Chapter Eight: They All Thought Wrong
(December 2nd)
Part 1: Sleepless nights.
"How long will he be unconscious?" Draco asked the Healer as he peered down at his resting father.
The span between father's psychotic breaks had been rapidly decreasing as the months progressed. He'd had three in the last two weeks, and it was making him antsy. More than ever he implored Mother to see reason and put him in St. Mungo's permanently where he could have round the clock care and safety from himself.
Anti-psychotic potions weren't working. Muggle medicines weren't working, either.
Nothing worked. His organs were slowly deteriorating, and his magic was getting more and more uncontrolled. It was pretty obvious that Lucius Malfoy was either going to commit suicide or deteriorate right before their eyes.
"Maybe a day or two." The Healer didn't sound too confident.
"Which is it; a day or two days?" he snapped.
"Draco," his mother called.
His shot over to the little couch where his mother sat with a stoic Blaise; she was close to tears and it muffled his rage. Other than the bruises on her arms, her black eye, and dishevelled appearance; she was otherwise unscathed from the latest incident with Father. Draco gave off a heavy sigh, pulled himself together, and listened to the Healer prattle on about the effects of the potion that he'd put his father on.
"Mr. Malfoy." Draco bristled at the title. "Excuse me, Draco, but the thing about these potions are..."
Earlier that evening, Mother found him trying to stab himself with a dagger. She spelled the dagger to disappear, but didn't expect Lucius' rage. Savagely, he launched at his wife, screaming words in what she said sounded like an invented language as he tackled her to the floor and started slapping her brutally. Draco refused to think about what would've happened if he hadn't come in the room when he did.
It was as much of a painful thought as it was an angry one.
"So that's why I can't tell you whether the potion lasts one or two days." Draco hadn't listened to a word, but nodded as if he had, and the Healer continued. "I'm going to heal your mother's bruises, if you have anymore questions, don't hesitate to ask." With that, the young Healer turned on his heels and walked towards his mother.
There was a small exchange between Blaise, his mother, and the Healer before the latter two left the room together. It wasn't until the massive bedroom door shut that Draco looked at his best friend. Blaise, of course, relaxed on the futon as if he instinctively knew a Draco Malfoy tirade was about to occur. He'd been witness to enough of them in the past to know the signs: slightly flushed cheeks, a typical Malfoy sneer, and flashing eyes.
"I've just about had it with this nonsense," Draco raged as he irritably paced next to Father's bed, "What does he have to do to make her listen to me and put him in St. Mungo's for good? Does he have to go and kill us all in our sleep before she believes me?"
"Draco-" Blaise rose from his seat suddenly.
"No! He could've killed her. He could've killed her and there wouldn't have been anything that I could've done about it!"
"Draco-" Blaise cautiously reached in his pocket.
"He needs to be put in a hospital, someplace where they can look after him and make sure he's not trying to dangle himself off bloody chandeliers!"
"Draco!" Blaise yelled a bit brusquely.
"What?!"
"Your father's hand is moving," he informed cryptically.
What the hell? He whirled around and sure enough, his left hand actually was moving; opening and closing, clenching and unclenching, like a reflex. Actually, it looked as if he were using his hand to dramatize the human heartbeat. His eyes drifted up slowly where they rested on his shut eyes. He looked peaceful...as if he were dreaming.
With a smirk, he turned back to a worried yet stoic Blaise. "Don't worry, he's still asleep."
The grandfather clock chimed. It was midnight. All the light in the room fell to darkness.
The battle of the darkness had begun and all hell broke loose.
"Lumos!" Draco heard Blaise call out and a little beam of light erupted from the end of his wand, but it wasn't enough for him to see well, "Draco? Mate, are you-!"
Draco felt the hand on the calloused hand on the back of his neck only moments before. "What the-" Instinct had him swing back in the darkness, but all he met was air.
"Nox!"
The hand squeezed momentarily and released. He swung back again; only air. Blaise was yelling every light spell he knew in hopes that one would make the lights cut on. A strangled yelp escaped Draco as he was pushed to the ground from behind.
"Draco, are you okay?"
It wasn't as if he could answer.
He hadn't had a moment's notice to brace his body for the fall, and he fell on the floor...hard.
Pain gripped each of his senses. He searched and searched, but he couldn't find his own breath and rolled on his back in hopes to regain the thing he'd lost. Faintly, he heard Blaise through the humming in his own head, but he couldn't focus too long. No, all he could focus on was the rush of blood to his head and the woozy sensation he felt in his stomach.
"Draco, answer me!"
He tried, he really did, but as he tried to muster enough strength and air to answer Blaise's almost desperate command, he felt as if he were trying to inhale from a thin straw; there simply wasn't enough air getting into his lungs and they burned horribly.
In the back of his mind, he heard a crash and Blaise's colourful cursing. "There's like a shield, I can't get through it."
Draco knew he was screwed.
A soft voice spoke above him; cryptic, calm, and lacking all emotion, "The veagles want your soul, Draco...they want your soul and your life. They want to cleanse it for you. Give it to them. Don't be afraid. I'll be with you every step of the way," and then that calloused hand wrapped around his neck again.
