Epilogue compatible!

The Truths, the Lies, and the Secrets

She was beautiful. He didn't even feel bad about staring, because he was divorced and free to be just as weird and creepy as he wanted. So he did. He watched her dancing with him, watched her laughing with her friends, watched her as she escaped the throngs of people and make her way out of the ballroom.

She was beautiful, he decided, but wildly unhappy.

She hadn't noticed him watching her; in fact, no one had. He was good at being inconspicuous. So, very inconspicuously, he followed her into the hallway.

He made it just in time to see the white silk of her dress disappear around a corner. His footsteps were silent on the plush carpeting, and he used it to his advantage as he all but ran after her. He was hoping to catch her to talk, for a verbal sparring match. He loved to see her angry. Whoever thought she was a bland prude had obviously never seen her even a little bit annoyed; she was passionate, he knew, and had a fire in her spirit Weasley would never understand. Which, he mused, was probably why she was so wildly unhappy.

He rounded the corner after her, his fingers tingling with the prospect of talking to her. She was his favorite itch to scratch, and he saw her so rarely that he took every opportunity he could to talk to her. He'd been doing so for years. Watching her was not enough.

He looked down the dim hallway, searching for a hint of that white skirt. He didn't see her; she must have stepped into one of the rooms too quickly.

"Hello, Draco," she said quietly.

Startled, he turned to see her nearly hidden in an alcove to his right. Her elbows rested on her knees as she held her head in her hands. She didn't just look wildly unhappy, she looked like hell.

"Hermione," he said awkwardly. He wasn't used to worrying about her health; she was supposed to be invincible. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she snapped, her voice shaking.

She was lying. "No, you're not." He kneeled before her and looked up at her. Up close, she looked deathly pale. In her white dress, she looked like a ghost. He touched her arm and was shocked by the coolness of her skin. "What happened?"

She wasn't breathing, but gasping for air. "Nothing! Go away!" But even as she tried to scream at him, she was clutching her stomach and groaning in pain. Then he noticed the blood.

"Hermione!" He didn't think, just acted, and picked her up and cradled her against him. She was light and frail in his arms, and the silk made it hard for him to hold her, but he didn't want to squeeze her too tightly.

He apparated them to St. Mungo's illegally, but he didn't care that he wasn't at a sanctioned apparition point. He carried her to the emergency check-in despite her half-hearted attempts to escape from him.

"What happened?" The healer asked him.

"I don't know, I don't know," he muttered desperately.

"Healer Gregory," she murmured, her eyes barely open. "I need Healer Gregory."

The healer went running for Healer Gregory and left Draco standing there, still holding her. He could feel the blood on the back of her dress, making the dress more slippery than it already was.

"Hermione," he whispered. He wanted to push her bangs from her eyes, but his arms were occupied and he didn't want to put her down. He stood in the middle of the empty reception room listening to his heart pounding in his chest and her blood drip onto the floor. It was hell.

He felt the seconds pass slowly, and then, finally, heard the footsteps of the doctor approaching. Her limp body was pulled from his arm and put on the gurney, but he clung to her hand. It wasn't natural for him to be this attached to someone, but he didn't care.

"Family only," the nurse said, shoving him aside rudely.

"I'm her husband!" He insisted, blatantly lying. It was a desperate, stupid lie, but the nurse was either tired or gullible enough to believe it.

He walked beside her gurney until they reached the door marked "Personnel only". He stood outside long after she had disappeared, slightly traumatized and confused. He knew he needed to get her real husband, or Harry, or someone, but he couldn't leave her alone. When the Healer's didn't even recognize the infamous Hermione Granger, something was wrong. Very wrong.

He stood in the cold hallway for an hour until the nurse ushered him back into the waiting room and handed him forms to fill out. He left them blank. He didn't know anything about her. He finally owled Harry. He didn't want to think about Weasley. He'd heard the rumors about her errant husband and, while he'd made his peace with Harry, he still though the redheaded sidekick was a bit of a git.

