You, shut it, Granger. Unless you want to tell me where else you’re so sensitive.”
She was silent.
“No?” he teased. “What about here?”
He touched her chin and then, experimentally, let the pad of his thumb slide very slowly down the center of her throat until it rested in the delicate hollow between her collarbones. She felt warm tingles spread through her but refused to react.
“Or perhaps here,” he murmured, leaning close to place gentle kisses along the curve of her ear.
She shivered and felt him smile. He sucked her earlobe into his mouth, his tongue teasing her pearl earring with slow, wet, wanton circles. She moaned and gripped his shirt even tighter. Tremors raced over her entire body, chasing each other, layering, until she felt as if her skin were shimmering.
“Yes,” he whispered, his breathing rough. “I always dreamed you’d be this responsive.”
He’d always dreamed…
This wasn’t a dream, Hermione thought through a daze of bliss. He is a Death Eater. He almost killed Katie. Harry was right about everything. What am I thinking?
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, pushing away from him. He refused to let her go and held her trapped in the circle of his arms. “Why? You hate me.”
“Hate you?” he said, his voice mocking. He shook his head and seemed to consider something before speaking.
“I’m doing this, Hermione Jean Granger, because my greatest secret is that I’ve wanted you since Fourth Year. Since the night of the Yule Ball.”
Hermione’s eyes widened in shock.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“It’s true,” he said solemnly. “You wore these pearl earrings and periwinkle blue robes with pleats on the sleeves. Your shoes were silver, and you took them off on the stairs when your feet hurt. Your hair was straight and up in a twist with a white ribbon. You were so beautiful. You are so beautiful.”
Hermione had forgotten about the white ribbon. She looked at Draco in amazement.
He continued softly, “I lost my virginity to Pansy that night, in the Astronomy Tower, but when I came, I looked up and I thought of you.”
“Looked up at what?” she asked.
He broke their gaze, looking down, and said, “At the sky.”
At the stars.
That was just the sort of romantic line that a silly girl like Lavender Brown would fall for, after waking up from her swoon over a baby unicorn. But it wasn’t a line. He hadn’t even said it. It was the truth. She could tell by Draco’s downcast eyes and the faint blush staining his face.
Hermione imagined Pansy Parkinson moaning beneath Draco, and a wave of dark jealousy struck her. She had never wanted to rip out that cow’s beautiful hair so much in her life. She wanted to be the one beneath him in that moment. Chilled by winter winds and burning where they were connected. His pale body above her and the stars above him. She wouldn’t have let him look away from her when he came.
Hermione felt a soft gush of wet heat in her knickers and pushed aside all reason.
“Unbind my hands,” she whispered recklessly.
“Don’t tempt me,” he said. “You know I can’t.”
“Draco…”
He kissed her again, to silence her. That was not the right answer. Hermione bit down hard on his lower lip, and Draco jerked back with a hiss.
“Bitch,” he growled, his eyes flaring with excitement.
She tasted a flavor like copper on her tongue and saw a gloss of red on his lips. She’d drawn his so-called pure blood. A thrill coursed through her, and she knew the fire in her eyes was as hot as his.
“Unbind me!”
“No!”
She stood up on her tiptoes, grabbed his shirt and yanked him down to her. Her kiss was as fierce as his had been. She sucked on his bottom lip, licking the blood off and tangling her tongue with his. Draco moaned into her mouth, a tortured sound filled with longing, and his arms crushed her against him. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“Draco, please,” she begged. “I need to touch you.”
He was still for a second, and then Hermione felt a shudder shake his entire body. He roughly pushed her away and grabbed his wand, his decision made.
“Finite!”
With a surge of triumph, Hermione watched the cords twist off her wrists and slither to the floor. She reached for him as he reached for her. They collided with a wild, graceless passion, her arms winding tightly around his shoulders. He bent her back with the force of his kiss, so far that she would fall if his arms released her.
Suddenly, she was falling. One moment, she was lifted up in Draco’s arms, and the next, she lay on a carpet on the floor. He leaned over her, breathing hard and straddling her right thigh. His hand cradled her head.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
She threaded her fingers through the silky hair at the nape of his neck and pulled him down to her. Their lips met eagerly. They kissed until she felt like her bones were melting. Until all her inhibitions were incinerated in the blaze. She arched her body up, demanding more, her thigh pressing boldly against Draco’s erection.
