I tried. I honestly did. But it seems that angsty, tragic stories are apparently my forte. So here's another one. It gets better though, promise. The beginning is AU, but it switches back to canon in a bit, or as canon as you can get with a Hermione/Draco relationship set in a timeframe after the books. But you'll see what I mean later on. I hope you like this, please review and tell me what you think.

The inspiration of this story was a music vid on YouTube called Make it Right by Sirrah78. All her videos are fab, I definitely, recommend them!

Hope you like, please review. Istalindar

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"Hey sleepy." Hermione opened her eyes and blinked up at the smiling face of her boyfriend and smiled.

"Why are you awake?" She grumbled. Draco grinned.

"Because it's past ten and we have a class in a little less than forty-five minutes. I thought I'd get a head start in the bathroom."

"Cheater." Hermione muttered, snuggling deeper into the green duvet. She was in his room, in his bed, and she had no inclination to leave. He chuckled, scooping her up, duvet and all, and pulling her into his arms.

"I love you." He whispered. She smiled, lifting her head to nuzzle against his chin.

"I love you too." She replied, breathing deeply. He smelt of soap and aftershave, and behind that was him. His face was smooth after a shave, his skin warm against her cheek. His head bent and his lips found hers and she surrendered willingly to his questing tongue and wandering hands, head falling back as he kissed her throat so her long hair tickled her bare back.

Then he poked her, making her shriek and giggle, ending what had been a very promising moment.

"As much as I'm enjoying this," Draco said, looking down at the woman he had so recently began calling his lover without feeling strange about it, "We don't really have time."

She snorted and he glared.

She was beautiful, he'd thought so since third year. That was, in all fairness, some time after he'd first become friends with Harry, before Sorting, and after he and Harry and Ron had made friends with her, after the troll debacle. The three boys had been careless with what they said, making her cry. And then the troll came, and they'd gone off to save her without even thinking about the consequences. She'd lied to McGonagall to save their skins and since then they'd been friends.

They all grew up, and when third year rolled around, Draco suddenly realised that Hermione was growing up to be quite beautiful. His crush grew, something Harry and Ron noticed instantly, and was the source of endless teasing, though they swore on their wands that they wouldn't tell Hermione. She carried on oblivious.

Fourth year was all about Triwizard, and when Harry and Draco and Ron all quarreled about Harry putting his name in the Cup, even though he swore he didn't, Hermione stood by Harry, and Draco could see that it hurt her to have to take sides, and when she started seeing Krum, it made Draco feel like an idiot. If he hadn't fought with Harry about that stupid cup, and let's face it, there was no way Harry could have put his name in, he could have been at Hermione's side to ensure Krum stayed far far away. But he wasn't and when she turned up at the ball, looking more stunning than he'd ever seen her, he kicked himself.

Repeatedly.

Then there was Cormac McLaggen in sixth year, and it was only Harry's fast talking and Ron's brute force that kept Draco from killing him. And when Hermione demanded to know what the hell was going on with him, Draco froze. He didn't know whether to tell her, and suffer her laughing yet sympathetic refusal or to just ask what she was talking about. His indecision made her glare, and huff before storming off, and earned a slightly sarcastic 'nice one' from Ron later on.

His father had warned him about Weasleys. There were times when Draco wished he'd listened.

In fifth year Harry and Ron and to a certain extent Hermione were all involved in something slightly secret which none of them could say, though Hermione looked apologetic, and then Professor Umbridge came and caused havoc, and they were busy with the DA. Their secret hurt though, and Draco knew it was because of his father. But he would never betray them, he thought he'd proven that again and again. Ultimately, Harry and Hermione had come and cornered him in the library, explaining in hushed tones about the Order of the Pheonix, and then he'd understood. That was the first time Draco had started worrying about the war ahead, and Hermione's part in it. All their parts in it, actually, but hers the most. But he still couldn't explain to her.

It was only when he'd rescued Hermione from Cormac at one of Slughorn's parties and they ended up necking in a supply room cupboard that he finally managed to express, somewhat out of order, that he liked her a lot and he wanted her to date him. Of course, the words were backwards and run into one so he had to repeat himself about three times before she actually understood him, and then there was a moment when she went very still and her eyes widened and he expected the sympathetic rejection.