When they clenched, cutting off his air supply completely, Draco, though he flailed and kicked with all his might, felt powerless for the first time in a very long time. And when Lucius Malfoy put force behind his squeeze, in an attempt to keep him from getting away, he actually feared for his life.
"Father, please..." he rasped out as his eyes burned.
In a last ditch effort, he wrapped his hands around his father's wrist, trying desperately to pry his hands off his throat.
They only tightened more.
"Shh...let go...accept it. I have."
It was a fight he was rapidly losing.
Snape once told him that he wasn't afraid of death, that it was the stakes that one put up in order to play the game of life. Yeah, well, that was complete rubbish. Snape was always too mysterious and philosophical for his own good.
Draco didn't want to die. Not that way. Not that night.
Lucius' hands squeezed his son's throat tighter; it felt as if he were crushing his windpipe in his vice grip. Draco's mind screamed in pain, his head throbbed from the lack of oxygen, and he felt his heart slow. Weakening more and more by the second, Draco felt his legs slowly stop jerking about wildly, just twitching sporadically as his eyes rolled around, unfocused.
His mind screamed at him to keep fighting, but he just didn't have it in him.
"Shh, everything is going to be fine, you'll see...I'm saving you, son, I'm saving you...."
Draco eyes shut, he'd stopped kicking and fighting; his mouth was partially open as if he still tried to draw in air.
"Finite!"
Nothing happened.
"All your life you've never known what it's like to be free...here's your chance. The veagles want you. They want your pure blood," and he sniffed at the skin of his neck. It was as he could smell the blood that slowly pumped through his son's arteries.
Draco released an internal grunt.
"Shh, don't fight it, son. You're going to be like us, Draco."
"Finite Incantatem!"
And the lights came back on, the door busted open. He faintly heard his mother's terrified scream.
"Stupefy!"
Lucius' body unceremoniously slumped over next to his son.
Yes, the pressure of his hands was gone, but Draco felt like he was trapped in a dream of sorts, neither here nor there. He heard a lot, but felt nothing; and all he could wonder if nearly being strangled by his deranged father for the second time in three years was really what his life was all about.
"Don't just stand there, you daft Healer, get some help! Send a Patronus, do something!"
He heard a door slam.
Weakly, he heard his mother say through strangled tears, "Oh Merlin, Blaise, is he breathing?"
"Barely. Look, I'm going to do something I learned a while ago...I'm going to tilt his head back and I need you to pinch his nose and breathe into his mouth, can you do that?"
There was no doubt about the fear and worry in her voice. "Yes...."
His chest burned as he inhaled sharply.
Merlin, it hurt! His head throbbed miserably, body ached, and his neck hurt like hell. With his head turned to the side, he coughed for what seemed like hours until he regained his breath, and even then he gasped like crazy. It was as if his body couldn't capture enough air to sustain him. His emotions ran wild; he was happy to breathe again, but he was mad as hell that he was put in that situation. Draco heard his mother weeping horribly and it was the water that drenched the flames of his anger.
Draco started to move, but felt Blaise's hand on his shoulder, forcing him to stay down as he muttered, "Don't."
But he opened his eyes slowly and they settled on his mother.
She looked incredibly shaken and more dishevelled than before.
"Mother," he whispered, unable to find his voice.
Narcissa's body shook as she cried miserable tears, not just for her son and husband, but for herself and the choices they'd been forced to make along the way; choices she would take back in an instant if she could if that meant getting her family back.
After the Healers carted his father off to St. Mungo's for a week in his private room where he would be under a suicide watch, his mother begged him to stay at the Manor, but he couldn't. Instead, he arranged for her to stay at a friend's and paid for the two to spa together for the weekend. There was nothing like a weekend with friends to get her mind off reality.
Blaise offered to stay at his house, but Draco declined. He needed time alone, but all he really wanted was a night; a night under his own covers, in his own bed, in his own room, in his own house where he could reflect on the night and sleep in peace. Of course, when he settled under the covers, he tossed and turned for a minute, unable to sleep. But sleepless nights weren't new to Draco Malfoy.
After the war, even with a heavy dosage of Dreamless Draught, he used to wake up screaming and shaking in a cold sweat; his nightmares used to make him sick. All the death, misery, torture, the constant threat of being eaten by Nagini, the Dark Lord, and the guilt he felt from the things he'd done to save his family; no amount of potion could stop him from reliving everything when he closed his eyes.
His first solution following the final battle had been to not sleep at all. Draco had spent months wandering the halls of the Manor all night until he collapsed somewhere. The house elves had taken him back to bed he'd sleep about an hour before he woke up in a cold sweat and restlessly walked the Manor again. It had been a vicious cycle that had lasted over nine months before Mother intervened with all sorts of potions that helped him sleep through the night.
But he'd been wise enough to sense that taking potions every night was an addictive habit and curbed it before it became a problem. The nightmares had never eased, even after all this time, but he was used to them. He had no other choice.
One day they would pass and he'd sleep peacefully.
With a snort, Draco rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling, touching his sore neck.
