/ So this is the start of a story I've been thinking about for a little while. I'm not sure if I'll continue it or not, so please let me know what you think about it.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: DOMESTIC ABUSE, SELF-HARM, ALCOHOL ABUSE
(none will be explicitly described as events but will be commented on/mentioned/insinuated/etc.) /
She loved him, but he took her stars out of the sky.
She was never one to talk about herself, never one to brag. But even she couldn't help but acknowledge the fact that she got some sort of perverse satisfaction from being the smartest witch in the room.
And he got a perverse satisfaction from taking away her will until she could no longer think for herself, until he was the only one that mattered, until he could completely and irrevocably control her.
Well, maybe not quite irrevocably. She was so attuned to his every move, so used to his various outbreaks, that she accepted them and even embraced them as a part of who he was – a part of someone whom she convinced herself that she had fallen in love with. He would treat her with such reverence when he was around her that she couldn't help but adore him. He was so sweet when he caressed her face before they kissed and when he told her that he loved her. He was so nice when he mentioned that other girls were coming onto him and that he's loved others before. He was so caring when he had sex with her and then left as soon as he finished.
Right?
It might be more accurate to say that even though he took her stars out of the sky, he was the one who put them there in the first place.
At least she was convinced.
Everyone said she was so smart.
Everyone.
No one would expect her to fall into something so deeply without any thought for what could potentially happen.
No one would expect that she, a known to be strong-willed woman, would allow someone to treat her the way he had.
No one would expect that of Hermione Granger.
And no one would expect that of Ronald Weasley.
But certainly no one would expect Fred Weasley to end up in the middle of all of it, of so large and elaborate a secret that even Harry Potter was not aware.
It was in her seventh year that everything went to absolute hell. Hermione, along with her two best friends, had returned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in order to actually attend and complete their seventh year after the war. Many other students from their grade returned as well, creating so large a class that they were dubbed 'the eighth year'. Mrs. Weasley had also convinced the twins to return with the eighth year, and by convinced it was a picturesque Sunday morning which involved a lot of apparating and threats with wooden spoons before they finally acquiesced. They did mostly to appease their mother, having already been owners of a highly successful business – they could afford to take a year off after the war while their workers ran the shop.
The eighth years were given special privileges – most if not all of them being of adult age – and were not confined to the castle, and nor were they expected to be in their common room by a specific curfew. They were only expected to attend their classes and have passing marks, otherwise they were given free range of the school. They even had their own common room and bedrooms, each eighth year having their own bedroom as opposed to sharing a room with four other people of the same sex.
It was under these circumstances that Hermione Granger found herself lying on the floor of the astronomy tower looking up at the stars at two in the morning, books laying forgotten next to her and a lit cigarette between her lips. As the smoke curled in the chilly October air away from her warming charm she saw a figure emerge in the opening to the tower. "What are you doing here at this hour, Draco?" She asked without checking to make sure it was him, she just knew.
"The same thing you're doing, I'd imagine, Granger." He replied without missing a beat, letting himself fall onto the floor next to her and swiping a cigarette from the pack somewhere behind her head.
She gave him a wry smile without looking away from the stars, "Contemplating the futility of life?"
He looked at her with a frown, cigarette posed perfectly between his left index and middle fingers. He stuck it between his lips and leaned over her, pressing the end of his unlit cigarette to the end of her lit one, taking a few drags. Her whiskey eyes forcefully concentrated on him and in them he saw her pain. He sighed as it took and he blew a small puff of smoke above her face. "You've let him hurt you again, haven't you?" His voice and body were weary as he lay next to her, allowing her to enter her mind once more.
He didn't miss her slight shiver and the brush of her fingertips on her left shoulder. "I love him." She said simply.
"That's not an answer to my question and you fucking know it." Draco snapped, leaning up on one elbow. He grabbed her chin in his hand and forced her to make eye contact as she flicked the finished cigarette away. "How he treats you is not okay. Our relationship is not okay. None of this is okay, Granger." He shakily took another drag. "We're so fucked up and everything is not okay."
She gave him a watery smile as she trailed her fingertips over his chin. "Who says everything has to be okay?" He closed his eyes and put the cigarette to his lips one last time as she pulled him closer by the back of his neck. "Who says that everything can be okay?" He flicked the butt away - they were so close her lips were brushing up against his. "We make each other forget. That's our thing. Don't ruin it." She kissed him and he exhaled the smoke into her lungs. His gentle hands soothed away the pain of Ron's rough ones as the cancerous toxins ripped through her system like morphine.
Draco and Hermione had developed an odd relationship when he found himself and Blaise as the only two seventh year Slytherins returning after the war. Draco had never truly believed in Voldemort's cause, and his family's efforts in the final battle proved his loyalty enough to Hermione. Regardless of what ended up happening, most of the students were relentlessly cruel to the two until Hermione sat next to them in lunch one day and struck up conversation. She found out she had much more in common with the boy with the platinum hair and tempest eyes than she originally thought. They were both severely fucked up in their own ways. Hermione had allowed Ronald to break her until she knew she didn't love him but was convinced otherwise. Draco had been controlled all of his life until he snapped and took control of the one thing that he could – his own body.
