Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work of fiction is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
Bond
Author's Notes: This story is now beta'd by doomsday2012, windsword14 & Hunter's Heir. You guys rock!
Chapter 1 by WickedDiSaster
The first conscious feeling Draco remembered was the pull. Hermione defined it as a state of irrational anxiety. The next feeling he could pinpoint was the restlessness.
Truth be told, during his first eleven years of life, whenever he felt it, he took a walk through the large grounds of his Manor. The stroll always took him to the far west corner of the lands, never quite reaching its limits. He could not help snapping with astounding ease whenever anyone dared deny him this; getting himself grounded, however, only enhanced the feeling.
Her anxiety during this period would make her incessant pacing carve holes in her bedroom's carpet. She wasn't allowed to roam the streets of London on a whim by herself – not even the park – since one of her anxiety-driven strolls had once taken her too far.
In that sense, Hogwarts had provided her with the forlorn comfort that only extensive grounds delivered. Yet, the Wizarding School had shown her just as many disappointments. She had harboured so many expectations for this place that the rejection of her peers took a harder toll on her.
When she received the letter, she made herself believe that the awkwardness of her nature rooted on her magical abilities, that all her social inadequacies would mean nothing once she joined her "kind". Oh, how it hit her when she discovered that this new world would make her an outcast not just for her lack of social skills, but for the nature of her background as well.
At her school in London, she had at least learned what to expect. Here, not only was everything new, but her solace – the books – failed to help her cope with the new reality. Hope for what awaited her in Hogwarts had her soaring so high that the fall had made her crumble.
That was how his walks led him to her the first time. She tried to hide her watery eyes with a firm stare on the lake. He felt annoyed with himself for having to fake his disgust at the sight of her, and failing so miserably at it too; but it didn't take him long to take it out on her. He couldn't understand why his restlessness diffused at the sight of her, so he made himself believe the peace that soothed his nerves came from mocking her.
It was never the case, of course.
This first time, he had stopped to rest his back on a tree, as she remained seated a few steps ahead of him. His pride would not allow him to leave just because of a sodding Gryffindor, or so he told himself.
But he first time she encountered him, he was throwing the bag of chocolate frogs his mum had sent him at breakfast. The force of each chucked sweet unable to hide his fury. She threw a rock, making it bounce through the surface of the lake, daring him to make his go farther.
By the time he realised he had started to associate the Mudblood with a sense of comfort, the bickering came back with a vengeance.
It wasn't until summer – when she first learned the secrets behind the Knight Bus – that she found herself on the edges of his Manor. He was crouched on the ground, one arm resting on his knee, his other leg resting on the ground, an expression mirroring her shock plastered on his face.
"What the bloody hell are you doing here?!" he snapped, cornering her like a cat would a mouse on its turf. Hermione gaped like a goldfish.
It took her a second to find her voice, "What are you doing here?!"
"I live here, you stupid Mudblood!"
That new piece of information renewed her shock, making her eyebrows hit her hairline. It couldn't be true. She stared at him in disbelief, turning her gaze to the immense trail of trees and bushes covering their surroundings, not even the glimpse of an entrance, a house or a fancy yard around.
He could see her thoughts written all over her face; he laughed. "But you are too much of a Muggle to see it, aren't you?" he delivered with a derisive sneer, shoving her hand towards the space at his right. He shocked her yet again, when she found wrought iron under her fingers, instead of thin air.
His snicker overshadowed the awakening of her senses, as the view through the large metal door displayed a seemingly endless path behind it.
Draco knew he had just forgotten that his wards stayed set to blind strangers, but he enjoyed his mockery nonetheless. That is, until the hurt and insecurity invaded her senses and Draco's already tampered mood dropped to disbelieving lows thanks to his unyielding restlessness.
He turned her around with a raging mood, grabbed her by the arm and growled in a threatening voice: "What are you doing here?" Although he already knew why – he was anything but thick – and these absurd encounters had happened far too many times at school for him to blame it on simple coincidence. Her presence there was almost like a howler confirming his fears.