He'd thought wrong.
ooo
Part 2: Unopened Letter
It was midnight on Day Fifteen and Hermione was wide awake, thinking and hurting.
Her father used to always say: "Time heals all wounds, Hermione. Nothing stays the same forever."
Now she choked out a bitter laugh at those words. Time had passed. She had tried and did everything possible to start the process of healing and turn things around now that she was back in Britain, but now she believed firmly in the fact that not even time could heal some bruises.
She'd spent over two weeks in the hospital thanks to her conversation with Harry and words couldn't express how thrilled she was the day of her release. It didn't matter that she had a limp. Sure, her arm was in a cast. Okay, she couldn't perform strenuous tasks or work for the next three weeks and she had to go to a Muggle physical therapist for her leg and then for her arm when they removed the cast. Hermione Granger was even okay with the fact that she was still on enough potions to make an addict sick.
Nothing mattered.
She was grateful to be out of that bed, out of that room, off that floor, and out of that hospital.
Goodbye to surprise visits from Ginny with her personal agenda and fake smiles. Goodbye to odd rooftop exchanges with Malfoy where she almost found him pleasant to talk to...until he said something that reminded her who she was talking to. Goodbye mediwitches or 'medi-bitches' as Pansy called them. Goodbye horrible hospital food, and hello to her own bed.
When she left the hospital fifteen days ago, Hermione felt like she was skating on top of the world.
Somewhere along the way she found out she was a poor skater, tripped, and fell flat on her face.
Apparently, she should've paid more attention to the Healer's final message.
Hermione had no clue that 'relax for fifteen days' really meant 'don't leave your house for fifteen days because the amount of potions you're on will render you unable to do menial tasks'.
She told herself there were worse things, but really, she felt trapped, like a caged animal, in her own home. And there was no Pansy to take the edge off. She had work in Madeira and left Hermione with a newfound respect for prisoners in Azkaban, even the evil ones who had lost their sanity along the way.
She understood why.
Being trapped in one place never sat well with her, but she slept away most of the first three days away because of the potions and it diverted her attention from the solitude.
Everything was fine until she became strong enough to walk around the house following a dosage.
She wanted a drink, but instead she spent the next three days cleaning everything from ceiling to floor the Muggle way because she still didn't have a wand. She made sure everything was up to date, organised her kitchen, watched all the movies she'd missed in her absence, sat out by the lake, polished her floors, considered hiring someone to landscape her property, organised her books by title and author's last name, cleaned her fireplace, wrote Charlotte back, wrote Pansy and Mrs. Malfoy, and sat and waited for someone to write her back.
No one did.
Hermione paced the rest of Day Seven away on floor right in front of her fireplace, deep in thought. There was no saving her. Poor blue rug; it'd been worn down quickly and she needed a new one. For hours, she paced back and forth on that little rug, not eating, not drinking, not sleeping, not blinking, just pacing.
The memories started flashing in her mind on the eighth day of pure solitude.
For the fourth time since they arrived at the airport Hermione assured, "I'll be fine. My flight leaves in an hour." "I can go with you to Venice, to make sure you settle in. I mean, I'd completely understand if you didn't want to be in a foreign country after everything that's happened with your parents and-" "Pansy, I'm fine," Hermione stressed coolly. It wasn't a topic she particularly enjoyed discussing, in fact it was still quite painful and hard to believe. "You need to go home; to London. You need to take care of yourself. It's been a long six weeks for the both of us." "And here I was thinking that I was taking a vacation," Pansy chuckled ruefully. There was a last call for Flight 390 to London and Pansy hugged her again. "I'm putting myself into therapy when I get back, I keep on having nightmares about a lot of things-you should do the same." Hermione brushed her words off and prayed she'd hurry up and leave before she saw through the lies she'd been telling her for days. "I told you Pansy, I'm absolutely fine. Go, or you'll miss your flight." When Pansy disappeared through the terminal, Hermione turned on her heels and walked away. Her flight to London left three hours later.
It was a futile hope at best, but Hermione spent the ninth and tenth day hoping that someone would drop by, even for an hour. Mrs. Malfoy had had a family emergency that kept her busy and Pansy was still inundated with business. Hermione felt very lonely without both of them. It was an odd feeling. No one else knew where she lived; she wasn't even connected to anyone on the Floo network.
She felt restless, lonely, trapped, and incredibly sad.
It was the same depression she still felt tonight.