Something inside him snapped. Some restraint that had kept his ardor under control. He pulled back, his chest heaving, and gazed down at Hermione with such scorching sensuality she was surprised her clothes didn’t instantly burst into flames and fall into powdery ash. An instant later, he took action, moving with a Seeker’s speed and confidence. She felt his left leg join his right, sliding between both of hers. His fingers gripped the hook of her knee. He spread her legs wide and lunged forward, with a possessive growl, shoving the ridge of his arousal against the softest, most intimate part of her body.
She should have been appalled by the sound she made. A sort of whimpering sob. But she was mindless with voluptuous sensation and didn’t care. Not when Draco was so beautiful above her, his hair white in the lamplight, a look like adoration in his eyes. Instinctively, she pulled her knees up, opening her femininity to him and creating a cove for his body.
He began to move his hips, grinding his hardness against her. She thrust up to meet him. Even through their clothing, it felt wonderful. Except… his rhythm was too slow. She kept outpacing him.
Frustrated, she finally snapped, “You’re doing it wrong.”
Draco laughed softly. “I am not, you know-it-all virgin.”
He punctuated the end of his sentence with a slow, firm, absolutely exquisite thrust that pushed her several centimeters across the carpet. Hermione threw her head back and sobbed again, her eyelids fluttering shut.
Before she even realized her hair had been pulled tight beneath her shoulder blades, Draco scooped her body up in one arm and swept the long, curly locks out from under her. He tumbled back to the ground with her, claiming her lips with a searing kiss. His hand on her hip, guiding her, he rubbed his erection against her with deliberate possession. She submitted to him this time, moving at his bidding until her motions perfectly complemented his.
Oh, God.
Stunning new sensations bloomed inside her. Like a swoon, except that instead of falling, she was rising, every nerve in her body desperately reaching up for something rapturous.
Her world was reduced to just the two of them, their bodies, their rhythm. His maddening scent. The flavor of his tongue. She felt suffused with fever. An intense trembling deep inside her threatened to spill out as ravishing, little waves made her hips twitch uncontrollably. She needed more. She felt Draco’s hand touch the side of her face.
Insensible, she turned and bit the base of his thumb. Just inside the curve of his lifeline.
“Hermione,” he pleaded, his voice tormented.
It was only one word, her name, not even a question, but she knew what he was asking for. She wanted to give it to him, greedy for all the pleasures he knew about that she did not. It would be so easy. Buttons and zippers undone, a slide of soft, wet fabric. A slide through soft, wet skin…
How would his cock feel deep inside her?
Draco stopped breathing as she reached for the top button of his shirt.
CHAPTER SEVEN
REMEMBER
When Hermione touched the button, a wave of nausea rolled up from her stomach. She smelled salt and heard the sea. Disoriented, she almost closed her eyes, but at the last moment, before darkness, she opened them wide, afraid of being consumed by the black cave.
Draco held himself above her, waiting, his body pressing her into silky pillows. Through the odor of salt, she could smell apples. She wanted him so much. She ached for him.
But she also felt it crawling slowly across her throat, its body long and dry and heavy. All the heat drained out of her. She stared hard at her fingers, holding very still, terrified that if she moved at all she would see the snake.
It’s not real. It’s just a vision. It is not real.
Something tickled the tender skin under the hinge of her jaw and didn’t know what it was.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
She tried to push Draco away, but he resisted. A thrill of panic ran through her. He felt as solid as the castle walls. In the next instant, with a rough sound, he relented, rolling off her and onto his back.
Hermione forced herself to stand quickly, on shaky legs, and move across the room before turning back to look at him. He was still aroused and unashamed of it. He stared with intense concentration at a point on the ceiling as he fought to regain control. She sat down on the edge of the red velvet chair, willing her own racing heart to slow. Her dread was fading.
I understand,” Draco said quietly.
He thought her refusal was about her virginity, and for once in her life, she didn’t correct someone who was wrong.
Long minutes passed without a word. She didn’t know what to say. She should just leave. Finally, Draco broke the awkward silence, turning his gray eyes to her and speaking with a vulnerability that stunned her.
“After the Yule Ball, I watched you in class, in the library, everywhere. I couldn’t help myself. I watched how your mind worked and realized how bloody brilliant you were… how brilliant you are.”
“But you were so awful to me,” she murmured.