A new nurse came to take him back to see her. She gave him a mean look for not filling out any of the papers, but led him back to her room nonetheless.

The healer was waiting for him. "How is she?" Draco asked. He'd never been scared for anyone's safety before, save his son's.

"She's doing better than expected. She won't bounce right back, but she should make a quick recovery. You can take her home tomorrow, maybe, or the next day."

"What happened?" He asked. His mouth was dry. She was Hermione Granger. She didn't get stuck in St. Mungo's for days. She was too stubborn to be weak.

"I'm sorry, sir, but there was nothing we could do to save your son," the healer told him gently. For a moment, he was stunned and confused, thinking of Scorpius and wondering what the hell had happened. And then, he realized everything all at once. Hermione had been pregnant. Hermione had lost her baby. The healer expected him to tell her.

"Oh God," Draco whispered. He pushed his way into the room with her. She looked too tiny and frail to be alive, and he worried, for a moment, that he had lost her too, and then he saw her eyes following him as he walked from the door to the center of the room.

"Hey," he whispered. "Uh… how do you feel?"

She looked at him blankly, and moved her hand over her stomach. "It happened, didn't it?" She asked. He couldn't answer her. How did you tell a woman her baby was dead? "It's okay," she whispered. "I can tell. You don't have to say it."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. The room was dark, illuminated only with the pale glow of the moon, but he could see her eyes glistened with tears. She fought them for a moment, and then gave up and sobbed.

He crossed the room to her bedside. He wasn't good at comforting people, but he tried for her. He sat on the edge of her bed and pushed her hair from her eyes with one hand, and held her hand with the other.

"It'll be okay," he whispered.

She leaned forward and didn't seem to care that it was Draco Malfoy who was comforting her. "I'm such a slut," she sobbed quietly, almost talking to herself. "I shouldn't have done all those things. This is all my fault. I'm so stupid. Oh God, I'm so stupid."

He was slightly shocked. "What do you mean? Did you…" Surely, Hermione didn't mean that she had been sleeping around? If word from the grapevine was to be believed, he'd say she had every right, but she was Hermione Granger!

"God, no!" She nearly shouted. He winced at her proximity to his ear as she continued. "I just meant… God, this is embarrassing. You've… you've heard things about Ron, haven't you?" She paused and he nodded, certain they were on the same page. She didn't want to clarify, and he didn't want to make her clarify. "Well, it's true. Not the more outrageous rumors, of course, but the rest are all pretty much right on the mark. And stupid, stupid me, I thought it was all about sex, so I… well, I got more… daring sexually … but it was never enough and it didn't work because he kept… well, you know what he did… and then I was pregnant but couldn't tell him and now this and oh God, oh God…" and then she broke down into another round of sobs and he wrapped his arms around her. She couldn't be feeling alright if she just admitted that to him. She couldn't be feeling alright if she'd done all that in the first place.

"He's an idiot," he told her. "You're beautiful, and he's an idiot for not seeing it, and for thinking he'd do better than you. You're so much better than he is. He wouldn't even be alive without you, now, would he? And you're not a slut- not by a long shot, so don't you dare even begin to think so. You're beautiful."

She shook her head, dismissing the compliment. She didn't realize that he didn't just hand out compliments, and he didn't give out pity-compliments. She didn't realize that he meant it. "Why are you even here?" She asked, no longer as vulnerable and quickly realizing how odd her situation was.

"A Malfoy always helps a damsel in distress," he said gallantly. They both recognized the lie; most Malfoys had no such morals. He, though, was the beginning of a new generations; maybe he'd be different. "Plus, I was the one who found you. You looked like you needed urgent care and I didn't think Weasley would be of much help."

She looked into his eyes. She was exhausted and aching, but she found comfort in his eyes. She knew he must have followed her out of the party. She'd excused herself when the pain began. She hadn't expected it to be that bad. She hadn't expected that.

"Thank you," she told him. "For helping me. For staying with me."

