all characters belong to JKR

Chapter 9: Truth and more Omissions:

Walking around in circles, Hermione said more to herself than to him, "Who would have done this? How did they even get in?"

Draco took her by the shoulders and pointed her back toward the main room. He picked up one of the kitchen chairs, which had been knocked over, and said, "Sit down a moment." She did without argument. "Didn't you mention that there was an extra key above the front door, in the little hole?"

"Yes, that's what Ginny told me, but if you remember correctly, my hand got stuck in there, and I didn't feel a key while I was stuck," she said in rather harsh tones.

He didn't like her tone, and he spat back, "Did you lock the door with a key or magic?"

"Why does that matter?" she asked, bending over to pick up parts of her burnt story from the floor.

"Because it would be nice to know whether this was done by a Muggle or a Wizard," he answered.

"This is a magical community!" she practically shouted. "I hardly think it was a Muggle!"

"Then you locked it with magic? Is that what you are so ineloquently trying to say?" he asked.

"YES! I LOCKED IT WITH MAGIC! I'm not an idiot!"

"Listen, don't take out your anger on me," he said. "I didn't do any thing."

"You did something, just not this," she mumbled.

"What?" he asked for clarification.

She wanted to say, "You lied to me! You sent another man to pick me up and pretend to be my date! You made me fall for you!" Instead of saying any of those things, or even answering his question, she said, "Well, my story is ruined and the letters are gone. Why would anyone care about my story?"

"Maybe taken together with the letters, they thought you were writing a piece of non-fiction, instead of fiction. Maybe there was something in those letters, and even in your story, that someone didn't want known," he said. "Although if the person read the story, they would know it was just a piece of romantic fluff."

She turned on him, pointed toward the open doorway, since the door was still lying on the ground, and said, "Kindly leave! I know it wasn't a great work of literature, but it was mine, okay? I cared about it, and it's ruined, and that hurts a bit. I'm sorry you are too dense and shallow to understand!"

Before he could give her grief for saying he was dense and shallow, she added, "I can't believe they took the paintings, too. This just couldn't get any worse."

He set another chair up and sat beside her, "What paintings?"

"I found three paintings, in a small trunk under the bed. One of the seashore, one of this cottage, and one of a beautiful, ginger-haired woman, with a note attached to the back that said, "To my beloved wife Miriam, from your husband, Otto." I assumed it was a portrait of Mr. Weasley's aunt," she stated.

Draco stood up and asked, "Did you say Miriam?"

"Yes, why?"

"And Otto?"

"Yes, the same name that was on the letters. You saw a couple of them. Why?" she asked again, standing up beside him.

He said, "I have to go. Will you be all right? Can you straighten this out yourself?" He didn't even wait for a response. He left.

She was more confused than ever. She didn't get to question him about why he lied about owning Carrington House, or why he was ashamed to let his parents know they were dating.

Were they dating?

Apparently not, because surely a boyfriend wouldn't run away and leave a girlfriend right after her cottage was trashed, her story ruined, and the inspiration for the story, old love letters, stolen. She started to pick up the cottage, not bothering with magic. It was cathartic to do it on her own.

It was well after 3 am before she had the entire placed cleaned and picked up. She tried to savage a few pages of her story, but for the most part, it was destroyed beyond recognition.

She saw no reason to stay at the cottage. She couldn't start her story over again. She just couldn't. If she was smart, and at home, she would have written on her computer, but something about being here, in this ancient magical community, and in this cottage by the sea, made her want to write it with longhand on parchment, perhaps the way Miriam would have written it if she was still alive.

She was more disturbed about the letters than her story. They were love letters, and they had apparently been important to Miriam, because they were hidden. She was put out about the paintings, because she hadn't even had time to examine them. However, more than anything else, she was livid at Draco Malfoy because he lied to her, in the same way that Mark had lied to her. It might not have been about marriage, but she wasn't going to stick around to find out how far Draco's lies had gone.

She was going to leave at first light.

She took a lightweight shawl and went out to a wooden deck chair on the back porch. She still had on her pretty dress, although it was slightly worse for wear. She placed her feet under her body, rested her head on the back, and closed her eyes.

She was anxious when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes, and saw that the morning sun was long up in the sky. She placed her feet on the floor, threw the shawl off her shoulders and asked, "What time is it?"

Draco was standing there, his hand still on her shoulder, and he said, "After nine."

"Oh no, I wanted to leave early," she said, standing.

He pushed her back in the chair. "You aren't leaving."

"Excuse me, Malfoy," she said with ire. She stood back up and he pushed her back down. She said, "Touch me again, and you will be sorry."

He closed one eye slightly and said, "Where's your wand?"

"In the bedroom," she said.

"Then I think I can probably take you in a fight, so stay in the chair, please." He went over to the little wooden table at the other side of the porch, and scooted a chair toward her, the wooden legs scrapping the worn floorboards. He put the chair directly in front of hers, sat down, and took her hands.

"I want to tell you a few things," he said.

"Okay," she said.

"First, I'm fairly certain I love you," he said.

She frowned. "Draco, we've spent a week together. You aren't in love with me," she said. Just because she was in love with him after a week, didn't mean he was in love with her. As soon she thought it, she felt slightly dizzy. Did she really love him?

