Bond

Chapter 2 by WickedDiSaster

The next year at school, their rows were ferocious. He would be insanely possessive of her and she would be stubbornly patient with him.

The first time he started questioning her friendship with "Scarhead", she restrained from putting him in his place with awe-inspiring self-control. When he lashed out on the Boy-Who-Lived himself, she forgave him only because he had been turned into a ferret for it; but when he went as far as to try to force her to leave them, she gave into their fights with all she had.

"I have to go," she ascertained. It took so little for him to explode these days.

"The fuck you do! Why the hell do you have to hang out with them!"

"Because they are my friends, Draco! As bizarre as that term might sound to you!"

"That ginger piece of scum is anything but a friend to you! Even I know that, the entire school knows that!"

"It's just a stupid crush, Draco, it doesn't mean a thing!"

"Yet you don't see me hanging around anyone with a meaningless crush on me, do you!"

"Oh, please! Half this school has a crush on you! And you don't exactly avoid their advances either!"

"Why the fuck should I!? All you do is chase Pothead and Ginger Head all day long!"

"No, you don't, Draco! You don't get to do this. They are my FRIENDS! This is a hard time for both of them. I can't just leave them because that suits your mood. I can't and I won't because that's not who I am, and you know it." She took some time to calm herself before continuing, "They need me, Harry needs me, and believe it or not that proud stubborn git who abandoned the other needs me too."

"If that's need, I can think of at least ten girls in my house who need me just as much!"

It wasn't that he enjoyed the way all the colour drained from her face, it wasn't that he wanted to see the ghost of her insecurities in the way she swallowed her pride; but he was a Slytherin, he was a Malfoy, and neither grovelled about to get their mate to stop chasing around other guys. All of it was ridiculous. She was turning him into a Hufflepuff.

"You don't mean that," she swallowed. "Draco, you know it's not like that. You know I'd never do that. You'd never-" she wanted to say it, wanted to make it true, wanted to hear him say it.

She didn't get either of her wishes though, and as she backed away a step or two, she crumbled against the wall of a cupboard that felt more suffocating by the second. Draco stepped forward, evil incarnate that he tried to be, took a hold of her chin and forced her to look at him. He stared unflinchingly into her deep brown eyes, daring her to remind herself, to remember who he was.

Just because she had peeled off so many layers, because she had uncovered all his facades, and broken down all his walls, it did not mean she had him wrapped around her bloody Gryffindor finger. Or so he wanted to believe.

He was about to step out of the cupboard, leaving her with that clear warning, when she stopped him – not with a word, not with a gesture but with her sole need for him to stay, with that gravitating power that compelled him to stay rooted to the floor.

He stared expectantly back at her, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrow raised in what he hoped was a sign of annoyance. He knew she could see right through it all, though.

"Draco" - he could hear the tremble in her voice - "I can't, I, I," - she was trying not to sob, failing miserably at it too - "I can't, please, oh god, I, they are my fr- no, they are my family! I can't just leave them. Oh, god-" She was right out sobbing on his chest and hitting him hard there too. "I can't believe I even thought about it, that I would even try, they saved my life, Draco! More than once! How could I just- How did I just think about it!?" She looked up to him, and he used every ounce of will power in his being not to give in. "Draco, they are the brothers I never had, they don't stand a chance with you, please understand that, I can't leave them, I just can't," she breathed.

It was the word 'brothers' that got to him. "Your brother has some very romantic feelings towards you, Hermione."

"He's just confused, Draco. It's just a matter of time."

Malfoys didn't repeat themselves, he thought as a mantra. It was too much that he had been unable to hold his comment about her sodding incestuous brother, so he focused on his impassive front – 'cause Merlin knew, he was anything but impassive with the Gryffindor. She was breathing him in; he liked how she did that, how it felt as if the sole act gave her peace, solace, strength. Right now, though, he wanted to push her at arm's length because she was meddling with his defences again.

He kept his ground, and did not hug her back when she buried her face on his neck, but it wasn't that which prompted a flicker of emotion to break through his facade. It was when she stood on the tip of her toes and cradled his face in her hands. "Draco, I love you," she said, and kissed him, pouring her heart in the kiss. "Don't ever forget that," she added; and with that, she finally left.

Any more seconds of that trusting, loving, and simply bare look in her eyes, and Draco would have given in. However, she left, and that's all he remembered, all he needed to fuel his revenge.

She was in the bathroom when she heard it. It wasn't the first time that an obnoxious girl bragged about an alleged kiss from the Slytherin Prince, it was the way she told it; she didn't describe the romantic, loving, under-the-moonlight kiss. She was talking about the rough, against-the-wall, hands-all-over type of kiss, a kiss that sounded not so much as bragging but as a friend trying to come to terms with a very difficult puzzle.

It wasn't a surprise that she ran from the room, that she found herself hyperventilating in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, or that he found her on the floor hugging her knees, and hiding her face between them.

She knew he was there the moment he stepped foot in the bathroom, and, while she chided herself for being silly, while she scolded herself for crying over nothing, and blamed her irrational insecurities for dragging him here; the second she raised her head to meet his eyes and apologise, she knew. She knew without the shadow of a doubt, with a staggering certainty, she knew; and she couldn't look at him anymore.

As the blow of the truth hit her in the callous zeal of his eyes, in the cold stance of his facade, she didn't need to hear why, or how; she didn't need to peel him to know how he truly felt. She knew it all already, she knew why, she knew what it took from him; and –Merlin help her – she knew just what he had focused on while doing it.

She knew this and a lot more in the precious seconds that it cost her to bolt from the room and ran as far away from him as she could, because just thinking of him was unbearable, seeing him was a whole different level of pain she just couldn't take.

It was that pain, that staggering, torturing weight, that hollow in her chest that she couldn't escape, which made her run until her legs gave in, until her whole being had not a speck of strength in her body. Even then, she could not give into exhaustion and enter the world of the unconscious. The hurt was so profound, so heart-wrenchingly wearing that she forced herself to focus on the less painful aspects of her situation.

She didn't know where she was, she didn't know what time it was or for how long she had been missing. She didn't want to see anyone, but she didn't want anyone to come looking for her either. She could just think of the person who could find her with a useful map as soon as he noticed her absence, if he hadn't already.

She forced herself not to think of that someone else who could find her without a map.

She used a glamour charm to make her fade into the surroundings, that, and a jinx to keep onlookers at bay along with an invigorating charm. She levitated back to the edge of the forest because her legs just wouldn't obey.

Every now and then, she'd use her wand to point her into the right direction, even practiced her Wandless magic to keep her alert from the creatures of the Forbidden Forest. She used every trick in the book to keep her mind from wandering into painful territory.

The hurt never left her nonetheless.

She managed to get back to her bed unnoticed, and before dark sent a message, explaining breakfast hadn't agreed with her and she would be gone until further notice.

She placed a silencing charm around the drawn curtains of her four-poster bed. She casted every calming charm she knew on herself; and she focussed on every Wandless Spell she could think of, until one finally put her out.

She woke up screaming, gasping and then sobbing. First came the hurt, the suffocating inexplicable weight in her chest, and then her mind, her treacherous, treacherous mind that got her looking for the source, and then made her wish for the nightmare.

The fact that for fleeting seconds, when the pain first crushed her, she would think of him, only to remember it all over again later, was the worst.

Her days would go from one task to the next, conveying her mind to focus on each, meticulously. Classes, helping Harry, talking to Ron, doing homework, studying, getting ready for the next day.

It all worked well until that fateful day, when they summoned them and put them asleep underwater.