“It made me furious, how much I started to admire you. It went against everything I had been taught about what was right and decent - to have respect for a Muggle-born. I couldn’t let you know. I couldn’t let anyone know.”
Hermione had braced herself, expecting to be called a Mudblood and knowing it would hurt more keenly now than ever. She had felt a strange sense of imbalance when he didn’t use the word. Then she realized she couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her that.
“Every time I provoked you, you fought back,” Draco continued. “Every time. Your eyes would flash… You have no idea how much it excites me to fight with you. I’ve been grateful for the fullness of school robes more than once.”
Hermione blushed and bowed her head, letting a cluster of thick curls fall forward to shield her face. She’d felt it too when they fought, that flutter in her stomach, an anxious energy. And then she remembered. Draco had called her a Mudblood months ago, the day she’d seen him at Madam Malkin’s being fitted for his dark green school robes. With his mother to witness the slur. That day seemed like such a long time ago.
This morning seemed like such a long time ago.
“I visited you in the hospital wing,” Draco said softly.
Hermione glanced up at him, astonished. He was sitting up now, his elbow resting casually on one upraised knee.
“After Dolohov cursed me?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Every night, after you were asleep. You looked so pale… My father was already in Azkaban. I hated Potter. I still hate him. And I knew you had fought by his side. But I couldn’t stop myself from needing to see you. I had to know you were all right.”
This was more than a confession of desire.
Draco Malfoy cared for her.
Hermione’s heart gave a painful, little clinch of longing for all the lost possibilities. If he had been taught differently as a child. If he had told her these things before now… It alarmed her how much she might have cared for him, too.
“And this summer,” he said. “In Diagon Alley, when I saw your eye blacked, I wanted to kill the person who’d hit you.”
“You said you wanted to send them flowers.”
“Who hit you, Granger?” Draco said in a quiet, menacing voice.
“A Weasley punching telescope.”
His expression was incredulous for a moment and then he burst into the kind of laughter she had never heard from him before. Free and a little wild. His elegant poise was lost. He looked boyish, and she was enchanted into a smile.
“Then I want to kill that telescope,” he said. “I want to tear it apart.”
“My hero.”
They both grew quiet at Hermione’s words, their smiles fading. The unintentional insult, the irony, was not lost upon either of them. Draco was no hero. Nor was he a pawn, because he had made a choice. He was, in fact, a villain.
He had come to her to confess, and some part of him wanted her to stop him. But in the end, he wouldn’t let her. He wouldn’t have told her any of these secrets unless he planned to make her forget them like a dream lost upon waking.
The room was dim now as the fire flickered low. The lamps glowed. The sky outside the window was deepest blue and winked with the winter night’s first stars, the brightest of which was Sirius. Hermone thought of Sirius Black falling through a veiled archway and disappearing forever. Harry hadn’t told her about the veil but Neville had. She felt weary with a deep sense of sadness and loss.
“You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?” she said.
“I have to,” he answered. He stood up and gave her a lingering look that felt like goodbye.
“Draco, I need to tell you something.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” he interrupted softly.
“No, listen to me. Even if I won’t remember today, you will. Remember that you don’t have to do what Voldemort has ordered you to.”
“Granger, stop it.”
“Go to Dumbledore,” she implored, standing up. “He can protect you. He can protect your mother.”
“And my father?” he challenged.
“I don’t know,” she said desperately. How could she convince him? Was Lucius Malfoy already beyond the help of the Order?
“If anyone has the power to protect him, it’s Dumbledore” she said with confidence. “Aresto Momentum, do you remember?”
He took three steps toward her, agitated, his hands gripped into fists.
“Hermione, you don’t understand. Voldemort would do… unspeakable things to my mother if I defected. He would kill my father. I can’t risk that. They’re my family! I don’t have any choice.”
“You do. There is always a choice.”
“Don’t you dare say there is always hope,” he said viciously.
His face grew hard, and he walked toward her with determination. She could have defended herself if she’d her wand, but without it, she knew it was useless to run. Instead, she faced him with calm defiance and returned his unwavering gaze. She saw a flicker of admiration in his eyes. He quickly extinguished it, stopping so close to her she had to lift her chin to keep eye contact.
“Draco,” she said. Her voice was strong. “Has anyone seen your Mark, other than me and the other Death Eaters?”
If he was surprised by her question, he didn’t show it. His mask of cold control was back.
