Series Title: Icy Intellect
Series Summary: The icy cold arrogance of Slytherin, Draco Malfoy, and the fiery passion and intellect of Gryffindor, Hermione Granger, collide in this compilation of stories about the intricacy of their relationships.
Series Notes: I rewrote each chapter of this series so the content and story plot is the same, but the content is altered and the entirety is longer. I hope you enjoy it! Each title in the series is based off of the song whose music or lyrics inspired my writing. The chapter title includes the song title and artist name in the case that you seek out the music behind the madness.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything affiliated with the Harry Potter series; all ownership and characters belong to J.K. Rowling.

Chapter Title: Bitemarks and Bloodstains
Chapter Summary: "I can't believe you'd say something like that...I...you don't understand how much you were asking of me to ask me not to fight for my future. I love you, Draco; I love you so much. When I surrendered my part of the fight to come back here, I surrendered my control over my own future for you. I love you, Draco; I love you too much." What happens when feelings one way dissipate?
Chapter Rating: T for Teen; dark themes and use of coarse language.
Chapter Notes: I particularly enjoy the rewrite of this one so I hope that you do as well!

It was a dark and cold night, the clouds offering an overprotective cover towards the skies as the wind whipped viciously around. This darkened, chilly place could barely be recognized as part of the Hogwarts grounds; they were often bursting with warmth and life and everything here was so cold and lifeless. Even the dungeons glittered with torches along the walls. But the Forbidden Forest had always retained some of the spook, some of the fear and the suspense that the students often whispered about. Despite the sheets of rain that were pouring down through the clouds, there were two figures standing at the limits of the forest, where the grounds seemed to separate the light from the dark, the safety of the Hogwarts grounds from the treacherous unknown of the forest and its secrets.

"You think I had a choice?" Draco Malfoy didn't yell often; it looked angry and passionate and that betrayed the stoic and controlled facade he had adopted over the years. Showing emotions to another person was something he had been conditioned never to do, and yet, he was bearing his anger openly and to a female, no less. To a Mudblood, no less. He raked his hands through his blonde hair, trying to focus his clear eyes towards the ground and not at the girl standing opposite him, so desperately trying to get his attention.

"Look," her voice was soft and pleading, "it's not like I was putting it directly on you. I just..." Words had escaped her as she trailed off. There were no words to improve their situation or make him soften. It had always frustrated Hermione that he insisted on putting on this act of false strength, this mask that rendered him emotionless, but she knew he needed to do it for his own sanity. She just didn't understand why he was doing it at that moment, when it was just the two of them and no one else. Why couldn't he just be straightforward and honest with her? Why couldn't he just let her see inside of his head for just a moment? She cautiously reached her hand out to touch his cheek, her tanned fingers and the chill of the rain making his skin look even more pale and porcelain-like under her touch. Her fingers skimmed along his cheek and settled to cup them as she turned his gaze towards her. "I worry about you, Draco."

She didn't even flinch when he shook his head and dislodged her comforting hand. "Well don't, okay? I don't need you to." His voice was rough and unforgiving, and Hermione bit down on her lip to avoid trembling and crying. Trying to break through the hard exterior that he put up was tiring and she was weakening. She needed a sliver of humanity to shine through soon, some token of his affection, whether it be past or present, to manifest itself. She summoned as much resolve as she could and put her hands on his shoulders, peering up at his eyes.

"I can't help it. I love you."

He replied, snarling as he pulled away from her grip, "Let me go, Hermione. Just leave things the way they were supposed to be." His eyes flickered but too swiftly for her to catch the undertone of emotion and they were back to cold slate grey.

"Nothing was supposed to be this way, Draco! If I left things the right way, I wouldn't be alive!" She had lost control of herself as she found her voice escalating into a scream over the rain that was soaking the outer layers of her hair and her clothing, seeping gently through. She had no desire to focus on that but on the man standing in front of her instead. "You asked me, you begged me to come back and to not fight! And I...I fought! But I fought weakly before I realized that I wanted to come back! I wanted to be with you!"

