Hello my darlings. Hope you enjoy my latest chapter, but before you do, a few items of business.
1. Thank you for all your wonderful reviews, I treasure each one.
2. When I first started this story, I arbitrarily decided that it was January, but in writing the last chapter and this chapter, I realized it needs to be in August, so now it is. I'm very sorry about the change, I know it's unprofessional.
3. This chapter starts with Hermione, and XXXXXX is POV change as always!
After a few minutes of a barrage of questions in the waiting room, most of them coming from Harry and Ron, I had answered as many could and we all apparated to the end of the lane where my little cottage sat. Malfoy of course had never seen my home, so someone had to take him by side-along, which fell to my lot. The late August sun on my face was revitalizing on my psyche as we walked past the myriad of cottages, belonging to both magical and non-magical owners.
When the seven of us reached my door, I turned to face the group before putting my key in the lock.
"Look, all of you—I really appreciate the concern, the escort, everything. But I know you all have things to do, and I just want to make this a normal day. Not to mention, I'm not sure my house can fit all of us."
It took a bit more convincing, but eventually they all agreed, and after lengthy goodbyes, I finally entered my house with only Malfoy in tow.
XXXXXX
Granger, thank Merlin, convinced her large entourage to go about their lives. As I waited for them all to bid their farewells (one would think they were never to see each other again), Luna Lovegood surprised me by bestowing a hug upon me as well. Strange, strange girl. I was fairly certain that no one else had seen, however.
Finally, everyone had apparated away and Granger unlocked her door and showed me inside. My first impression that it was impossibly small—a living room with a sofa and a few chairs (and a full bookshelf of course), a tiny kitchen with a very small table and set of two chairs, and two doors that I assumed were a bedroom and bathroom. I didn't know houses came in such a small size—it was probably only slightly larger than a master suite in the Manor.
Granger cleared her throat from behind me. "Small, I know," she said, "but it's all I can really afford at the moment." I nodded.
"It's…nice." I was awful at being polite. She walked around me and faced me determinedly.
"This is a bit weird, isn't it?" She looked at me like she hoped she hadn't offended.
"Of course it's a bit weird." We had never spent time alone before the interview, to my recollection.
"I'm sorry." She paused. "That you're in this situation."
That made me very angry. "Granger, don't ever apologize for that."
She opened her mouth again, "No, I mean I know it's not my fault, but I just mean that I'm sorry it happe—"
I couldn't let her finish. I grabbed her shoulder. "Granger. Stop. I don't want to hear any of it."
"Please don't tell me what to do, Malfoy." She said coolly.
"I didn't mean to tell, I meant to ask." What the hell was wrong with me? Of course I had meant to tell her. It was as if my new overriding desire to make sure Granger was okay had gained access to the part of my brain that controlled my mouth, and was just telling her what she wanted to hear. The fact remained, however, that hearing her apologize for being assaulted made me see red.
She sized me up for a moment, and then turned on her heel. "I badly need a bath," she said, walking through one of the doors, which indeed proved to lead to a bathroom.
I turned again to face the living room, and wondered what to do while Granger was occupied. Before I could once more became horribly depressed that my level of activity now depended on Granger, I heard a loud thud from the bathroom.
I took the four steps to the bathroom door, alarmed.
"Granger, are you alright?"
"Fine, Malfoy, I only dropped my shampoo."
I felt like an idiot.
"Please, just make yourself at home. Read a book or something, I have plenty." She sounded, unsurprisingly, exasperated.
XXXXXX
I listened at the door for Malfoy's steps toward the bookcase, and heard him settle into a seat, presumably with a book in hand. Finally, I thought, as an audible sigh escaped me and I ran copious amounts of near-scalding water into my tub. Normally I might take a book into the bath with me, but I had too much to think about at the moment.
As I submerged, my stomach clenched with the heat, but my shoulders relaxed, letting go of more tension than I knew I had. I laid back, ready to let my mind run and analyze for as long as it needed to.