He kissed her hands, which he still had in his, and he said, "I haven't loved a lot of people in my life. I love my parents. I loved my grandparents. I love my son. I love you."

"But your wife?" she started.

He interrupted her before she could complete that thought. "Didn't love her. Not in the least. She tricked me into marriage. We dated for a few months, she claimed she was pregnant, she bribed a Healer to fake results for her, my parents forced me to marry her, I did, but I didn't love her," he answered sharply.

"You didn't love the mother of your son?" she asked.

"I met her by accident. I was in a miserable marriage. I was unhappy. I wanted to go somewhere where no one would know me, so I had to go somewhere where there weren't any Wizards. I went to Paris for a few months. I met an American Model. She didn't know who or what I was. It was perfect. It was just sex. We spent one week together, and that was all. There were no declarations of love by either of us. Then she became pregnant. My wife found out, well, because I told her. I hoped it would be enough of a reason for her to leave me. It wasn't." Draco let go of Hermione's hands and stood up. He leaned against the porch railing and said, "My wife had to be bought off so I could leave her."

"But you wanted to divorce her because of your child?" she asked, still feeling a step behind. She didn't understand.

"I wanted to divorce her because I couldn't stand the sight of her," he said bluntly. "Now I'm involved in the whole custody battle thing. My son's mother is living in London now, and she wants to marry this bloke, and have him raise my son. He's my son, my heir, and I cannot let another man raise him or give him a different name. There came a time when I was forced to finally tell her what I was, and that made her more resolved that I should never see my son again."

"When I finally convinced her that my son will probably be like me someday, she became scared and ran away. I tracked her down, and now we're in the middle of the biggest battle of my life."

"I'm so sorry, Draco," she said.

"Listen, I don't want your pity," he said, pushing aside the chair he was in, grabbing her hands, and pulling her up to stand in front of him. "I'm telling you this because I don't want you to think I'm some lying sack of shite like your ex-boyfriend. I'm not. I didn't set out to lie to you about anything. I didn't lie about my divorce or my son. I just hadn't told you yet."

"I did lie about Carrington House, but at first that was just because it was so funny that day you told me how terrible the tour was, and how the house was boring, and you broke my great-grandfather's statue." He started to laugh. "Well, I couldn't tell you at that point, and later when I found out you were staying here, I thought if I told you, you might leave and I didn't want you to do that."

"Why would you think I would leave?" she asked, before she gasped and said, "That statue looked familiar to me! It looked like you."

"See, you're smart," he said. "Slow, but smart."

"Forget my ineptness and tell me why you think I would have left the cottage if I knew you owned Carrington House. I know you're made of money. I wouldn't have cared," she said.

"Would you have stayed here if you knew I owned this cottage, too?"

"You don't own it," she said. "Mr. Weasley does."

"No, he doesn't. My family still does, and he knows that. I didn't want to tell you that, because you really seemed to need to be here. I wanted to help you. I wanted to help myself. I wanted you close by. You see, Mr. Weasley has permission to use it, for the rest of his life, from a binding magical contract signed by my grandfather's brother, Otto, to Mr. Weasley's Aunt Miriam."

"Miriam and Otto," she said, just realizing.

He nodded and took a small locket out of his pants pocket. "This was hers." He opened it and there were two portraits. He pointed to the man and said, "My grandfather's older brother, Otto, and Mr. Weasley's aunt, Miriam. Is this the woman from the portrait?" He handed it to her.

She nodded, since the portrait was an exact miniature of the one she found. She looked at the pictures for a long time, until he took the locket from her. He reached up and stroked her cheek.

"They were married?" she asked.

"I don't know that they were, but maybe there were," he said. "The letters don't prove anything, just because he called her his wife, but maybe they were and they hid it from everyone," Draco said, closing the locket and putting it back in his pants. "Who knows, the letters might have shed some light on that matter, but now they're gone."

"Why would they hide it?" she asked.

"Because even though she was pureblood, much like your Miranda, she was poor, had nothing in her name, no money, no relations. He was from one of the oldest, proudest, richest, pureblood families in England. He was the eldest son, and expected to marry well, and present a proper wife to society, and to have proper heirs. We always assumed he never married, and he died fairly young. My grandfather became Lord of the Manor, my father his only heir, with me his only living heir."

"And your son your only heir," she said softly.

He nodded. "It's important that I don't lose him."

"For more reasons than that," she said as a statement of fact. He nodded, placed his hand behind her neck, and pulled her closer to him.

"Now what?" he asked. He brushed his nose along her jaw. He kissed her behind her ear. "Do you forgive me? I would have told my parents about us." He looked her deep in the eyes. "I just wasn't expecting them, and they caught me off guard. I'm sorry. Do you forgive me?"

"Yes. I mean, what's not to forgive," she said.

"And do you love me?" he asked. He kissed her right cheek, and then moved his cheek next to hers, his face skimming hers until his mouth was on her left cheek, and he kissed that as well.

"I do," she said.

"Show me, Hermione," he said. "Show me that you love me."

Coming up: Three Love Scenes and a cottage