"Maybe you shouldn't have." Draco's voice was plain. "Fate had it so, Hermione. You're right." This time, when his eyes flashed, she could see the bitter emotion behind his words. "I begged you to stay, and you left. I'll never forget that the one time I begged, the one time I asked, the one time I wanted - no, I needed something, you denied me. You left and then you came crawling back and expected what?"

Hermione looked timidly down at her feet, tears falling into the grass with the rain. "I can't believe you'd say something like that...I...you don't understand how much you were asking of me to ask me not to fight for my future. I love you, Draco; I love you so much. When I surrendered my part of the fight to come back here, I surrendered my control over my own future for you. I love you, Draco; I love you too much." The twinge of bitterness coated the last admission she spoke outloud.

"I love myself too much too," Draco confessed and Hermione couldn't help the combination sob and laugh that escaped her lips. His bitter gaze had spread through her and her laughter was bitter, just like her sobbing. She managed to stifle it under the pouring rain to listen to his words. "I can't see myself loving anyone else. I can't take that chance again. I was out in the open and I was weak and I let myself be that way, I saw no problem with it. But during a time of war, weakness is always a problem." His words were rigid but he opened his arms to pull her close. The plainness of the contradiction made Hermione weak around her knees, but she gripped him tightly to steady herself. "I don't know why I stayed with you, Granger," he whispered against the moist, frizzy state of her curls, "I guess I just needed someone to hold onto."

Hermione nodded against his chest, pulling her hands away as she felt her feet return to a solid stance underneath the rest of her body. "I understand," she mumbled. "I was giving fully into a relationship that was running on half-truths and half-feelings. I'm sorry I wasted my love on you, Malfoy. I'm sorry I went to fight and that I didn't die. I'm sorry that I didn't stay behind when you asked me to and I'm sorry that because I didn't stay, that you don't love me anymore." She pressed herself onto her tiptoes and leaned her lips against the curve of his ear. "You used to love me."

His hands wrapped firmly, almost painfully around her forearms. "I had no choice," he hissed to her. "I had no choice in what I'd become without you. You knew what my fate was here when you left me behind. It's not a surprise that I'm a Death Eater now. If I could choose, if I had the choice, I wouldn't be one at all. I could still love you." Her tears had surfaced again but she ripped herself away from him, stumbling and backtracking through the mud.

"That's not going to happen, though."

"You know it's not."

"I guess you've made up your mind," came her reply quickly.

Draco closed the distance between them again, his body towering over hers in a dangerous way. His feet were planted around her and she leaned back - into his arms - to maintain any semblance of personal space. For the first time that night, his clear grey eyes looked into her face and into her eyes, and she felt the overwhelming power of words that he kept at bay. There were so many things she could literally feel that he wanted to say to her, but he appeared to be choosing wildly. "I have no choice. I can't love you." 'But I do love you,' he might as well have said it. Hermione could feel the words waiting on his lips but he never spoke them. Instead, he pressed his lips against hers crushingly.

It had startled her but his hands fisted in the soft material of her silver cloak, pushing her between the shoulders and pulling her waist flush against him. Her hands found his cheeks, brushing the rain from them and pulling him as close as she could get him in some faint hope that it'd change his mind, that she could coax him into doing something drastic. His fingers lifted from her shoulders and grabbed the tips of her hair, darkened by the rain, and pulled at them. Hermione couldn't help the yelp and the tipping of her head back as his lips pressed against her neck and his teeth pressed into the supple flesh.

"Don't," she called weakly, but she could feel the biting and the drawing of blood as he marked his way from her neck to her collarbone towards her shoulders. It hurt but it pleased her and she found herself wanting him closer and wanting him further away simultaneously. When he finally pulled away from her, his hands brushed her cheeks gently before he took the material of the cloak, familiar under his fingers. He had bought it for her the first time they had gone out as a couple. He clenched the material and pulled her towards him slowly before kissing her gently, his hands cupping her cheeks and tilting her head as he poured everything that he couldn't change into the last kiss that they'd share.