And then she smiled, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly.

A very good end to a rubbish party.

They started dating and as with all couples, there were awkward moments, moments where they came to within a word of breaking up and moments where life was blissful and there was no one else in the world.

Then the summer before sixth and seventh year.

They'd agreed to take it as it came, one step at a time, trying to keep expectations low because both knew they'd be heartbroken if the other cheated/found someone else/etc so the lower the expectations the easier to fill them. It was lucky, because Draco's father spent the summer indoctrinating his son with the Deatheater propaganda and philosophy and so Draco had very little time to write to any of his friends. And that letter, the same one sent to them all, was very simple.

Don't write, dad's gone psycho. Talk in September. Draco.

It was all he could manage before his dad came in for another 'talk', so there was no time to write a special one for Hermione. When he saw her in September she gave him the cold shoulder, which he understood immediately. And he spent the next week trying to get her to listen to him, if she wouldn't talk.

It took them a further week to be back on speaking terms, a week after that for her to kiss him and a week after that she appeared in his bedroom one night, wrapped in Harry's invisibility cloak and quite nervous. They'd both been virgins that night but they'd managed well enough, and they started sleeping together as they rebuilt a relationship weakened by months away from each other, no contact and suspicious hearts.

It was now just after Christmas, two weeks into the spring term. They were Head Students, with the Head Suite, which allowed them a semblance of privacy. Hermione had admitted that the invisibility cloak had been in case she'd lost her nerve that first time, which made Draco laugh. Hermione never lost her nerve, no matter what it was. Going back in time to save that ruddy Hippogriff which had maimed him in third year, sneaking around for the DA, or even in first year, fighting the challenges for the Philosopher's Stone. She never, ever lost her nerve, even when she was terrified or horrified or bone-achingly sad.

It was one of the things he loved most about her: her strength and determination to do what was right, no matter what.

That and she was quite adventurous in bed. And when she laughed, he knew everything would be fine, no matter how insane his father got or how much homework Snape gave them.

He'd told her he loved her under the mistletoe at Christmas. And she'd laughed that laugh, the one that told him she wasn't laughing at him, she was just genuinely happy, and told him she loved him too.

And life had been blissful since.

But his birthday was coming up, 7th February, and he knew things were going to get messy.

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Draco had finally left her to wander into the shower with a measly twenty minutes to get ready for class, including washing her hair, and so Hermione got to it.

Standing under the hot spray, she couldn't help but wish he was here too. That had been last night's activity: get Draco clean after a particularly muddy Quidditch practice. Of course, it had taken two people, two hours and a good deal of giggling and kissing.

Hermione smiled at the memory, rinsing shampoo out of her hair.

She'd liked him from the start. Even at eleven she could tell he would be handsome when he grew up, either that or he'd go the other way and look like a rat. But handsome had won out, and when she'd first seen Lucius she'd understood Draco's good looks. Still, he hadn't seemed interested in her, and so she spent years trying to hide the fact that she had the hugest crush ever on him. Ginny had repeatedly told her to go for it, but Hermione had hung back. She knew Draco could be particularly sharp, and that his talent for condescension was unsurpassed by almost everyone in the school, besides, of course, Snape, and she hadn't been prepared to face that kind of rejection. Better not to know.

She'd hoped he'd liked her in fourth year, when he got particularly surly and insistently expressed his dislike of Viktor, and Hermione almost flaunted the Romanian in Draco's face, hoping for a reaction. But Draco sulked and in the end she rolled her eyes and got on with it. 'It', however, ended quite sharply when Viktor started hinting heavily about sex, and Hermione got out of there quickly. It wasn't that she was waiting for marriage or anything, she just wanted to be ready. And she wasn't ready. And certainly not with Viktor.

Fifth year had been a nightmare, with Umbridge and the Order and everything else. Harry and Ron and she had discussed telling Draco about the Order extensively but couldn't come to a conclusion. Hermione swore they could trust him, almost with blind faith. Ron didn't want to tell them, because of Lucius. Harry was caught in between; trusting in Draco but wary of Lucius and what he knew Lucius was capable of. The hurt in Draco's eyes almost made Hermione tell him on the spot, but she resisted. Eventually, against Ron's better judgement, they told him.

