Title: Sorry Doesn't Cut It
Category: Romance/Angst, D/Hr
Author: silvermisery

Disclaimer: Let me check…currently the titles are not Draco Malfoy and the Half-Blood Prince, so nope, I guess I don't own Harry Potter.

She stared at him. He was asleep, platinum blond hair spread all over the couch and her shoulders, his face calm and serene as it never was in real life. In the back of her mind, she knew and accepted and was grateful for the trust he gave her by falling asleep in front of her without his wand, his guard totally let down. But all she could think was, sleep. He's asleep. Something she hadn't been able to do for so long, guilt eating away at her and gnawing her insides like a werewolf ravening to be let out. I have to tell him. I can't tell him. I have to.

It was a year now, a year and three months since she'd first met him at the little café down the street and he'd bought her a cappuccino; eleven months since it had stopped becoming a mission and had started becoming real. And she'd been so happy. Six months since she'd started knowing it wouldn't, couldn't last. Lying had never been one of her talents; even when she had been young, and alive, she hadn't been able to convince Borgin and Burkes about that cursed necklace. Already there were small discrepancies popping up everywhere: photos of people he knew, tidbits about his life she shouldn't know, an invisibility cloak in her room, Galleons to spend when she had had none before. They should have—wouldn't have tipped him off; sometimes she thought she might even be hoping that they would, spare her the task of telling him herself. Only he loved her, and he trusted her, and now she was going to shatter it all. She was going to lose it, dammit, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She was trapped.

Not tell him and die of guilt—or lack of sleep, she thought ruefully, tell him and lose him forever. How clever of me, the brightest witch in my year. I have found a path so deep in hell that there is no way I can ever get out.

"Draco?"

"Hmmm?" they had been lying in bed together, their clothes still on but cuddled in each other's arms.

"Do you trust me?"

It was a simple question, so innocuous, but so deadly too. She knew how much it meant—he knew how much it meant.



"I don't know," he said. "I—it's been an ice mask for so long, you know? All ice, covering it—myself, and it's been there so long I don't know whether it's the ice or myself anymore. And I can't get rid of it either—it's part of me for good now. If you try to pull it away I'll just come with it."

"But maybe you don't have to pull it away, Draco. Maybe all you have to do…is melt it."

"Melt it, huh?" he asked with a grin. "And what do I get for it if I do?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said, smiling. "I think I can think of something." And she drew him to her.

And now she was going to shatter it all.

"Draco? Draco, wake up," her voice was hesitant, but it woke him up instantly, traces of sleep still obscuring his eyes, but wide awake nevertheless, a last remaining trait of his days as a Death Eater on the run. Looking at him, she almost stopped, said never mind, her resolve giving out as it had so many times before. But she couldn't. She had to.

"I—I have something to tell you." Her voice faltered as she said it, cracking like a child's.

"Yes?"

At the sound of his voice, she had promised herself—she had sworn she wouldn't cry, but—

"Please, promise me, you have to promise me, don't hate me for this Draco, please, don't—don't let it destroy you, you have to know," a torrent of words, dammed up for so long, came pouring out, and he just sat there and let her cry into his strong shoulder—the shoulder that been there for so long, no matter what—the shoulder that would soon no longer be there.

"I'm a spy for the Order." There. It was out. She couldn't look at his face. "I was ordered to try to get closer to you—to become friends with you." To seduce you, the unspoken words hung in the air heavier than the spoken ones.

"And you did." It was a statement, so painfully obvious. She blushed as she recalled their fevered love-making, the snogging in dark corners, the robes hastily ripped from their body and flushed cheeks and mussed hair afterwards.

"Why?" his voice was calm, controlled. It was not the reaction she had been expecting. She knew how volatile he could become; she had feared curses, hexes—even the Killing Curse, though she had not thought, really, that he could actually bring himself to kill her. It was not the reaction she had feared. It was worse.

."I—Draco, no, don't do this—" her voice, traitor that it was, traitor that it always had been, gave out, and she struggled with words that would not come.

He sighed, a heavy sigh that sounded like the whole weight of the world was upon his shoulders, and she cringed. "Was it ever for real?" he asked. "The kissing? The—relationship? Or was it all just a set-up? Did you ever feel—anything for me?"



She couldn't bring herself to look at him. She knew how much it had cost him to lower his pride like this; he was always the one shying from a relationship, always the one shunning commitment, and now he had practically said that he loved her. Please, she begged mentally, please don't do this to me.

"I see." His voice was cold. "Melting ice, huh? Or did you forget that ice always shatters before it melts?"

"Draco, don't…"

"Don't what? Don't get mad because my whole life for the past four months, my whole life has been a lie?" his voice finally rose slightly.

"I'm sorry…" even as she said it she knew how inadequate they were. What do you say to a man whose trust you have taken away for good?

"Sorry doesn't cut it, Granger," he said, and the sound of his voice as he said her last name was like a wounded animal turning upon the enemy who has cornered it. "Oh, trust me, Draco," he said wildly. "Why can't you trust me, why are you always so uptight? Why can't you be normal? Always the damned trust, huh? What the hell is wrong with you? You think you can move on, I can just move on because you said a fucking sorry?" his voice cracked on the last word.

"I don't know what else to say," she murmured, hating to do this, but knowing she had to.

"You don't know what to say? How about, Malfoy, I hate you? Malfoy, I hope you drop dead? Malfoy, you never mattered to me so you can go hang yourself for all I care?"

"No, Draco, I never meant to—it wasn't like that, I—"

"That's Malfoy to you," he snarled viciously.

"You don't understand," she said desperately.

"What's there to understand? You came here to seduce me, to get me to tell you all about me so you can run and tell Potty and the Weasel, and they can tell the whole world. You did your job. It never meant anything to you. End of story. Happy ending for everybody except the big bad Slytherin."

"No, please, Draco, I swear to God, it wasn't just like that," she pleaded. It sounded so harsh like that. So bare. So unfeeling and cruel. But that's what it was really, all along, wasn't it? Asked a voice that sounded suspiciously like her conscience. All he's doing it is stating in words you were never brave enough to use. Shut up, she thought desperately. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

He just looked at her. Anger was gone—spent in that little exchange of words. It had been an instinctive reaction, really, as he had always done. Anger to cover up the hurt, iciness to cover up wounds. But he could keep it up—couldn't maintain the façade. She had hurt him too deeply.

He stood up.



"Where are you going?" she asked frantically, afraid that if he went out like this he would kill himself or something equally drastic.

"Out," he said, waving his wand as he did so. All his belongings zoomed toward him, and then neatly packed themselves into his suitcase. He picked it up, waved his wand again, and fit the magically shrunk suitcase into his pocket.

"Out where?" her voice grew hysterical.

"Hell if I know," he said, the last tiny flash of anger mingling with his sadness.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again, the only thing she could think of to say, anything to keep him from—what? From hurting himself more than she already had.

Again those eyes flashed before turning that horrible black, devoid of all emotion, devoid of all light. "Sorry doesn't cut it, Hermione." It wasn't anger now, just a terrible resignation, a knowledge that he was never meant to find happiness. A terrible bleak sadness.

She watched numbly as he left, shutting the door carefully behind him.

Sorry doesn't cut it.