I'm back with a little one-shot. I'm working on the next chapter of The World is Our Oyster. I hope you liked the last one? Anyway, this is a little Dramione story with the lyrics of Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis as my inspiration. Review with thoughts about this, or about The World is Our Oyster or Live Laugh Love. Thank you...
Closed off from love
It was during the war. Ron had left and Harry and I had surrendered to the Order, telling them about the horcruxes and everything that Dumbledore had left us to do. Then, the Order put us in a safe house where we could properly search for horcruxes, without worrying about food or shelter or even death eaters.
He'd been there since October, locked up in a bedroom on the top floor of wherever we were. Mrs Weasley had been feeding him up, something to occupy her mind, rather than worry about her children on the front line of the war, rather than worry about Ron, because nobody knew where our best friend had run to.
I watched Harry and Ginny when they were reunited. I watched them cry into each other's arms, for the time they had lost, for the nights that they thought that maybe they'd never see each other again. I watched Harry propose to Ginny and I watched her accept and I watched her sneak into his bedroom every night, as though nobody knew, but everybody did. It was nice for them to be happy though. At least somebody was.
I didn't need the pain
He asked for me a week into our stay wherever we were and I didn't go. Why should I do anything that he wanted? He, a death eater. He, the one who disarmed Dumbledore. He, the one who had tortured and killed and raped. Why should I pander to the wants and needs of Draco Malfoy?
I saw him in the kitchen one night, being held by Mrs Weasley, and I knew that my resolve was breaking. I was alone. Harry and Ginny were in their own, sex-filled, orgasmic world and they seemed to have forgotten about me, so maybe Malfoy could be my pet project. Maybe he could be a distraction from the war and from the mission which we seemed to be getting nowhere with.
So, I went to him. I took his dinner to him and I brought him new clothes and I asked him if I could get him anything. He told me he wanted his mother back and I just left. I couldn't help him.
I returned a few times, playing monopoly with him a few times and laughing at his sarcasm.
He stopped calling me mudblood.
He stopped being Malfoy.
Once or twice was enough
Our first kiss wasn't at a Quidditch party, like Ron and Lavender's and Harry and Ginny's. It wasn't fuelled by passion or love. It was fuelled by the need of a distraction from the thrice damned war. It wasn't followed by a romantic walk around Hogwarts lake or a search for an empty classroom. It was followed by harsh silence. It was followed by me storming out of his room, wondering what on earth was wrong with me.
The second kiss was after I returned from a mission, after I watched a pregnant muggle be raped and then murdered and I couldn't help. The kiss was harsh, demanding and perfect. It was lust to the highest degree and the sex afterwards was just as lust-fuelled.
I didn't feel like myself, but I liked it. I liked being with Malfoy. I liked kissing him and sleeping with him, but I knew it was wrong. And, so, I was determined to stop.
And it was all in vain
I tried to ignore him. I tried to spend time in my room, reading, but every nightmare, every mission, I was in his bed again and he would thrust inside me and all thoughts of war, of murder were gone, to be replaced by him.
He was sweet, sometimes, and sour, sometimes. He gave us ideas on the horcrux hunt and Harry started to appreciate him. Harry started to like him, even. Ginny laughed at his sarcasm and Draco started to like them, even.
I didn't tell them, because it was my dirty little secret. It was my relationship.
I moved into his room the night before Ron returned, determined to tell Harry and Ginny the next day.
Time starts to pass
When I woke up, Ron was at the breakfast table with Harry and Ginny, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't abandoned us. It was March now. He'd been gone since November.
I didn't speak to him. I spent the day in Draco's room, making love slowly and then quickly and then languorously and then sleeping. It was perfect.
The next day, Harry was sent the sword of Gryffindor.
And the next, the head of Voldemort's snake.
Before you know it you're frozen
I didn't want a relationship. I'd watched Tonks and Remus argue and worry over the baby they were bringing into the world and I didn't want to put myself in that position, so it was just sex. Or at least I tried to make it just sex.
But something happened
Draco became an addiction: something I couldn't live without. The mornings he wasn't there, I would grope for him. He was necessary in my life.
It was different to my relationship with Ron and Harry, by a long stretch.
Ron and Harry, they were like a limb. I would struggle without them; it would hurt for them to leave me and it would hurt afterwards, but I would live.