Ron just stared at her as if she'd gone bonkers, but she paid him no mind. After all, she had a lot to do and she was still rather jet-lagged from her flight from Australia. The trip to the Burrow should've been over ten minutes ago if she wanted to keep up on her schedule. Not to mention, she had to end a beautiful chapter in her life and she didn't want to, "What do you mean you're leaving, Hermione? You just got back!" Tears welled in her eyes, but she bit them back before he saw and unemotionally responded, "Exactly what I just said. I'm leaving, Ron. I'm moving to Venice. I've got an excellent job offer as a curse breaker, the company is paying for me to have a private tutor so I can sit for my NEWTs in a couple of months. It's the best opportunity and I have to take it. My flight leaves in tomorrow. I've just come to say goodbye. Don't talk me out of this. It's something I have to do." He reminded her of a tomato, anger was evident on his face and she knew she was in for the biggest row of their entire seven-year friendship and brand new relationship. But then he resigned a sigh and crossed the room, approaching her from the front. God, she was tired and she didn't want to fight, but it was all rather inevitable. Ron was right there, inches from her face. Hermione was cognizant to the fact that she was literally backed into a wall and Ron towered over her. Instead of anger, he spoke with emotions that broke her heart, "'Mione," he breathed softly against her forehead before kissing it softly. All the reserve she'd built up melted in a pool around her feet and Hermione fisted his shirt as his lips moved down the side of her face, down to her chin, and up, where they grazed over hers. Where he acquired such gentleness, she didn't know, but he was making it hard for her to do as she planned. And when he captured her lips in a kiss, he'd made it damn near impossible. Then it all came back to her. Slowly, she pulled away, hoarsely, "Ron-" He rested his forehead against hers, "You're right. I know that I can't stop you from doing what you want, it wouldn't be fair and I love you too much to hold you back from reaching your potential. If Italy is where you want to go then I can't stop you. All that I can do is hope that you will reconsider." "Ron, please don't make this any harder than it has to be." She begged, seconds from tears. She didn't want to leave, she didn't want to leave him, but he wouldn't understand. "I really don't want to talk about it right now. Venice is an amazing opportunity for me, I've considered and thought it over and I'm saying yes. I'm utterly exhausted right now and I'm not changing my mind." He sighed and released her, leaving her suddenly cool. It looked like it took him a lot to leave the topic alone and she loved him more for it. Silently, Hermione thanked him, "It's been a long six weeks in Australia-" It was like Ron was on a mission to converse to get his mind off everything. "Did you find your parents?" After clearing her throat, Hermione prayed her broken voice wouldn't betray her, "Yes. I did." He made hand motions as if he wanted her to elaborate and when she didn't he took the liberty, running off at the mouth for what seemed like forever, "Well, where are they? How are they? How did it go?" She chose her words carefully. "They're still in Australia, and they're fine. They seem to be at peace with everything." Ron didn't notice just how vague she'd been. "That's great news, Hermione. I know you were worried that they would be upset with you about the whole 'Memory Charm' thing." The clock chimed and Hermione took a deep breath, turning to her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. She rested her hand on his shoulder and looked him straight in the eyes, "Ron, there's something I need to do and it's probably one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, but it has to be done..."
By Day Thirteen, Hermione had finally figured it out.
Being at home had given her too much time to think about everything that she'd told Malfoy on the roof that day, and about all the things she hadn't told anyone.
Her thoughts wandered.
Pansy stared at her as she held open the door. "Do you think you can do this on your own?"
Shrugging, Hermione walked out on the sidewalk and inhaled the Australian air. It was beautiful here. It was a pity she didn't get to enjoy it because she'd spent every waking moment looking for her parents. In a flash, her black-haired companion was right next to her, "I'm not sure," was her truthful reply.
"You don't have to do this alone. There are other choices, like telling the father."
"That's where you're wrong. Telling him isn't a choice. The war made a mess of everything, and I can't make a mess of him, too. We've been through too much together. He'll want to marry me out of duty and then what? We'll grow old together? No, somewhere in the crevices of my mind, I'll blame him. I'll blame him and this baby for missed opportunities. I don't think I can live with that."
"What about you and your dreams?"
"Who says my dreams will be stopped by this?"
"It's a baby, Hermione-"
"Who says I'm keeping the baby?"
Pansy gasped.
"This is something I have do on my own, no Ron, no Harry, nobody else-"
She took Hermione's hand in hers. "I won't let you do this on your own... you have me."
Yesterday, Day Fourteen, Hermione had thought that she was literally going mad from thinking so much.
"I'm sorry Miss Granger, there's nothing we can do."
She was hysterical. "What do you mean nothing? You can do something!"
"No, we can't. He's too weak to fight off anything."
"You're giving up?"
"No, of course not, but you need to start making arrangements, just in case...."
In the previous days, Hermione had cried, smashed dishes in anger, rocked back and forth on the floor, sat outside on her patio and stared out at the lake behind her house until she couldn't see two inches in front of her face, and then she had continued to sit out there, even though she had been freezing cold.
Funny how the cold couldn't numb her more than she already was.
It was 4:38 PM on Day Fourteen when Hermione Granger reached her breaking point.
The entire conversation with Ginny had left her cold inside. The second she'd turned on her heels and left without another word, an incredible layer of guilt had settled on her spirit. It had been a weight that was impossibly heavy to carry; a burden that needed its release.
Despite Malfoy's, "She deserved every word of that," which left her a bit unsettled for the rest of the day, Hermione had known better than to listen to Draco Malfoy.
Ginny, though her reasons for approaching Hermione were shoddy at best, hadn't deserved her anger. Ginny had every reason to be angry with her.
Ron had been devastated to speechlessness when she'd broken up with him. It had taken everything in her not to cry when the lone tear had run down his cheek. It had taken everything in her power not to take it all back and throw her arms around him. It had taken everything not to tell him that she loved him, that she always would. It had taken everything not to tell him the real reason why she was leaving him. It had taken everything not to tell him everything on her mind. It had taken everything within her to not look back when she'd walked out of his life.