“My mother,” he answered.
“Did it attack her?”
“No,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
Hermione shivered at the thought of a horrible possibility. Ironic, that Draco and the other Death Eaters were essentially branded, like slaves. And Muggle-borns were not. Yet.
“The Mark didn’t hurt your mother because she’s a pureblood,” she said. “It binds you to Voldemort, but it also identifies Muggle-borns by their reaction to it. It is part of a larger plan. He will order you to find us and commit crimes against us… if he hasn’t already. Atrocious crimes. Enslavement, torture…”
Rape.
Murder.
Draco’s mask splintered. Hermione saw that he remembered her earlier words. He gazed into an unseen distance now, his eyes haunted.
“Draco,” she said firmly. He looked at her. She saw his eyes clear and knew she didn’t have much time.
“I don’t know what Voldemort made you witness or what he made you do,” she said. “But I know this… it is only the beginning. Obliviate me, but when it becomes too much to bear, find the courage to go to Dumbledore. Please.”
Draco reached up with his left hand and tenderly slipped it around her neck to cradle the back of her head. For a moment, she thought Draco would kiss her. He made a fist, instead, gripping her hair tightly, just until it hurt.
For the second time that day, he placed the tip of his wand upon her temple.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
“No,” she said, gazing up at him. “Remember what I’ve said. Remember.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Remember.”
“Silencio.”
Hermione had never been Silenced before. She felt a tingling inside her mouth and then tasted a bittersweet flavor, like dark chocolate, which faded as numbness slid down her throat. Even knowing it was stupid, she opened her mouth to speak. No sound came out.
Remember.
Remember.
She chanted the word over and over in her mind, staring up at Draco with a steadfast intensity, willing him to hear her silent command. She would brand the word into his memory. She would never let him forget it.
Remember.
The tears brimming in her eyes surprised her. Normally, she would have felt a tight heat in her throat before she cried, but the numbness of the Silencing spell must have suppressed it. Her cheek was hot, but the tear rolling down it was strangely cold.
Draco’s eyes widened, looking more silver than ever before.
“Hermione…”
He wiped his thumb across her wet cheek, and she saw, against his skin, that her tear was a luminous white.
She didn’t know how she’d worked the spell. The chanting of the word, the power of her wish. Silenced, she couldn’t tell Draco about bottled memories and Pensieves. The tear was gone, and she didn’t know how to recreate it. Soon, Draco would be gone, too. Lost in darkness and unable to find his way.
Fighting nausea, Hermione took his face in both her hands and pulled his mouth down to hers. She spoke her silent entreaty against his lips until the word became a farewell kiss.
The wand against her head began to shake as Draco’s hand trembled. She pulled back and wrapped her hand around his to steady it, gazing at him, unblinking, as he spoke the incantation.
”Obliviate.”
A flash of blue-green light illuminated Hermione’s face.
”Somnus,” Draco whispered. The light turned purple before fading away.
She fell asleep on her feet, her body swaying. He caught her against him, one large hand on her spine, before gently laying her back into the red velvet chair.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hermione, in her Scourgified boots and Harry’s oversized clothes, watched the scene, enthralled by Draco’s tenderness.
The moment he had cast the memory charm, she had felt a little snap in her chest, like a thread being broken, between her and her younger self. She felt no connection to the rosy-cheeked girl anymore. What happened now was beyond her memory or experience.
She watched Draco’s secret made manifest as he tended to the girl’s comfort. He placed her sock-clad feet on an ottoman, tucked a pillow behind her head and gestured to the fireplace with his wand. Its fire blazed with renewed energy. He retrieved her wand from his pocket and placed it beside her. He retrieved her book from the floor, and after gazing at the black silhouette of a bird on its cover for a long moment, he placed it in her lap. His touch lingered on her knee.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
The sky outside the tower window was black now and glittered with thousands of stars.
Draco leaned down and kissed the sleeping girl, but she didn’t wake from the wizard’s spell. She wouldn’t wake from his spell for almost six years.
Hermione felt herself floating up from the floor. The last thing she saw as she rose out of the Divination classroom was Draco leaning down once more to whisper something in the girl’s ear. And then, they were gone. She was spinning up through freezing blackness, her stomach slowly flipping inside her. With a dizzy lurch, she landed on a stone floor, surrounded by light in the Chamber of Memories.
She was not alone.
Part One | Part Three