He shook his head. "You don't have to thank me for being a decent human being."

She squeezed his hand. "But for the longest time, I didn't think you were one. I know the war changed you- it changed everyone- but even though we go to all these social events together, we never talk. We just bicker like we're still children." She paused, bit her lip, and then continued. "I like bickering with you, you know," she admitted. "It's like nothing's really changed. It's comforting."

He nodded. "I know. It's nice to not bicker as well, though."

"Yeah," she murmured, and then he got the feeling that she was drifting very far away from him. "I supposed I should owl Harry," she said finally. "I suppose I should owl Ron too- I just don't want to."

"Don't," he told her. "Just rest. You need it. I've already owled Harry, don't worry. Just rest."

She nodded. She wouldn't have fallen asleep had she not been administered a slow-acting sleeping potion. He was grateful for it. He wanted her to sleep through the pain and weariness. She deserved it.

He held her hand as she slept and wondered why he was still there. She watched her as she dreamed, and she was still beautiful. He decided that no one could pull off half-dead the way that she could. He watched her float on peacefully, unaware of the pains her waking self bore. She didn't look so wildly unhappy anymore.


He fell asleep just as the first rays of sunlight infiltrated the grim hospital room. He didn't sleep long, though, before the Boy Who Lived to Annoy and his sidekick began making a ruckus in the hallway. He stood slowly, aware that his joints would protest heavily to the position he'd slept in, and eavesdropped shamelessly.

It seemed that Harry had gotten the owl, rather belatedly, and alerted The Weasel that his wife was in critical condition. The pair had apparated to the hospital, only to find out that there was no Hermione Weasley registered yet, just someone in the maternity ward who hadn't filled out her paperwork yet. So that was where they went, though wondering if Draco was just setting them up for something. They apparently hadn't forgotten the old rivalries the way she had.

"Family only," came the nasally snarl of the nurse. Draco recognized her as the same one who'd attempted to kick him out the night before. He'd claimed to be her husband, but Weasley really was.

"I'm her husband!" Weasley exclaimed.

"Her husband's already in there with her," the nurse informed him. "Get out of my corridor."

Draco reluctantly walked to the door, looked one last time at her sweet, sleeping face, and then walked into the fray. "Harry, Ron," he said curtly in greeting. He handed them the clipboard. "Here, you fill this out- I don't know anything about her medical history and stuff."

"YOU!" Ron bellowed. "You told them you were her husband! What the hell!"

"Sorry, I didn't realize you wanted me to leave her alone and unconscious. Next time she starts bleeding uncontrollably and passes out, I'll keep that in mind."

He left an angry Ron sputtering in the hallway while Harry filled out the paperwork. She was awake, no doubt pulled from her slumber by her oaf of a husband's shouting.

"They're here," he stated unnecessarily.

She shook her head. She looked deathly pale again. "Please, don't… I don't want to see Ron right now. Please. I can't… and tell him… tell him, if he threatens to divorce me, that the papers are in the bottom drawer of my nightstand."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I wanted to be ready," she explained. "And I had seriously considered it before. I'm seriously considering it now. I just don't think I can ignore it anymore." She meant the adultery, he knew. It was amazing she'd ever tried to ignore it, but Hermione wasn't a woman to give up without a fight. She also wasn't a woman to persist in doomed causes.

He left her again, even more reluctantly, and met Weasley in the hall. "She doesn't want to see you," he informed the shorter man. "Frankly, I don't blame her."

"What happened?" Ron asked angrily. "Why is she even in here? Why doesn't she want to see me? Why does she want to see you? What's going on?"

It would have been funny for Draco to see Ron so flustered had he not just realized that he'd have to tell the other man that his wife had just miscarried their baby. Ron was an idiot, but he loved his children, and this would be a deep blow to him. The realization had a very sobering effect, and Draco wished, not for the first time, that none of it had happened.

"Look, Weasley, you've screwed up with her. She's scared and vulnerable and is afraid of what you may do or say, because you don't have a great record with comforting her. I'm the one who took care of her and brought her here, so she's just being clingy. It's natural."