Malfoy is in my house. Draco Malfoy, sworn enemy of my best friend, is in my house indefinitely, because he physically can't leave me. Yet. Madame Derwent said he would, no, might, be able to control his impulses eventually. That's important…I need, we need, to learn how to do that for him. But, from what I've observed from him, they're still getting stronger. Maybe my magic is taking an extended period of time to reach its full effect on him—but that can't be good, can it? How far will the protection thing go, I wonder? Will he just need to make sure I'm alright all the time, or will he soon decide to go after the man? I shook my head. No thinking about the man, Hermione. You're okay, he's not important. Even as I thought this, I began to scrub myself a little more rigorously than I would otherwise. Still, my mind processed everything. Okay, so it happened, and it was awful, but you're fine, and you'll move on. Putting it behind you will take a week or two, that's to be expected. Eventually things will be back to normal. Except Malfoy. Merlin, back to Malfoy. How long will he be here? I need to research the Phenomenon, there must be a few accounts of getting his sensibilities more under control. We can work on it, and it's not as if he isn't intelligent. He won't need nearly as much help as Harry or Ron, probably. But, he probably won't be as agreeable or willing, either. But you have to be understanding, Hermione, I reminded myself. Madame Derwent said I couldn't conceive of his mindset, and I have to be patient. I wonder if…
XXXXXX
Granger had been in the bath for nearly an hour when I finally heard the water begin to drain. I had long since tired of The Influence of Wizards on Medieval Raids by Pierce Pinckney, and returned again and again to Granger's safety. I made a mental note to ask her about her wards later.
Her voice abruptly ended my musings. "Will you close your eyes please?" She called from the bathroom.
I didn't answer right away…mostly because I had assumed she would be exiting the room fully clothed.
"Malfoy, I didn't bring clothes in here, and I'm sure you can understand that I'm not really keen on you seeing me in a towel at the moment."
"Yeah, hold on," I remarked, taking a few moments to make sure her front window was completely covered by her curtains. I then reoccupied my armchair and firmly shut my eyes. "Alright, all good…" I trailed off. This was likely the most bizarre situation I had ever found myself in—I had seen plenty of women in much less than what Granger was probably mostly covered with—and yet Granger's wishes had once again completely overtaken my own, and all I could think of was whether I was complying enough for her to feel safe.
Apparently I was, for I heard the door click open and listened as Granger padded quickly across the room to her bedroom. When I heard the door close, I opened my eyes.
She re-joined me in the main room a few minutes later, dressed in simple dark jeans and a red tee shirt that admittedly fit her much better than the borrowed clothes of Lovegood's. Her hair, still wet, was unrestrained, though somewhat more tamed than usual by the weight of the residual water.
"Granger, do you have wards up?" I asked briskly, and rather suddenly.
She was caught unawares by my question. "I—what? Oh…not right now. I put one up at night though."
"ONE? You have a ward?" How did she not see how dangerous that was?
"Yes, a very effective alerting charm, it works quite well." She was so matter-of-fact.
I rubbed my brow. "Granger, you can't leave your security so up-in-the-air! Do you think that the world is a perfectly safe place where no one wants to hurt you?"
She breathed heavily and loudly out of her nose. "Of course I don't think that."
I winced internally—of course she didn't—but there was no time to focus on my mistake…Granger didn't have wards.
"Well, I have to put more up, immediately."
She sighed, a strange look of desperation mixed with something very close to pity upon her face. Resigned, she answered, "Fine. I'm going to study."
I got to work around the interior and exterior perimeters of the house, muttering all the while about witches who were daring and cavalier in the matters of personal safety. I had completed my ministrations a quarter of an hour later, and did indeed reenter the living room to find Granger studying.
We left school ages ago!
"What are you reading?"
She raised the book without speaking so I could read the title: Advanced Theories in Magical Law Enforcement: Volume One.
"Why are you studying? Didn't you already pass your N.E.W.T.s?"
"Of course." Her eyes hadn't left the page.
"So why—"
She cut me off. "Because I need to know more! I like learning, and obviously, as you know, I want to work for the Ministry. They have their own exam after you complete the year in a relevant field."
Despite her delivery of this speech, she was still completely engrossed, so I sat down in one of the chairs opposite her perch on the sofa and watched her read.
Every twenty minutes or so, Granger's eyes would glaze and stop flying across the page, and she would stare at once spot for a minute or two. Each time, she would seemingly shake herself loose and her eyes would move and she would begin turning pages again.