But she hadn't.
She'd broken his heart and left him standing in the middle of the drawing room, wondering just where he had gone wrong.
Merlin, if there was anything that she regretted more, it was that - it was him. It was what she did to him.
He hadn't deserved to be hurt by her. None of them had. Hermione had known that she couldn't change what had happened, but she could at least start the process. She was tired of the war between them, tired of the rumours, and tired of them not knowing the truth.
There was no reason to hide it anymore; the truth was...dead.
So, she'd swallowed her pride, pulled out a piece of parchment, found her favourite quill, and spent the rest of Day Fourteen drafting a letter to Molly Weasley. After all, it had seemed like the appropriate place to start in her quest for redemption. Harry, Ginny, and Ron were too hard; the wounds between them were too deep. Mrs. Weasley was, after all, the last Weasley that she'd spoken to before she left five years before.
"Hermione?" Mrs. Weasley's voice was soft as she approached the crying girl from behind, "Is everything all right?"
"No. It's hopeless. It's all hopeless."
She tried to comfort her. "Maybe-"
"I'm breaking up with Ron tonight. I'm moving to Italy."
Mrs. Weasley gasped, "But why?"
"I can't...I can't tell you, but I'm so sorry."
"You have nothing to apologise for-"
"If only you knew..."
"I know that you may feel that way, but it's not the case."
"But-"
"Don't hesitate to write me, okay? Just to let me know how things are going for you...and if you need any advice, I'm just a Fire call away."
Hermione nodded, but doubted the invitation would stand once she finished breaking her son's heart.
The letter of apology to Mrs. Weasley didn't include just an apologise for her lack of communication over the years, but an apology for Ron, for the way she left, for all the pain and suffering she'd caused them all. Hermione didn't ask for forgiveness, she didn't want it. Even after all that time, there was nothing, nothing that she would take back. No, she only asked that she read her letter with an open mind and heart.
But what had happened next that had made her realise that taking the high road was rough. Perhaps seeking redemption wasn't worth the pain that it had caused.
Today, Day Fifteen, the last day of her house arrest, Hermione's letter was returned-unopened.
It felt like the biggest slap in the face she'd ever received.
Weasley vengeance served cold.
For the last three hours Hermione had stared at the letter on the coffee table as she cried. She cried until she could no longer speak. She cried until she could no longer see the neatly printed 'Mrs. Weasley' written on the cream-coloured envelope.
What the hell was she thinking?
Opening the lines of communication was a desperate move on her part.
Tears slid down her cheeks and thin shoulders shook.
More than anything, she was sick and tired of being miserable. Hermione had lost her humanity, determination, and will to keep living the way that she was. The problem was that there was no escaping that life, because it was one of her creation. She couldn't escape, not without some sort of forgiveness from a source that would immediately reject her.
It was mission impossible and she cried because it was all her fault.
Pain. The pain from the truth, pain from her sorrow, and pain from Mrs. Weasley's obvious sign of rejection hurt more than shattered body parts ever had or ever will. Pain was such a strange concept to someone who had never felt it, someone who didn't know what it actually meant. It was odd to the naïve and the lucky ones who couldn't feel it.
The word, when said to them, probably brought the obvious type of pain to mind: physical. The kind of pain that drew blood and left bruises; the kind of pain that left marks on the body to prove it had been marred. Sometimes it left scars and sometimes those scars healed and disappeared, forgotten. But Hermione, who had experienced more physical pain than most, never forgot.
She remembered every mark, every cut, and every sore.
There was no way she ever could forget.
But physical pain wasn't the worst, not even close. There was another type of pain: emotional pain, the one and only aspect of pain many couldn't, or most likely, didn't want to understand. Most didn't think of it the way she did and maybe it was because they'd never experienced it the way she had.
Most said that pain was a physical sensation, something you only felt with the body, but not the heart. And that just wasn't true. When your heart suffered, your body suffered too. Emotional pain was physical too; her broken heart was just as physical as her broken arm.
Hermione tossed the unopened letter in the fire and watched through tear-soaked eyes as it burned.
Her mother had once said that an apology was like superglue; it could repair anything.
Obviously, she'd thought wrong
ooo
(The next morning: December 3rd)
Part 3: Where in the hell are her parents?
Draco Malfoy awoke in a familiar bed to the smell of eggs...and bacon.
For a moment, he thought that he was at the Manor and the house elves were bringing him breakfast in bed like they always had every Saturday. He took a deep breath. He definitely wasn't in his bed at the Manor, but rather in his bed in his own house. Buried in a sea of pillows and under a thick comforter, Draco slowly lifted his messy blond head to look around with bleary grey eyes.
He sniffed the air again, muttering, "Eggs?" under his breath.
Draco didn't even know that he owned eggs; he sure as hell couldn't cook them.