"She hates you," Ron sneered.

"No, you hate me, and you assume she feels the same." Ron had cheated on his wife, but had lost his unborn son, and for that Draco couldn't manage to feel anything past pity towards him, irritating as he was. "Look, just go get Harry and talk to a doctor."

He could tell Ron wanted a fight, but he went anyway. He was scared. If Draco didn't want to tell him, it had to be bad. He may have been a less-than-perfect husband, but he didn't want something terrible to happen to her.

He watched Weasley and Potter retreat in search of Healer Gregory and then went back into Hermione's room.

"You okay?" He asked.

She nodded, looking more childlike than he'd ever seen her. "Yeah."

"I didn't tell him," he told her. "I sent him to find the healer. He'll be back though."

"I know… I just want this to be over with."

"I'll be right back." He disappeared and reappeared in a flash before handing her a vial of purple potion. "Take this," he said softly. "It'll help you go to back sleep. I'll deal with them."

She did, and fell back asleep almost instantly. He repositioned the blankets around her before going back to the hall to meet Harry and Ron and whatever other Weasley's they brought with them. He couldn't save her from them, he knew, but he could let her sleep through the worst of it. He would do that for her.


The Weasleys never came. Ron went home alone, a broken man, and Draco pitied him. Harry took Hermione back to Grimmauld Place. Draco watched as he led her out, his hand on the small of her back and then his fingers wrapped tightly in hers as they flooed together. She looked small and weak, but she was beautiful. In fact, it almost frightened him how much he thought of her as beautiful. He realized when she turned around to catch his eye that she had told Ron about the bottom drawer of her nightstand. She was broken and giving up.

He felt strange seeing her go. He'd brought her in, taken care of her; it seemed fitting that he should have taken her home as well. But Potter was her friend, not him, and Potter was better equipped to help her handle the loss and the divorce.

He went home, but it was all motions and no thought. He wondered how she was. He wondered what had happened after they'd sorted out who her real family was and, realizing their error and his lie, had sent him back to the waiting room. He wondered what she was doing now.

He felt pathetic that night as he lay in bed. He couldn't sleep, even though he realized he hadn't slept in days. He hadn't felt like that in years, since before the war was over, during his sixth year at Hogwarts.

He'd hoped the rumors were untrue. There were rumors about everyone in the public eye, after all, especially the Quidditch players. The fact that Ron was a Keeper for the Canons as well as a member of the infamous Golden Trio only heightened the media's desire to expose scandals and start rumors. He'd comforted himself with that knowledge, and told himself it was nothing to worry over. He had convinced himself that she was a big girl, and she could handle the gossip, especially since it wasn't true. He hadn't considered the possibility that she couldn't, and it was.

Around three in the morning, he decided that honesty maybe really was the best policy, and vowed to stop lying to himself.


He didn't see her for weeks after she was discharged, though he made an effort to keep up with her through wizarding tabloids and newspapers. He gathered that the rumors about Ron had been true, and that the couple was divorcing. He even found a full-page spread about Hermione and the children. The article said that Rose and Hugo had been pulled from Hogwarts for a week to stay with their mother. That, he could believe; he could imagine her pulling her children out of school in what would probably be a vain attempt to tell them the news before they found out from less comforting sources.

Someone had managed to get a snapshot of her with the children at the train station. She looked better, he noticed with a smile, and beautiful as always.

He carefully folded the tabloid and added it to the stack he'd accumulated. Satisfied that she was doing well, he then proceeded to send large sums of money to the different tabloid owners with anonymous notes asking them to please mind their own damn business.


The next time he saw her, she was alone at Florish and Blotts. In all honesty, he had been going by the store more often than usual in hopes of catching her there, not that he'd ever say so. He was pleased to see that there was no cloud of paparazzi around her.

"Oh, hello, Hermione," he greeted her as he pretended to have just noticed her at the self of muggle books about parenting.

