Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling, Michael Ondaatje, and Anthony Minghella own all of it.
Ah, I've finally written another one. As you can tell from the disclaimer, I've borrowed almost direct quotes and some plot themes from The English Patient, mostly the film, because I love it. So... no one cite me for plagiarism because I admit that I used aspects of the movie, got it?
-
Chapter: The Empty Glass
She knows he will cause trouble the moment she sees him walk through the door. He nearly dances towards the table, terribly dashing in his pristine muggle suit, his gait and demeanor deceptively cheerful. His eyes bore hot into her.
Hermione turns her face away.
"I believe I'm rather late," he announces loudly as he casts a tight smile across the room, interrupting what began as a pleasant meal. The near twenty people in the room—people Hermione admires, loves, and in many cases owes her life to—look up from their conversation upon hearing the commotion.
Draco violently drags the chair across from Hermione away from the table and sits regally. His face is so hard and full of angles that Hermione can hardly watch any part of him. When she finally meets his gaze she sees manic vehemence in his eyes.
"Ah, good," Scrimgeour says, breaking the unexplainable tension in the grand room. "We're all here. A toast, then," the Minister pronounces, raising his glass, "to all those who assisted in the defeat of the Dark Lord five years ago. We have assembled in this great and historic hall annually since our victory, and after five years neither the pain of loss nor the joy of triumph have lessened. Wizardkind owes its gratitude to every one of you. To all." A murmuring chorus of affirmation echoes through Hogwarts' Great Hall.
Draco's eyes never leave Hermione's face. Finally, she spares a glance in his direction, and sees the familiar twitch of his jaw, a near-imperceptible flutter beneath his skin. She wills her eyes to plead with him, to keep him from doing what is ruminating in his otherwise stolid expression.
She loses the battle.
"Ah, us," Draco croons, smiling charmingly at those sitting around him. Ron, sitting beside Hermione, furrows his brow. Draco raises his full glass of brandy and downs the whole of it in one swallow before continuing. "Misfits, buggers, muggles, and slags"—this is spat with particular venom towards Hermione—"all of us. Thank Merlin the wizarding population has us at their disposal."
Hermione winces, fighting the urge to cover her face with her hands. Molly Weasley lets out a scandalized, "Mr. Malfoy!"
Playfully, like a joke. "Oops! Terribly sorry, Molly. Mustn't say things like that. Dirty words, filthy words." He smiles horribly, fixed and cold, while his eyes burn into Hermione's.
"Draco, what are you playing at?" asks Ron slowly, watching the other man as if he is a crazed animal. Beneath the table, he places his palm protectively at the small of Hermione's back. She tries not to jump at the touch. Abruptly, Draco stands, his chair bumping against the stone floor. It is only when he stumbles uncharacteristically that Hermione realizes how drunk he is.
"What am I playing at? Oh! I've invented a new dance!" Draco declares loudly, opening his arms widely towards familiar people in the room, all of who stare at him with thinly veiled alarm. This person is so very different from the Draco Malfoy they think they know. "I haven't decided on a name. Who's up for it? Potter? Lovegood?"
"Draco, sit down," commands Harry, his eyes flitting back and forth between Draco and Hermione, whose elbows are nearly supporting her entire weight on the table as she sinks into herself.
To Hermione's horror, Draco begins to hum along to the faint music playing in the background in a disturbingly singsong melody, apparently making up the words on impulse.
"...We'll bathe at Brighton, the fish
we'll frighten when we're in. Your
bathing suit so thin will make the
shellfish grin, fin to fin…
"Very old tune, that one. Those were the words before they were cleaned up." A pause. "Could be a song for you, Mrs. Weasley… with your love of swimming…"
Here his gaze and tone become so violent that it is all Hermione can do not to collapse from embarrassment and revulsion. She looks up sharply in response to his last mocking comment, her eyes shimmering with loathing. "Draco…" She says, quietly pleading with him. Ron, his lips pressed to a thin line, glances between his wife and the apparently deranged Malfoy, attempting without success to put the pieces together.
Harry, who has finally had enough, rises from his seat just as quickly as Draco had moments before and grasps his friend about the elbow, pulling him in to his chair. He hisses viciously into Draco's ear. "Honestly, Malfoy, you're drunk! Either shut up or go home."
Darkly, Draco picks up his napkin and smooths it nobly on his lap. "Absolutely right, shut up. How very improper." He says this almost to himself, finally taking his eyes off Hermione to brood over his empty brandy glass. "Lashings of apologies all around."
Beneath the table, Hermione fiddles with her wedding band, twisting the small stone at its top around and around her finger.
-
Hermione finds Harry in the cloakroom as he is retrieving his jumper.
"Harry…" Her voice is so weak that she thinks he can break it if he moves too quickly. "Harry, I…"
Slowly, Harry walks towards her and encircles her in his arms. "Shhh, 'Mione. It's okay." Hermione allows herself one half-sob, clinging to his collar for a moment. Then she steps back, wiping tears from under her eyes with stiff fingers.