It was Sixth year, when Hermione had pretty much given up on Draco and every other boy in the school, when McLaggen approached her. He told her she was beautiful, bought her gifts, talked intelligently with her. And then he, too, tried to get her in bed. Draco had rescued her from him at one of Slughorn's parties that he had crashed, grabbing her hand and tugging her through the crowd and out the door. Then Filch had come, and she'd dragged him into the closest broom closet, and almost before she'd shut the door behind them Draco's lips had crashed down on hers, his hands tugging her hips to him and her arms twisting around his neck. And then he'd finally admitted he liked her a lot.

Finally. At last. Hallelujah. Hermione had agreed to date him and off they went.

Then summer. Hermione knew Lucius was a megalomaniac tyrant, Voldemort's right hand, but surely Draco could have managed a quick 'sorry I can't talk, I miss you' along with the perfunctory note they'd all gotten? Either way she spent the summer alternately panicking that he'd died or gone through some painful Dark ritual and angrily condemning him to it. Harry and Ron tried to console her, tried to paint pictures of Draco in the slavish grips of his insane father, unable to do anything and lucky he'd managed even the one note, but it had done little to convince her. And when September came, and he tried to talk to her, she brushed him off, unwilling to hear and let go of her anger at what felt like abandonment.

It took a week for her to stop and listen to him, to the story so similar to what Harry and Ron had described. She didn't want to listen, wanted to still be angry, but she missed him, and his voice reminded her of evenings spent with him and occasionally the others, sat on the carpet in front of the fire of the Room of Requirement. So she listened, and felt her anger draining. But she held on.

Another week before she broke and spoke to him. It was more of a scream, really, as he tumbled from his broom during a mock game with Harry and Ron. He still swore it was nothing, but Hermione only remembered how her heart stopped and she couldn't breathe as she watched him fall, before she was up and running, collapsing by his side onto her knees, tears streaming down her face as she touching his face and hands, checking for a pulse and that he was breathing before his eyes opened and he looked up at her.

"So you're talking to me now, then?" He had asked, and she had cried harder and hugged him tightly, and he had hugged her back and Ron and Harry had headed discreetly back to the castle while the two sat on the Quidditch pitch.

A week after that she had kissed him, and by this point she knew he was getting fed up, but she was still coming to terms with a realization of a different kind. She wasn't mad anymore, hadn't really been angry since she'd heard his account of his summer. She was in love. And it scared the hell out of her. And so she kept her distance, trying to analyse and understand the feeling that made her heart beat faster every time he walked into the room and made her want to touch him whenever she saw him. Eventually she'd caved, dragging him off the path on the way back from Herbology, backing him against a tree and kissing him as deeply as she knew how.

And from that, she knew something else. She was ready.

So a week after that, wrapped in Harry's invisibility cloak as security, she slipped through the bathroom that adjoined their rooms in the Head Suite and with a deep breath, she steadied her nerves, dropped the cloak, and climbed into bed with him, kissing him gently awake with soft lips and roaming hands. He'd gotten the hint rather quickly.

Since then her nights were filled with him and her days were spent cramming her head with information for her NEWTs, six months away and closing. He laughed at her, but she didn't care. And he was used to her by now anyway, they all were. If she hadn't had premature panicky moments they would have been more worried.

Christmas came, bringing with it the feast and party, and it was under the mistletoe there that Draco had said three words that made her possibly the happiest she had ever been. And for about three days, she had floated in the bliss of the knowledge that he loved her. And that she could say it back with the assurance that it was reciprocated. But as soon as it began to fade, she noticed something that he had been trying to hide from her, a darkness in his eyes, a shadow of fear and worry and impending doom. But when she asked, he shook his head, said it was nothing, and distracted her with whatever was closest. But she let the subject drop willingly, watching him instead. His birthday was approaching, he would be eighteen. And his father was a Deatheater. She wasn't stupid, nor was she a victim of denial. As the date grew closer he became more affectionate, telling her he loved her often, but there was an edge to his hugs, a desperation to his kisses, that told her something she didn't want to face.

There would be big trouble. Very big. Maybe so big that they couldn't overcome it.

And there was nothing she could do.

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