Draco, though, he'd become, as cliché as it was, he'd become my heart. I couldn't live without him. I would die without him.
And I was happy with that.
For the very first time with you
I'd liked Ron, a long time ago, when I was young, when I was innocent. I liked the idea. We were friends so we knew each other really well and it seemed right. I would ignore all of his bad habits and say that I could change him, when we were together. But that wasn't love.
Draco was love. He was passionate and his flaws made me love him more and more every time we spent any time together. Draco was not my first love. He was my forever love. The only man I had ever truly loved, the only man I would ever love.
My heart melts into the ground
I tell him that I love him one night, after everyone is asleep and we are lay in our bed, unnoticed by anybody. He grabs my cheeks and roughly looks at me, meeting my eyes and desperately looking for any insincerity. I know that there is none there. He kisses me slowly and then pants out his love for me.
It's incredible and my whole outlook on life has changed and this is it. This is who I am going to spend the rest of my life with. Draco Malfoy. The love of my life, an ex-death eater.
Found something true
The next day, I talk to Draco. We should tell the others, I tell him. He disagrees, knowing that he will lose Harry and Ginny's friendship, that Mrs Weasley will disapprove, that she will want me to marry Ron, her own son. I falter. Maybe he's right. Maybe Harry would disapprove.
But I power through and we tell Harry and Ginny and we tell Mrs Weasley and then the whole house knows.
And everyone's looking round
For the next few weeks, everyone stares at me. They wonder why I've shacked up with Draco, who has tried to kill people, who has kidnapped and tortured in the name of Voldemort and of blood purity. Some people ask me. I tell them that I love him. The more volatile tell me that I'm a traitor. I give them blank looks.
I am not a traitor. I am a girl in love.
Thinking I'm going crazy
Ron finally confronts me, a month after he found out. He tells me that he loves me. And I tell him he doesn't even know what love is. Perhaps I am harsh with him. He forces himself on me, kissing me, and I push him away, demanding to know what the hell he is doing. I love Draco, I remind him.
He scoffs and tells me he's tricked me. Draco has me under a spell or a potion, because Ron and Hermione is meant to be, apparently. I look at him sadly and apologise. He leaves the room, storming out angrily.
But I don't care what they say
Harry speaks to me after my confrontation with Ron. Properly, I mean. He's been speaking with me for the last month, but not about Draco. He has not even broached the topic.
He tells me that he is happy for me and he is sorry for not being supportive. He and Ginny both feel this way, he says, and she reciprocates the conversation later the same day.
Nobody else really talks to me, except for Harry, Ginny and Draco. Oh, and the twins when they're around. Wherever I go, whether to a mission or another safe house, I am called a whore or a death eater or a traitor. But I can't bring myself to care.
I'm in love with you
Harry and Ginny get married in a quiet ceremony. It is only Draco and I there, as witnesses. They both look lovely and I cry as they say their vows. Harry whisks Ginny away to somewhere in the Caribbean and Draco and I feel the romanticism, spending the evening at a nice restaurant and snogging over candlelight. It is perfection.
They try to pull me away
Finally, Mrs Weasley speaks to me. She tells me that Draco is damaged. That I deserve somebody better. "Like your son," I spit at her. She looks affronted but I don't care. I love Draco, not Ron.
Ron talks to me again. He begs me to reconsider him. I tell him no. He tells me that I'll regret it. I tell him I won't.
But they don't know the truth
They mock me and jeer me and call me names, but they don't understand how I feel about Draco, how I love him and how he loves me. Tonks tells me how it is similar to her and Remus and I understand the connection but at least the people who live in the same house don't shun her and mock her.
I love him.
My heart's crippled by the vein
My parents are slaughtered one day and I am numb. Fenrir Greyback cut out their throats. Draco tries to comfort me but Harry is the one who looks after me. Greyback carved the words 'for Draco' onto the wall of my parents' home and I wonder whether Draco had wanted this, before he came here. If he had wanted to do it or if they had found out. Had Voldemort found about Draco and I and killed them to hurt him by hurting me?
That I keep on closing
I told myself not to ask. It wouldn't help. But I'm too stubborn, too inquisitive for my own good. I asked him what the words meant. He told me that he'd discussed it with Greyback a long time ago. I leave the room and am promptly sick.