She opened her mouth to speak, unable to manage one single word, trying to get her bearings back, when the sound of people approaching interrupted them. With reflexes quicker than her sight, he made a cut on her hand and shoved her through the doors that melted into thin air before she could see where her drop of blood had marred it. The iron gates let them through, and instead of following the endless path ahead, he delved into the forest surrounding it, finding an untraceable track through the thick forest. It could have been a shortcut or an attempt to drag her deeper into its darkness.
He ran pulling her behind him as fast as he could for what felt like ages, until they reached another edge, and Hermione faced the most spectacular view she had ever imagined. His mansion was truly astonishing.
He didn't let her gawk at it, though; he pulled her behind a bush, drawing a finger to his lips, signalling her to keep quiet. Draco summoned an elf on the other side of a bush and commanded him to bring his broom. Hermione could hear people approaching through the path of the railing door, but before she could so much as voice it, he pulled her up to mount the broom. The next second, it soared through one of the windows.
That was the first time Hermione would find herself in his room. He yelled at her for being there, she roared he had all but kidnapped her, and he started ranting about how it was all her fault. She sighed in frustration, opened up his window, and checking for marauders outside, she climbed down through one of the plants and rails decorating the facade.
Right about midway down, he appeared on his broom, asking her – in what he thought were whispers – what the hell did she think she was doing.
She ignored him as best as she could, until her patience got the best of her.
"I'm leaving! What does it look like, Malfoy? You obviously don't want me here. And you can bet your life on it, I don't want to be here either!" She landed on her feet and marched towards the path that led to the entrance door, leaving behind a fuming Draco Malfoy.
Getting out of his property proved easier than she had thought, even though Malfoy yanked her back through the trail they had taken to enter. The wards let her come through without a problem after the obnoxious git had shed her blood that afternoon.
He never explained why they ran off from his father in that manner, but he did make her vow that she would never breathe a word of what had happened that day.
She was more than happy to oblige.
The next year, the way they lashed at each other did very little to sever their connection. Nevertheless, although they hurt each other deeply, they discovered yet another way to relieve both of their pent up frustration.
The first time they kissed, it was the middle of second year, and they were in an empty hall. The kiss ended as suddenly as it begun, and did nothing to diffuse the rage behind their bickering. Especially when the shock of being shoved against a wall with his lips against hers, turned into awareness and awareness turned into a battle for dominance.
As time went on, however, their private fights would somehow have a way of finishing in a snogging session; and more frequently than not, the snogging feast would fail to end as abruptly as it began. It finished, instead, in a heaving contest of silence for who caught their breath back first. They learned to drag this as well, for as long as they could.
With time, these extended moments turned into quiet periods of solace, after which they left the bickering aside, exclusive for their public displays; a silent agreement that soon carried a distinct amount of secret mockery, becoming more endearing rather than spiteful.
Mudblood and Obnoxious Git could have been pet-names for all they knew. Smirks and secret winks were met with a roll of her eyes and a light blush.
They never talked about it, never arranged a meeting, and never failed to attend one. When one-half was in need, the other one was in need of assisting to it. Time turned their senses more acute, making them distinguish desire from ache, not just by the angst behind the welcoming lips, but for the nature of the pull as well.
They never asked the whys or the hows; they comforted each other with their mere presence, their soft whispers and their light touches.
A year later, he surprised her by moving below her waist, while she chanted his name first in astonishment, and then in a reverie. He kissed her in places he had never touched her before. He enjoyed the way he could make her blush just by licking his lips. He would not miss an opportunity to have her thrashing underneath his touches when his fuming temper attracted her to his chambers.
They still had spectacular rows, especially each time she landed herself in the Hospital Wing.
During the summer before fourth year, while he ranted about his father at Malfoy Manor, she stopped his endless pacing with a stubborn pull on his forearm. She sat him on his bed with her in front, giving him a secure and sympathetic stare that he only allowed from her. "It doesn't matter, Draco," she whispered, "the entire world could abandon you and judge you; I know better. I would always come to pick up the pieces. You'll never be alone. I'm helpless to leave you – and Draco – I don't ever want to leave you."
He wanted to deny that was ever the issue, wanted to yell at her for insinuating it in the first place, but her next words shut him up effectively.