"Hello," she said a little less brightly. "How are you?"

"Good. Yourself?"

"I've been worse. Looking for books on single-parenting?" She asked.

He nodded and remembered belatedly his promise to stop lying. Old habits died hard. "I don't know why you're bothering, though; after mothering everyone in Hogwarts you could force under your wing, I think you'd be better suited for writing the books."

She laughed, and it was only slightly forced. "Actually, I'm looking for books for Ron. I'm hoping to find one that says very explicitly to respect and honor your ex-wife and give her sole custody."

He smiled. "Good luck with that."

She smiled but then looked up at him strangely. He had a strange urge to check his teeth for spinach. "I'm not made of glass," she said slowly. "What you saw in the hospital, that wasn't normal. You know I'm stronger than that. You don't have to make pleasant conversation with me because you're afraid I'm too weak for our usual repertoire, or because you feel bad for me."

He shook his head. "It's not that. It's just nice to talk to you."

When she looked into his grey eyes, she expected to detect a lie. She expected him to say hasty goodbyes and walk away. What she found instead startled her: it was almost as if he genuinely cared. "It's nice to talk to you too," she admitted. She vaguely recalled saying something of the sort to him before, in the hospital, but the whole experience was a general blur, with the exception of Ron storming into her room in a fit of despair and flying out in a fit of rage after she told him that it was over.

"You hungry?" He asked, and she nodded slowly. He wasn't supposed to be this nice when she wasn't bleeding, and she didn't understand it, but she liked it. "Dinner will be ready at the manor in half an hour, if you're interested in joining me."

She paused, then smiled. "That sounds lovely, thank you."


He couldn't picture her at a stuffy table with a different fork for every dish, so they ate on the back porch. Malfoy Manor was built a bit like the French palace Versailles, with the house at the top of the hill so that they had a clear view of the gardens and fountains in the backyard. It was stunningly gorgeous, and Hermione had to restrain herself from asking if she could just go and wander through the gardens. That would be rude, she reminded herself, when she'd only be invited for dinner.

The back of the manor faced west, so they watched the sunset as they ate. They made pleasant small talk, avoiding sensitive topics and subjects they suspected may be a little sore. They were both afraid that a simple wrong word would ruin the pleasantness and send them spiraling back to their pre-accident bickering. The bickering had been nice, Draco decided, but talking was better. He'd never really had a chance to talk to her before.

"Where are you living?" He asked curiously, carelessly. He wished he hadn't asked that moments after the words were out of his mouth, but it was too late.

She grimaced from distaste but answered. "Back at my parents', actually. Until the divorce is official, I can't buy my own place. I stayed with Harry and Ginny for a bit, while I was recovering, but I couldn't stand all the memories, and besides, Ron is Ginny's brother. She knows he was wrong, that he had it coming, and she would have picked me over him if it came down to choosing sides, but I couldn't ask her to do that."

"How are the children?" He asked softly. He'd been through the same thing, more or less, when he divorced Astoria, but she had two children instead of just one, and her divorce was more explosive.

"They're… children are smart, you know," she told him. "They'd been expecting it. Luckily I got to them before any of the other students got their gossip magazines. I just wish they didn't have to deal with this. I wish they didn't have to listen to any rumors about their dad. It's been nice, though, that the tabloids finally seemed to forget about us all at once. How was it for Scorpius?"

"Scorpius had a fairly easy time of it, I suppose, because you're right, children are smart, and he knew that Astoria and I never loved each other, and our divorce was far less messy and public. When she married some foreign man with a better title than mine, she made a half-hearted attempt to take him with her, but he chose to stay with me. I think he adjusted well. I made him see a counselor anyway, though."

"Did it help?"

"The counselor?" He asked, and she nodded. "Yeah, I think the counselor helped, once he got over his irrational belief that I only sent him there because I thought he was insane and wanted some cheap babysitting. Would you like the address?"

She nodded, and he rummaged through his cloak in search of some paper and pens to write it down for her.