"I don't know w-whether to feel guilty or disgusted," she whispers, staring at the jackets and robes over Harry's shoulder.
Harry pulls her into another brief embrace, rocking slightly. "I'll talk to him. He's upset. I'll make sure he's okay."
"'Mione?"
Hermione starts at the sound of Ron's voice. She gazes at Harry, drinking in his strength, before fishing for a tissue in her pocket and dabbing it across her eyes. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she returns to the revelry.
-
Hermione stands at the bottom of the familiar stairs at Hogwarts' entrance, staring misty-eyed at the lake across the way. The voices and sounds of fond farewells drift away from her ears, leaving her in relative silence.
She feels his eyes on her, burning into the side of her face. She jerks her head around, her gaze zeroing in on his figure tucked darkly behind a cluster of bushes. Her step falters, if for only a moment, before she walks briskly over to his partially concealed form.
"Evening, Mrs. Weasley," he drawls, his voice deceivingly smooth, as she approaches.
"Shut up. What the fuck is wrong with you? Have you completely lost your mind?" she hisses, jabbing him sharply on the shoulder with her forefinger. Despite his inebriation, he does not stumble.
"What's wrong with me?" He begins to laugh, the deep rumble Hermione had once loved in him turning to something awful. Suddenly, he quiets, his expression grave and desperate. "I've watched you, you know. At these bloody functions, these parades of nonsense. How can you smile? As if your life wasn't at your fucking feet waiting to be stomped on." His voice is a low, emphatic growl.
"Leave me alone," she says quietly. He tries to hold her, grasp around her waist and pull her to him, his expression unbearably brittle. She almost hits him, but instead tenses and pushes at his chest. "Stop that. Stop, Draco."
"I want to touch you. I want what belongs to me. You're mine." Slurring slightly, now.
"I am most certainly not." But her voice lacks her usual conviction, for she knows, even now, that it is true. It is true because even as she pushes against his body, a play for release, she wants nothing more than to curl against him and soak his comfort in as she once had.
"You're a frigid bitch," he spits, reading this conflict in her face as if she is a freshly minted page.
Hermione holds his gaze, then, determined and tremulous. Her eyes glaze, prickle, and threaten to spill. But she blinks, and the emotion was gone. Finally, a whisper. "You think you're the only one who feels anything?"
She thrusts his arms away and walks back towards her husband.
-
Later that night, as Hermione is pulling off her stockings and slipping her nightgown over her head:
"I wonder what was up with Malfoy tonight," cautions Ron from his reclining position on the bed, laying the Quidditch catalogue in which he had been engrossed moments before on his lap. "He seemed really unstable."
The hairbrush freezes briefly on Hermione's hair. "I haven't the foggiest."
"It's just odd, you know? He's always so reserved."
Hermione stares at her reflection in the mirror, watching her face grow white and expressionless, a hard mask. "Well, he was drunk, wasn't he? Alcohol can make people act in strange ways." She pushes back the covers of the bed and slides in next to Ron, shivering slightly as the cold sheets skim across her legs. "It's probably best not to think about it. He'll be fine. Embarrassed, but fine."
Ron frowns. "It's not like you to not be worried about someone, especially considering all Malfoy went through in the war."
Hermione turns towards him, smiling even when her lips tremble imperceptibly with the pain of it. "Malfoy's a big boy. He can take care of himself. Besides, Harry said he'd make sure he was all right."
The things she is saying make her feel horrible, as if every part of her has changed. As if he has changed her.
Ron grins at her. "So practical, my love." He reaches out a freckled arm to push her hair, still as long as it had been at Hogwarts, from her shoulder so he can press a reverent kiss to the pale skin. He keeps his hand in her hair, twirling one unraveled curl around his finger. "You have such lovely hair," he says, his eyes changing. He gathers the mass in his hands and fans it out over her shoulders.
Hermione tries to smile, tries to make her voice warm. "No I don't, Ron… it's been the bane of my existence my entire life."
"Well I like it," he declares, playfully petulant. And then, seriously, with a look in his eyes that Hermione both adores and dislikes: "I like you, Hermione…"
She turns towards him, smiling faintly, her heart breaking. "I know."
She kisses him, then, her thoughts on another.
-
A/N: So I began to write this as a one-shot, but I soon realized that this would be a damn long one-shot, so it turned into multiple-shot. It's not going to have that many chapters, but the upcoming ones will explain further some of the things referenced in this chapter (the swimming reference, for one).
I adore the first bit, probably because it comes mostly from The English Patient.
If you haven't seen that film, go directly to a Blockbuster or or whatever and rent it.
In the upcoming chapters more will be explained about Hermione and Draco's relationship and how they got to be where they are. You can probably expect the next chapter out pretty quick, as I've got most of it written already. Don't worry, it will get less and less like The English Patient and more like my own thinking. I just found inspiration for the first scene from the movie, and went from there.