"I am in love with you, I can't stop myself from loving you, and I'm not trying to-"
His bruising kiss could have ended wars. His kisses tended to silence her where his words could not, and this one was not different. It silenced her threatening words and stopped him from thinking himself, a kiss that would inevitably brand her as his.
He failed to stop when she fell on the bed, he continued through the empowered rush of her body beneath his own; he never stopped. He never stopped pouring his pent-up fury for crossing that unspeakable line, for making him feel the way he did.
All the while, she showed him the sincerity of her words, taking his wrath in a stride through her unyielding tenderness.
That was how he took her virginity, and how he learned to be amazed by her; that was the first time he was crushed by her complete trust of him, the first time her beauty rendered him speechless.
She was the first one to break the silence with a tired yawn, her perspiring body limbered up under the sheets, his sheets. She wore the most breath-taking smile he had ever seen.
Her knowing eyes looked at his terrified expression with wonder. "I don't want to leave," she sighed, and it took him a while to understand that meant she 'had' to leave, as she got up from the bed, drawing the sheet around her shape.
He stopped her with a firm grip around her wrist that made her turn her attentive eyes to him. "Then don't," he said, plain and clear, with the most stoic voice he could muster.
She caressed his hand with light fingers, her troubled eyes focused on his hold. "If only," she whispered and kissed him with all her desire to stay. He felt a tear running down the side of her lips, and understood. The gnawing thoughts lurking in her mind were not about being late home but about his father. He tensed at the thought. She smiled in his lips, running a finger through his cheek. She gave him a smile that in his opinion paralleled the sunshine on warm spring days.
"Hey, we'll see each other soon enough, I know it," she had murmured.
The peck on his bare chest before she climbed down his window left him rooted to the spot for what felt like ages. She had disappeared long ago from his lands when he removed himself from the window. After that night, he ordered his elves not to touch his sheets for a week.
The next time they did it, it took him five minutes to follow her after she left his Manor. The smile that she wore when the Knight Bus turned around and he climbed up made him feel like Merlin himself. She was so fidgety during the ride that he could see the people seated next to her throwing odd glances her way.
To his surprise, they didn't stop at her place, where he had been known to land himself in many occasions, but a good five blocks away, at a park he had never seen before. She jumped and hugged him as soon as he stepped foot on solid ground, with an ecstatic "Draco!"
He couldn't help his smirk. "In the flesh." She hit him on the arm, unable to hold her dashing smile, muttering something he couldn't quite place.
"I thought we were going to your place," he muttered, trying to hide his qualms on this regard. As if he could hide anything from her.
"We are," she cheekily replied, "I just found the Knight Bus entirely too fast for my liking." She took a hold of his arm and prodded him to walk with her.
"Is that so?" he raised an eyebrow, and watched her smile die on her lips as something ahead of them caught her attention. "What is it?" he asked, but the answer came in the form of a shrilly, girly voice down the street.
"Is that Hermione Granger?" he heard. "Yes, yes it is!" the voice continued. "Fell off the face of the planet; that one did!" Another girly voice added, "You scared her away, Mandy, you did, remember?"
Draco raised his cold stare to meet their faces, looking at the devious smile said Mandy portrayed as she answered in the same shrilly voice, "Well, I suppose I did."
"In your dreams, McDonally! I simply went to a boarding school," Hermione snapped.
"And what a boarding school it must be, if the best this pumpkin could find was you." Mandy smiled flirtatiously at Draco, "What an ugly camp of shrews, darling, if you think you can conform with 'this' – she looked at Hermione – for a girlfriend."
At first, Draco had controlled his rage with thoughts of what he'd do to them if the Ministry wasn't an issue. His snapping rebuff, though, fell muted by the sound of the word girlfriend, making him barely notice the insolent Muggle running her hands down his chest.
He did feel, nonetheless, the wave of hurt both his reaction to the word and his lack of response brought to the shaking girl on his left.
He didn't even hear Hermione's snapping remark to the petty chit, he felt too distracted by the way she had removed her arm from his, as if he'd just burned her. She now stood a step ahead from him, blocking the hurt through glares of contempt to the owner of the hand that, he then noticed, still rested on his coat. He snapped.