"Thanks," she said and pocketed the slip of paper. "I'll take them when they get home for the summer. They won't be thrilled, but it couldn't hurt, right? I just hope the divorce is final by then and we don't all end up living at my parents'."

"Hey," he said suddenly, remembering something very potentially important. "I've got a small house in Scotland you can live in, if you want."

"Define 'small'," she joked. "It's a very nice offer, thank you, but really, I couldn't."

"Sure you could!" He exclaimed, excited to have a reason to talk to her more often and to be in a position where he'd be taking care of her. Why hadn't he thought of the house before? Probably because had been abandoned before he was born, but he conveniently forgot that. "Really, it is small; it's only in the family through a series of marriages and isn't like any of the other manors and castles. It's more of a cottage than anything else. It's a bit run down, but from the pictures I've seen, it looks like it could be perfect for you."

She shook her head. "No, really, I couldn't. It would be too strange looking. I mean, how would it look to you if one of your friends suddenly had some woman living in one of their spare houses."

"I would assume that she was his mistress," he admitted.

"Exactly! I don't need that rumor getting to my children. Besides, there's a good chance I could win sole custody, and I'm not willing to jeopardize that."

But Draco was already scheming. "What if I charged you rent? You could have your money back, of course, later, but if I charged you rent it would go through Gringrotts and end up in the social papers, so everyone would know it was legitimate. And rent would be rather low because the place is in a state of rather sorry disrepair, though I'm sure you could fix it all quite easily."

She was tempted to say yes. She was very tempted to say yes. It sounded good. In fact, it sounded too good to be true. He hadn't been her enemy since the end of the war, but he certainly hadn't been her friend, and he was suddenly very interested in helping her? "Why are you helping me?" She asked solemnly.

He was slightly startled by the question. He had a few different answers- some that she would know were lies, some that he would know were lies, and some that were mere half-truths. "You need an ally," he finally told her. "And you're really the only person from the Order who doesn't seem to care what I was forced into. You've made your peace with it all. So really, we both benefit."

But she was too smart. "No, that's no it. Plenty of people have forgiven you- the press covered your trial quite thoroughly and it all worked out in your favor. Some people aren't particularly fond of you, but they've forgiven you. Why are you so intent on helping me?"

He didn't want to tell her. He wanted to help her, and knew that the truth might scare her, and then she'd really be gone from him forever. She was in the middle of a divorce, for Merlin's sake, not to mention that she'd just had a miscarriage and had been cheated on for years. She may not have been made out of glass, but he knew she was still breakable. He couldn't tell her the truth, not right then. It wouldn't have been right, and it wouldn't have been fair to her. It would have hurt both of them.

Because Ron was partially his fault. He'd never admitted it to anyone, and tried not to admit it to himself, but he had come very close to loving her in her sixth year. He'd never told anyone, but she was the main reason he had hesitated to kill Dumbledore and the reason it'd taken him so long to fix the vanishing cabinet; he'd been buying her more time. She'd also been the reason he'd chosen his mode of communication with Rosmerta: it made him feel closer to her, to use a method she'd probably invented.

It was after that battle he realized he couldn't be with her. She'd never trust him, he knew. He hated to think she was safer with Weasley, but he knew she was. So he'd given up the claim he never had and sent Weasley a very detailed letter explaining exactly what would happen to certain parts of his anatomy should he screw up with her.

It seemed silly to think of now, 19 years later. Hogwarts was long over, as well as the war. But he'd never really forgotten her. He'd tried, with Astoria, but it never really worked. She was always there in the back of his mind.

Sometimes, he felt like Gatsby, and she was his Daisy.

He hoped to Merlin they would have a better ending.


I'm going to blame the suckiness and slowness of this one on my severe heat exhaustion / possibly mild heatstroke. I have no idea what happened, really, except I was kind of all over the place and should probably not have driven myself home. So review because you feel bad for me.

I like reviews more than breaking the food curse!