I go back to him that night and ask him to tell me what he did as a death eater. He tells me and I leave again.
You cut me open and I
I talk about it with Harry and he tells me that I always knew that he'd done things, that he had most likely killed people. I reply that I had never known specifics. He's remorseful, Harry tells me.
He is. But those people were innocent.
I keep bleeding
I return from a mission one day and I only have eyes for him but, as we kiss, I see them, the murdered people and they surround me. I flinch and run away, not able to face him. Draco joins the Order the next day.
I keep, keep bleeding love
I forgive him. I don't forget but I realise that he has changed. He is a different person now and he did what he did to survive. He didn't kill for the fun of it. Only when he had to.
He comes with us on a mission and we work together well. We save lives and maybe he's making up for it. His father kills, though, of course. He kills three Order members and Draco apologises, sobbing into me that night.
Trying hard not to hear
I don't listen. They tell me that his dad killed Katie Bell, killed Hestia Jones, killed Lee Jordan. They tell me that he is just the same and he is tricking me and he is going to leave me. But I don't listen. Draco is not his father.
But they talk so loud
They say it in front of Draco and he hears it and flinches every time. He leaves me. He tells me we were never really even in a relationship. I do what I had promised never to do, sob over a boy. I blame them. He blamed himself for Katie and Hestia and Lee.
Their piercing sounds fill my ears
I can hear them now. I hear them clearly and I listen, trying to convince myself that I don't love him. But I do and they hurt and I defend him and I spend evenings sobbing into Harry and Ginny's arms.
Try to fill me with doubt
They tell me that I made the right choice and maybe I did but I didn't because he made it for me and that wasn't fair. Because I love him. Over the weeks, I never doubt it. Even when Harry and Ginny tell me that I need to move on, to recover. I lash out at them, because I will never recover, I will never move on because my heart is split down the middle and I love him.
Yet I know that the goal
I know that they mean well, I do, but, when I see him and I sob, I can't cope with their lectures. We argue, oh we argue. I spend days not talking to them and I constantly ask them what if it was each other. What if Harry left Ginny? Would she recover? Would she move on? Of course she wouldn't.
Is to keep me from falling
We go out on a mission and I watch as he is cut down, hit with a curse. I sit in his bedroom, waiting for him to wake up, to love me again. I will not let him do this anymore. I love him. I barely sleep, eat or shower. I will when he wakes up. They tell me maybe he won't. But then he does.
But nothing's greater than the rush that comes with your embrace
He holds me for hours and never lets go. We don't kiss or have sex. We just hold each other. And it feels better than anything ever has.
And in this world of loneliness
In the morning, we kiss and he apologises and begs for me back and I give in, of course. We sleep together and he tells me he loves me and I tell him that if he does it again, I'll kill him. I won't.
I see your face
It seems like a dream when I wake up from my post-sex nap, to see Draco sat there, watching me. I love you, he says, and I love him.
Yet everyone around me
They're at it again. They wonder why I've given him a second chance. Ron tells me that he would never hurt me like Draco had but he would. Harry tells me that if Draco ever hurts me again he's a dead man. Ginny reiterates this statement, but I think they're secretly glad that they can have their sexual gymnastic time back, instead of looking after a weepy me.
Thinks that I'm going crazy, maybe, maybe
For the first time, Draco and I are properly public. We sit together at the kitchen table and I feed him things from my plate, much to his discomfort, and I snog him in the living room and we snuggle up in Order meetings. Ron feeds me a love potion antidote and I slap him, hard. Draco punches him, harder.
But I don't care what they say
A mission goes out to raid Malfoy Manor and Draco makes them a map. They find another horcrux in Draco's room and they say that he put it there, but he swears he didn't, that he didn't know it was there. Harry sticks up for him and that makes me incredibly happy.
I'm in love with you
He asks me to marry him. I say yes. He says he wants to buy me a huge ring. His face threatens to split with the size of his smile and I assume the look is replicated on my face. He sneaks out one day and does, indeed, buy me a big ring, almost as big as Ginny's. Harry leant him the money, Draco informs me and I grin because my two favourite boys are working together.
They try to pull me away
Ron sobs when he finds out. He begs me to reconsider and he tells me that Draco is just lonely, that he only loves me because I'm his only option. My handprint was on his face for a week.