The world became alive and loud with traffic sounds again, and he restrained from twisting the Muggle's hand while he removed it from his robes. "I don't care who you are, and I don't care what your issues are," Draco sneered, "if you ever so much as look at my girlfriend the wrong way, I will make you wish you hadn't been born." He looked at her with disgust, "And if you ever put your hands on me again, you will lose them." As soon as he let her go, the chits hurried away, barely concealing their fright.
He stared at a stunned shape of the girl who, mere seconds ago, had been glowing at the sight of him, and now didn't dare a look in his direction.
He ached to Crucio the chits running fast across the street. He would have done so if not for the pull that made him gravitate to her, the pull that currently rooted him to the ground, to the thirty centimetres separating him from her as she hugged herself, holding together the pieces that formed her.
She had felt how estranged that word felt on his lips. Girlfriend was not in his vocabulary, girlfriend was not in his plans, it was not what they were, and know-it-all that she was, she knew it with palpable clarity.
It didn't matter that he had just defended her from two dim-witted Muggles, defining her as such. It didn't matter that, for a split second, that word made her exhale the breath she was holding; it didn't matter because, the next second, she had felt how that word made him feel. How defining them made him feel.
It was enough to send the wheels reeling in her mind. He knew she was certain that such a scene wouldn't repeat itself in Hogwarts grounds. He knew that despite what she had given him less than an hour ago, he couldn't turn his back on his beliefs, on his family, on everything that he was.
She was petrified – he could feel it; and the thirty centimetres of air separating her from him felt like a wall of bricks restraining him to move. Because she was the one with the reassuring words, she was the one with the heart on her sleeve; she was the one strong enough to voice what he could not even dream about.
She was shaking, and the gravitating force that pulled him to her now stopped him from moving closer as well. She was shaking and breathing heavily, as he felt the weight of the world crushing on his shoulders. He could feel how she tried to keep it down, how she tried to stop her heart from breaking.
He could feel it in each intake of breath she took that failed to calm her.
Until he saw, he saw the tear hit the sleeve of her shirt while she hugged herself tighter, and something cracked inside him, petrifying him from the inside out.
He pulled her towards him with all his might, and kissed every part of her head he could reach. When he finally pulled her face up, he found it covered in tears that kept flowing from her closed eyes.
He could feel her breathing ease on his arms, but the sight of her broke him. She couldn't, she couldn't look at him and it terrified him. Because he knew he hurt her, that he would continue to hurt her; he knew it was the smart thing to leave him, and he was holding the smartest witch in his year.
Then the weight of her words finally settled in, filling him with dread.
"You said you wouldn't leave me," he said, surprising himself with the raw sound of his voice.
It felt as a testament to her pain that she had to nod to his assessment, because words were too much for her.
"Never," Draco pressed on, and heard her take a gulp of air before she whispered in a gruff voice.
"Never, Draco, never," and he felt her try to hide her face in his chest because another wave of tears threatened to pour, but he didn't let her. It was enough that she would not dare look at him.
"Promise it, no matter what happens, no matter how I screw up, you said you would be there."
She smiled at him – a weak smile – but the ghost of a smile nonetheless. "Always," she said solemnly, taking another deep breath, before continuing, "You don't need to worry about that, Draco, a hoard of Death Eaters couldn't stop me from coming to you." She took another breath and opened her eyes, "I can't leave you."
And Draco saw the truth of her words in her eyes, and how said truth cracked her open, because it would be Draco who'd leave her broken.
He wanted to yell at her it wasn't so, wanted to scream at her for figuring it out, but it was just that; she had figured it out because it was true, and despite her knowledge, despite her crushing certainty, she had chosen to stay by him, to stay true to him. Because he knew she had been honest, and he couldn't bring himself to lie to her after that.
He walked her home and snuck into her bedroom, where he held her throughout the night, kissing her, hugging her, holding her, and watching her sleep. Doing all those things he wouldn't do when they came back, including waking her up to say goodbye, and giving her his ring on a chain wrapped around her neck.
He visited her many more times during that summer, and it would be the last summer she stepped foot on his property without being turned into a bloody mess, or being dragged at wand point.