He rolled over and sat straight up in bed. His neck ached, but overall he'd recovered from the previous night. Well, everything except his pride. Throwing the covers back, he winced as the cool air of his house hit his bare chest and decided that he needed a shirt, but it could wait. Once he made the bed, stuffing the sheets in the corners just the way he liked them, Draco yawned and stretched his long high above his head; a relieved groan escaped his lips when the bones in his back and shoulders popped.
Next, he sought after a shirt, which he found in the dirty clothes hamper in the laundry room.
After three failed attempts to figure out the spell to do his laundry magically in between his bi-weekly visits from his housekeeper, Draco made a quick mental note to con Pansy into doing the deed for him and walked back into his master bedroom where he found his wand right where he left it. He brushed his teeth, ignored his hair, and stared at the visible bruises on his neck where his father's hands had been.
With a frown, he sighed. Life went on. He refused to think about his near-death experience. One problem at a time was all that he could handle, and with a convincing nod, he decided it was time to go handle the intruder.
It wasn't a real intruder anyway.
With all the wards and protection on his house, they had to be friends with him to get inside his house. Still, Draco put on an intimidating sneer and stalked down the steps, wand in hand, still looking disheveled and slightly bleary-eyed, but no longer shirtless. But what he found, standing in the middle of his kitchen, was a well-dressed Pansy Parkinson with a lecherous grin and a frying pan in her hand.
He didn't know that she could scramble eggs, much less boil water. The sight was almost scary.
"Morning sunshine!"
His eyebrow rose gradually as he observed her with a mix of fascination and curiosity. "And exactly what are you doing here?"
Blue eyes cut from his to the pan, "Isn't it obvious?"
Apparently, Pansy's look went for the modern-day, Muggle Susie homemaker. She wore a quarter-length black shirt and a short, but classy little black skirt that fit her form, accentuating her perfect hips and showing off great, bare and slightly tanned legs. Pansy was blessed with probably the best legs he'd ever seen on a woman. And the fact that she wore black heels made them look longer, better.
Sweet Merlin...he almost bit his lip.
Around her little waist there was a thick white belt that matched her headband that kept her perfectly layered black hair out of her clear blue eyes...and of course she had a little white apron tied around her waist. She was beautiful. She always had been. During times like these, he wondered why they didn't date-"When you decide to stop staring at me like you want to tear my clothes off, your breakfast will waiting for you on the table."
Inwardly, Draco groaned.
Of course she had to remind him by opening her fat, annoying mouth that reminded him he felt nothing but platonic vibes from the woman in question. Well, that and Blaise's threat to kill him in seventy-five different ways if he dared to date her. Blaise wasn't possessive over anything like he was over Pansy Parkinson.
"I wasn't staring at you because I wanted to tear your clothes off, gods forbid that shit ever happens," he countered with a bit of almost playful malice in his voice. "I was staring because I was wondering who the hell Polyjuiced you. The Pansy Parkinson I know can't even boil water without magic."
She fired a bitterly cold and nasty glare that made her look like a pug before the corners of her lips slowly curled into an evil, but pretty smirk, "You're right," Pansy remarked in a cool drawl, "I had a house elf come in here and cook. Merlin forbid I waste my time on something as silly as cooking, I'll leave that to Hermione," she informed before dropping the pan into the sink as if it were burning her hand and made an unpleasant face.
A house elf stood by the table when they walked into the dining room together.
"Binky," she addressed, "I'm sure that Draco has some laundry that needs tending. Can you and Doxy please go handle it, and clean up a little?"
The house elf nodded and, with a snap of his fingers, disappeared to follow orders.
Draco only smiled at her as she removed the apron and took a seat at the table, crossing her legs as she elegantly picked up her coffee mug and took a quiet sip from it. No slurping, because she was poised like that. She then gestured to his plate of steaming food with a flip of her wrist. "Sit. Eat."
It sounded like a command, but he did it anyway.
He was about halfway finished eating and a quarter finished with his coffee laced with a pain potion - just in case - when Pansy asked. "Blaise came by last night. He was upset and was chain-smoking. My living room smells like cigarettes now. I had to lace his drink with Dreamless Draught to get him to go to sleep. What the hell happened last night - and what the hell is that on your neck?"
Draco snorted in his coffee mug and set it down, calmly explaining everything that happened, as much as it pained him to do so. When he finished, Pansy wore a worried expression. "Oh, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he assured thinly, patting her manicured hand.
"You know if there's anything I can do-"
"Know any Glamour charms?"
Pansy smiled. "Of course, I do."
There were a lot of things he loved about Pansy Parkinson.
The first thing was her unfailing loyalty. Draco had known Pansy since before he could remember; their mothers were good friends and openly fostered hopes that the two would grow up and marry each other. Obviously, with the war and everything, that hadn't happened and he was pretty damn sure that it never would. Now that he thought about it, he could laugh aloud at the idea of him and Pansy getting married; they would murder each other in the first day.
Scratch that, the first hour.
Pansy was beautiful-no-she was stunning, but he wouldn't marry her, much less date her for all the Galleons in the universe. Even though she was self-confident, sassy, funny, loud, and quick to curse him out if he acted like a git, when it boiled down to it, Pansy was bred to look and behave as the perfect pure-blooded bride: dutiful to the point of being submissive, loyal to their family's honour, gregarious, and amazing at saving face during hard times. Her breeding had become painfully obvious whenever they were around her surviving family members.