But they don't know the truth
Ron doesn't know what love is. He doesn't know how it feels. He wants me because I'm his only option. He wants me because I help him, because he is immature and doesn't understand that boys and girls can be friends.
My heart's crippled by the vein
On a mission, I am kidnapped. I am kept in some sort of dungeon, naked and in chains. They rape me. His father rapes me on my first day and it hurts.
That I keep on closing
They want to know information and I don't tell them anything. They say that they have Draco too and that he set up my kidnapping. They take my engagement ring.
You cut me open and I
They use the cruciatus curse. They use the imperius curse. They cut me and whip me and rape me for three days but I never tell them a thing.
Keep bleeding
Bellatrix carves the word 'mudblood' onto my skin on my last day there and she is still in my cell when Harry and Draco burst in, wands at the ready and furious. Draco cradles me in his arms and Harry blasts the chains off me, averting his eyes from my body for my modesty. It hurts. Everything hurts.
Keep, keep bleeding love
Draco is sick when I tell him. He rages and screams and cries and apologises and begs me not to leave him. I don't, of course. He is not his father. He loves me, he says, and I love him, but I scream every night and I see his face and I wake up to Draco's and it hurts.
And it's draining all of me
I barely sleep. I see death eaters everywhere. I feel their hands on me. I feel the curse and I can barely leave my room. Draco begs me to come down to the kitchen, to come to Order meetings but I can't.
Oh they find it hard to believe
I start to heal. My cuts heal and I study Draco intensely, finding every difference between him and his father that I can. And there are lots. Draco, my Draco, is loving and kind and he smiles and his eyes are warm and loving.
I'll be wearing these scars
Months pass and it's difficult for Draco and Harry that I won't ever be the same again. I'll always be marred but I explain to them that I am getting better, that I will eventually be better. I hope.
For everyone to see
I go to the Order meeting and Draco squeezes my hand, kissing my cheek. He loves me, he reminds me. And I know. But they all look at me. They think I'm damaged goods, I can tell.
I don't care what they say
I want to marry Draco, I inform him. He asks if it's too soon. I say it's not. He agrees and we marry. I wear white and, for the first time since I was raped months ago, I am not ashamed of my scars. Draco looks at me with such passion and love that I just could never be ashamed of myself again.
I'm in love with you
Our sex that night is wonderful. It is the first time since I was raped and I sob, of course, but it is so different and so beautiful. It is perfection and I couldn't have asked for anything more. He is the best husband I could have.
They try to pull me away
The horcruxes are gone and I fight alongside my best friends and my husband in the final battle. I watch Harry kill Voldemort and, at that same moment, Draco's father hits me with a curse, before fleeing. I collapse and Draco rushes to me, along with Harry and Ginny.
But they don't know the truth
They rush me to Madam Pomfrey. She tells me I am losing my baby. There is no way for me to stop it, she informs me sadly. I beg for her to establish paternity and she does and it is Draco's baby and we sob together. Madam Pomfrey says that, if I hadn't been pregnant, the curse would have killed me very slowly and very painfully. It doesn't make me feel better.
My heart's crippled by the vein
The war is over but we can't move on. Draco and Harry spend their days searching for Lucius and it takes months. Ginny becomes pregnant and I am happy but I remember my baby, a boy Madam Pomfrey had told us. It is six and a half months after the battle that he is locked away until his trial, that my rapist is put away and for the first time in over a year, since I was raped, I sleep through the night.
That I keep on closing
I demand to go to his trial and I go. Harry made sure that I wouldn't have to testify and I watch as he is sentenced to death. I sob for my baby.
You cut me open and I
Before he dies, I visit him. I tell him that he hasn't won that, in fact, I am pregnant again. It is almost two years after his trial that I stand there, hand on stomach, and feel free. He tried to ruin me and he failed.
Keep bleeding
Even after everything I went through in the war, in those three days, I am so happy. Ginny gave birth a few years ago to James Arthur and Sirius William followed the next year. Draco and I have a beautiful house and we are godparents to James. We decorate the nursery and I tell Draco that I love him, again.
Keep, keep bleeding love
I give birth to a girl, Caitriona, and four more follow. I work as a lawyer and Draco works with Harry as an auror. My life is complete and I couldn't be happier.