Derwent had been right in that I couldn't read her thoughts or feelings exactly, but I certainly felt more in tune to her mood, and I became more uneasy during each glazed pause.
After watching her read for more than an hour, when her eyes glassed again, I asked her.
"What are you thinking about?" I guessed I knew in general, but I wanted to help, and I felt I should know more in order to do so.
Granger answered in a very small, far away voice, "You didn't dress up for me, I'm so disappointed. We'll talk about it later."
She then looked up and gave a small gasp—clearly she had told me something she hadn't meant to.
"Did he say that to you?" I asked, rising from my chair automatically.
"Malfoy, it doesn't matter. I shouldn't have told you…" She trailed off, apparently figuring out from the look on my face that it did very much matter. "Yes, h-he did. When he—after he cut my shirt open." She tried to say this flippantly, as if it was a trivial detail of the past.
But, since she had repeated that maniac's words in that awful, hollow, hurt voice, I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. I couldn't see straight, I couldn't think properly, except that I wanted to kill more than I ever had—including the months when I was a Death Eater (when truly I hadn't wanted to kill at all, only prove that I could). But this anger at Granger's attacker was different—it practically transported me back to that night. I could see in my mind's eye what I imagined the scene to be—that lunatic loomed over a half-naked, tied up Granger, struggling and squirming—not only physically hurting her, but verbally humiliating and berating her. I certainly didn't want to see it, but it was there, unbidden, fueling the fire of my anger. He had abused her. Granger hadn't hurt anyone, hadn't deserved any ill treatment, and she had still experienced such a horror. I was sick and livid as I couldn't stop imagining the capable witch in front of me being rendered helpless by a monster.
XXXXXX
I should never have told him. I hadn't even meant to, but his question broke through my memory and I hadn't even thought about it. He was so serious—and he just kept growing progressively redder, and more disheveled. He sat across from me, still looking in my direction, but I don't think he was really seeing me, he was somewhere else entirely.
Swiftly, he stood up and balled his hands into fists, almost knocking the armchair over behind him. I really started to worry at this point.
"Malfoy?" I asked tentatively. I knew that it could be dangerous to break someone out of a trance, and I didn't know what had taken hold of him.
But he either ignored me or hadn't heard me. It occurred to me then that he might be reliving a part of the attack he hadn't actually seen—in fact, he really hadn't seen much, because when he got close to me, the man ran off. Something about his eyes, and his sudden need to take action convinced me that something like that was happening in his head, and I knew that it couldn't be good. His new, Phenomenon-driven instincts didn't seem completely under control under normal circumstances, and I'd just given him a window into the thing that would upset him the most. Wonderful, Hermione.
Of course, I'd decided this all in a split instant, and my next course of action was deciding that I had to reach him.
"Malfoy!"
I grabbed his arm as he started to turn away. "MALFOY!" I shrieked. I was genuinely frightened. My pull on his arm seemed to yank him back into the reality I was occupying. His eyes finally saw mine, instead of looking past me completely.
"Are you alright?" I searched his face.
He turned his hand so that the arm I was holding was now holding my arm as well, and pulled me into an embrace. As he did this, I began, "What are you..." but the rest got lost and muffled against his chest. He wrapped both arms around me tightly, and I stood in my living room hugging Draco Malfoy. I couldn't tell who exactly the hug was supposed to be comforting, but it honestly did calm my spirits that Malfoy wasn't about to go on a bloody, murderous rampage. And I suppose, being completely honest—I felt a little safer from the memory that had caused this whole incident in the first place.
XXXXXX
My imaginings had been broken into by a tug on my arm, and I had realized that at some point I had vacated my chair, apparently intending to take action. I came out of my near-trance to see Granger looking scared—I was fairly certain that she had been trying to get my attention for longer than normal. She seemed like she might have had a small amount of wetness in the corner of her eyes, and without much though (I am Draco Malfoy after all, there was a fleeting idea of my usual, much more collected self in what I was about to do) I pulled her into me and enveloped her with my arms. It soothed me as well as I had meant it to soothe her, and, in all honesty, I felt that I wasn't able to pull her quite close enough.
(THEY HUGGED ZOMG)
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