Draco made Hermione forget her bruises and emotional scars. And Hermione made Draco forget the liquor in his closet and the cuts running down his perfect, pale arms.
That was it, they had no real emotion between them beside the kinship of understanding. Both of them knew what it felt like to be blamed for being something that you couldn't help but be, and both of them knew the horrors of the war. They chose to forget their troubles in the form of each other on the astronomy tower in the middle of the night. They cared for each other enough to protect each other from the cruelty of others, to try as hard as they could to ensure that the other didn't have to face any more horror in their life.
That was why Draco sometimes wished Ronald would come up to the astronomy tower one night while they were there, just so he could have the satisfaction of pushing him over. Normally he would care that Hermione was technically cheating on Ron while she was with him, but because he knew what he did to her, and also what he did to other females that Hermione had no idea about, he no longer felt bad about the affair.
When they were satisfied for the night, clothes completely shed and skin glistening in the moonlight and the glow of newly lit cigarettes, someone did stumble upon them.
Unfortunately, it was not Ron – it was Fred Weasley. His eyes were full of mischief that told of pranks to be played on the couple caught.
"Hermione..?" He asked, astounded at first. That wonder soon turned to rage. "Hermione, what the actual fuck is going on here."
She took a drag, not bothering to put anything on while Draco had at least enough decency to quickly throw his underwear back on. "What does it look like, Fred?" She asked through her smoke.
Fred was slowly getting redder and redder, "It looks like you just cheated on my brother – your boyfriend - with Draco fucking Malfoy. Do you have an explanation or should I just go tell everyone right now?"
"Please go tell everyone, Weasley." Draco chuckled, looking up at him for the first time. "It would be a blessing for Hermione if Ronald broke up with her."
"It would be a blessing if I didn't punch you right here and now, Malfoy." Fred spit out at him, glaring for all he was worth.
Draco lowered himself back down to the stone next to Hermione. "Why don't you actually take a good look at her Weasley, and then maybe you'll understand what's been going on."
Fred, infuriated, was hopelessly confused at Draco's wording. "What's been going on?" He mumbled to himself, blue eyes scanning over the naked, and admittedly gorgeous, Hermione. He first looked at her small, perky breasts, like most men would, but he couldn't find any fault with them. As his eyes trailed lower he noticed dark yellowing directly under her breasts that slowly got worse until he saw a large dark purple bruise on her left ribcage from which the surrounding yellowing was coming. He gasped and moved slightly closer, eyes trailing down farther and seeing more yellowing around her thighs – the yellowing of faded bruises, along with a bright purple one on the outside of her right thigh. Her knees were both so badly bruised and scraped up they were unrecognizable as knees. He moved back up to her neck, where he could see faint bruises matching the mark of fingers, another dark bruise had blossomed on her right collarbone and the faded ones continued down her arms where he finally noticed that her hand was in Draco's as she was lightly trembling. When he finally looked at her face her eyes closed quietly as tears started to fall. "Hermione?" He questioned, no longer angry but afraid.
"Now do you realize what your brother's been doing to her? What she's let him to do her?" Draco snapped at him, becoming protective of Hermione very quickly. He looked over at Hermione and knew she needed to go be alone. "C'mon Hermione, let's get dressed and I'll walk you to your rooms."
As they both shuffled into their respective clothing, cigarette butts flicked away into the night, Fred stood there silently. "Malfoy, what happened to your arms?"
Draco froze as he was buttoning up his shirt. "Don't worry about it, Weasley." He glanced at Hermione, who was gathering her things. "Worry about Granger, she's the one who needs it."
Hermione looked up and her eyes flashed. "I'm perfectly fine by myself, Draco."
Draco laughed once without humor. "Yeah, you're not fine until you stop needing me and these," he grabbed her pack of cigarettes, "to forget everything that's hurt you in your life."
She snatched them out of his hand and shoved them into her bag with the rest of her things, face burning. "I'm fine." She insisted.
Hermione rushed out of the tower before either man could get a word in edgewise. Draco looked up at Fred with sad, pleading eyes. "Look, Weasley, I know you owe me nothing, but you've considered that girl to be family for years." He swallowed and looked away for a moment, as if considering what he was about to say. "Just please don't risk that happening again by telling your pig of a brother before we can figure out how to keep her safe."
Fred nodded once, succinctly.
Draco nodded in return before running down the stairs after Hermione, leaving Fred alone in the astronomy tower with nothing but the stars for company. For the first time in his life, Fred looked up and wondered who the hell put them there.
/ And that's the end of it for now, please let me know if you're interested in continuing to read!
As Always –VV /