A perfect, dutiful, and pure-blooded wife? Definitely not what he was looking for. Not at all.
Honestly, Draco didn't fully know what he was looking for in a wife, much less a companion. He had no real time for that aspect of his life. Sure, he had dated a multitude of women, but only to keep up appearances. He hadn't care for any of them, and he hadn't bothered to get to know them, either. They eventually had served their purposes, and left.
He didn't care. They weren't what he wanted. But what did he want?
After thinking about it, he knew he wanted a witch intelligent enough to hold her end of a conversation, a witch who was independent, and a witch who spoke their mind freely. Other than that, he didn't know, but above all else there had to be a spark.
And no matter how stunning Pansy looked in heels, there definitely wasn't a spark.
But he'd gained something more important than a wife from his relationship with Pansy. He had a loyal friend; one who looked after him and kept his best interest at heart; one that would never damage or deceive him in any way. She was a friend who would kill, yes kill, anyone who tried. As with Granger, Pansy was fiercely protective of him, almost to the point where it annoyed him to no end, but unlike Granger, Draco's trust in her stretched out to the boundaries of the universe. It was limitless. Oh, and the loyalty she had to him was reciprocal.
He would kill anyone who hurt one black hair on her pretty little head and deep down it pained him that someone had. That man was lucky that Granger had killed him because what he would've done had he been the one to find her - it would've been infinitely worse.
"So," Pansy, fresh from using the perfect Glamour charm to cover his bruises, leaned over and stole a piece of his bacon. "What are you doing today?" she asked with her hand politely covering her mouth as she chewed.
Draco glared, "Working on the Marquette case."
"You work too much."
With a shrug, he confided truthfully, "Keeps my mind off things."
"You need to get out, Draco, and I have the perfect plan. I'm going to Hermione's..."
Draco's thoughts about the previous night had shattered the moment Pansy said her name.
"She's been alone since she left the hospital and she seemed rather down in her letter. I want to make up my absence by taking her out to dinner tomorrow."
If he was going to be honest with himself, he would admit that she'd been on his mind more than usual as of late, but didn't know why. He could easily blame it on Mother (who wouldn't stop talking about her), the job (where he just finished Operation Cover-up), Blaise (who asked about her the previous night before the fiasco occurred), or his memories from their rooftop conversation. But he didn't. Instead Draco decided that honesty with oneself, although highly overrated, was probably necessary in the case of Hermione Granger. So, yes, he thought about her, not constantly, but a few times when his mind wandered or someone brought her up.
Like right then. She was a wonderful distraction from his problems. Unlocking the mysteries to Hermione Granger's fucked up life was a good distraction from his personal domestic hell.
Everything that he'd learned about Granger's life thus far had the opposite reaction from what he expected. While he expected her story to interest him to no end, Draco didn't expect the things she'd overcome in her own life to make him respect her more. He didn't expect it to make him think more about his own life. Of course, it didn't wane his curiosity about why 'The Golden Trio' had broken apart. In fact, his curiosity had swelled to capacity after their rooftop conversation and her argument with the Weasley girl. He was intrigued, almost to the point where it consumed his thoughts when he was bored or when he had free time.
There were a lot of pieces to fit together, and he wanted to make sure it was right.
But there were some major loopholes that needed to get filled:
Why was she in Australia in the first place? That question walked into his mind after his conversation with Granger on the roof last month. Why did she leave the Weasel if she (gag!) loved him? He knew it was out of desperation, but why? What could make her so desperate that she'd leave the country for? And that led to another question: did she dump him before Australia or after?
Why did the She-Weasel and Granger not get along? He'd picked up little hints, like how it was the She Weasel's goal to keep Granger and Potter apart? But why? Granger was all Potter had in his pocket at school; Draco knew the fluffy-haired witch saved his arse on plenty of occasions with her vast amount of knowledge and her repertoire of spells. Why was Pansy the only person who knew why Granger left London? He'd definitely have to ask Pansy about that.
And what made Pansy visit Granger nine-no ten months ago? That little faux pas on Pansy's part plagued his thoughts, but he figured it was something he'd have to wait to get answered; there were more important potholes to fill. For example: the question that ran through his head constantly. Where the hell were her parents in the whole ordeal?
He obviously knew very little about Granger (and what he thought he knew was very far off base), but Draco figured that she loved her parents. She just seemed like the type that would do any and everything to protect her family; she was a lot like him in that sense. It seemed rather odd that she didn't talk about them, at all. But it was stranger that not once had he seen them, not even after her stint in the hospital following the Marquette incident.
There wasn't a story about them in the paper so he knew they were alive....
All those unanswered questions left his head in a fog, but it kept his mind off the pain in his neck.
"Draco?" Pansy's concerned voice snapped him from his thoughts, "Are you okay? You blanked out there."
He pasted a fake smile on his face. "I was thinking about the case," He lied with ease, "You were saying?"