When Hermione pulled away, the words slipped from her lips slowly. "Goodbye, Draco."

"You're being taken in for your trial now." The taller, aged brunette witch's voice was cold. "Hurry and get up." She spoke to what appeared to be an entirely empty cell in the prison. Azkaban was cold and it had made Hermione a cold person. Murderers, both plain and Voldemort sympathetic alike, passed through and it was the only way she could keep in touch with herself - if she made herself a completely different. The shadows of the cell unfolded a huddled mass from their grips, one with long blonde hair and the bristles of hair sweeping across their cheeks and chin. He stared at her firmly as she turned the key in the lock and had offered her his wrists before she had even reached to get the chains at her waist.

"Come on, Malfoy," she said as she secured the charmed chains around his wrists, "the dementors are waiting."

"Miss Granger," the voice was startlingly harsh. "Did you or did you not have an association with the man in question?"

It had evaded Hermione why she was called up as a witness in his trial, but she should have known that she couldn't escape it. She had been his classmate, after all, and however brief, she had been his girlfriend. She was hoping the latter piece of information had been deemed irrelevant, but she found herself seated in a witness stand and staring down a petite but fiesty lawyer.

"I did. Draco Malfoy and I attended school together, in the same year and often in the same classes."

"Did your association with him ever transcend the classroom?"

Hermione hadn't meant to flinch but the whispers around her had revealed that she had flinched, she had reacted to the question, and now an answer was being waited for. She knew she couldn't lie. "Yes. Draco and I...dated for several weeks prior to the First Battle. I left to fight against You-Know-Who and he became a Death Eater. So it was safe to say by that time we had separated." A wry smile pressed itself against her lips as she looked at him standing between two armed guards, his hands cuffed in front of him. She looked back towards his lawyer and steeled herself.

"Do you realize that the penalty for being so closely related to someone on trial for war crimes is dismissal of their charges or dismissal of yourself from this case?"

"I didn't realize that my personal relationship invalidated the Dark Mark tattooed on his skin."

"Do you realize - "

"I didn't realize." Hermione snapped as she sensed his lawyer preparing to repeat her question. "I didn't realize my personal relationship would result in a dismissal of either of those things. Let the record show that I, Hermione Granger, allow myself to be dismissed from this case."

"If you live, you'll never see me again, you do realize that." Hermione's voice was surprisingly cool as she watched the guards shepherd Draco past her. He stopped in his tracks despite the guards pushing and Hermione nodded to them. They held him still and he dipped his head down.

"I realize that. Do you realize that?" She repeated as she watched the top of his blonde hair. It was longer and unkempt; imprisonment had done a lot of things to his appearance and his resolve. "It'll be cause for an appeal to say that you've violated the personal influence of your case."

"I'm sorry." His apology stuns her momentarily before her face resumes its look of impassivity. Hermione stands from her seat and moves to stand opposite him, peering at both the guards that flank him to make sure they are holding him tightly. "If I live or die, I couldn't do either without apologizing. I'm sorry for blaming my decisions on you. I'm sorry for forcing you to choose between your future and our relationship."

Hermione snorted uncharacteristically, folding her arms across her chest. "I've got to go. I can't be caught talking to you," her brown eyes flickered towards the emptying doors of the court room before she turned to move away. It surprised her to feel the cold metal of chains in her hands as Draco wrapped his hands around her wrist, unable to move anymore. The guards beside him twitched uncomfortably until she pulled away from him.

"I have no choice," she repeated ironically, bitterly. "I can't love you."

"But you do," Draco said quietly, careful to only look over his shoulder fleetingly as the guards led him in one direction and Hermione walked away in another.