After giving him a funny look, she pressed on, "I was thinking about taking Hermione out for dinner tomorrow to celebrate the end of her medical house arrest and I wanted to know if you wanted to come - it's my treat," she grinned.
Casually, he asked, "Is Blaise coming?" He didn't want to sit with a quiet, defensive Granger and a chatty Pansy without even-tempered Blaise.
"Yes. We're, well," she stammered and blushed a bit, "We've decided to start trying to fix us. I'm ready to get on with my life."
Draco smirked at that bit of news. "Well, it's about time."
Pansy smiled giddily, "It is, isn't it?" and finished her tea, "So, will you come?"
"Fine," he trailed off for a bit and ate a slice of bacon, chewing thoughtfully before speaking: "I have a question."
"And perhaps I have an answer," was her smart-assed reply that was followed by a smirk.
The glare he fired made the temperature cool a few degrees, "Ha, ha, you're a riot, Pansy," Draco deadpanned and drank from his mug. "I was wondering how long you've known Granger."
Pansy regarded him with a rather odd look. "I've 'known' her since we were eleven."
His face twisted into a tame version of a sneer. "I mean, when you actually started treating her like a human being."
There was a change in her; he'd seen the shift everytime they discussed something serious. The haughtiness was gone, the playfulness was gone, and before him sat a serious-looking Pansy Parkinson. She sipped her tea and stared at the table for a full minute before answering, "She came to my father's burial." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Granger was at the burial? He hadn't seen her.
Pansy shut her eyes as if she were trying to remember the day and even after five years it made her miserable when she thought about it, "She stood several feet away, on the left by some huge oak tree. I just so happened to glance in her direction as they lowered him in the ground, she gave me a little nod, turned on her heels and walked away." She opened her eyes and smirked sadly at the memory, "I think my respect for her quadrupled; she didn't have to come, she probably wouldn't have been welcomed by some of my older, more prejudiced family members, but she did. That took guts, and it showed me that she cared. And then I saw her on the flight-"
"To Australia?"
"Yes. My seat was right next to hers and after our cool greeting, we started talking."
"Why was she going to Australia?"
The witch looked uncomfortable with his questions all of a sudden. "Why do you care?"
Draco replied flippantly, "No reason...I'm just curious."
There was a long pause and he knew she was trying to figure out just what she could say, "She was there to find her parents."
"Find her parents?" Draco drank more coffee, eyebrow raised.
A small sigh escaped her lips. "I shouldn't tell you this. Merlin, she'd kill me if she knew I told you, but Hermione altered her parents memories sent them to Australia to save them after Sixth Year, just in case Death Eaters decided to attack them. She went to Australia to find them, reverse the memory charm, and bring them back to London."
He nearly spewed coffee everywhere as it all came together in his head. The prominent question in his head was finally answered, "They're dead, aren't they?"
Pansy's gasp was all the answer that he needed. "But how did you-"
Grimly, he replied. "Simple. She doesn't talk about them, they're not her next of kin, you are. So either her parents hate her, which I doubt because, really, who can hate Hermione Granger?" Draco rolled his eyes, "Or they're dead."
A long silence fell between them before she finally sighed, "You're right. They died."
"How?"
"That, I can't tell you, but I can tell you that September tenth was probably the worst day of her life."
Even though he'd figured it out, Draco was still stunned at the admission, but didn't let it show. Granger's parents? Dead? How? When? What did September tenth have anything to do with it?
The strange thing was that he hadn't heard about their deaths, not during the year they trounced all over the English countryside and not in the years after the war ended. How did the news of their deaths go over his head? Blaise had acquired her file for him the morning of the Marquette Manor incident, but it had taken another week for that file to reach his hands. The sad thing was he didn't find anything particularly interesting, to his frustration.
In fact, Hermione Granger's file was impeccable-oddly so.
Draco's brow rose at the memory.
It included basic information about her: full name, where she was born, address prior to her move, birthday, parents' names, age, height, approximate weight, O.W.L and N.E.W.T results (she'd done phenomenal, as expected), a few awards and honours bestowed to her before and after the war, etc.
There were three articles: one was about her departure to Italy after the war. The second was about how she'd risen to the ranks of one of the most elite female Curse-breakers in Europe. The third was a vague exposé the Italian wizarding paper wrote about her (he spent hours trying to translate it, gave up, and asked Blaise for help, much to his best friend's confusion) that included nothing about her home life both before and after her move to Italy, which made him more curious, if that was possible. Nowhere did it mention her parents' deaths-or even the fact that they existed, which he knew they did. He'd seen them before Second Year. Surely The Daily Prophet would've printed up something about it if they knew-which meant one thing.
They didn't.
No one knew except Pansy-and him. Draco drank the last of his coffee, "Why didn't you tell me any of this before?"
Pansy shrugged, "I didn't think you cared."
He was pensive for a moment and then the most alarming thought flew through his mind. She thought that he didn't care?
Well, she'd thought wrong.
Disclaimer: I own nothing except my characterizations and plot. JKR owns everything else. I make no money from this.
A/N: Snape's idea of death is a quote from Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38.Thanks to wildflower4evr for betaing this chapter!
