Draco was nursing his second drink by the time she came out. The roaring fire had settled down to glowing coals, and he'd turned out most of the lamps. He was too exposed sitting there in the bright light. Too vulnerable. Darkness hid plenty of things, and Draco wanted it to hide him.
Hermione did keep a nightgown tucked away in that bag of hers, which was far less of a disappointment than Draco would have expected. No frumpy flannel, this. Cool grey silk poured over her skin. The fabric almost reached the floor, skimming past red toenails. A slit on one side reached all the way to her waist. The designers of that number hadn't bothered to pretend it was for anything other than seduction, or that such seduction would inevitably be successful.
She crossed the small room and pulled open the draperies just enough to look out. "Be careful," Draco said. The last thing he needed was her getting cursed right in front of him, right in a room where he would be the prime suspect. The light of the streetlamps caught her face and made the satin of her nightgown shimmer, and she stood, a single lit figure suspended between a dark room and a dark world.
"Obviously, I've seen Ron more recently than I told you," she said.
Draco let her go on without interruption, but he indulged his urge to get up and rest his palms against the skin of her shoulders. She'd always had the softest skin.
"He came by the bookstore with Harry, oh two weeks ago," Hermione said. She was staring out the window. Her earlier shock seemed to have hardened into resolution. "Maybe less."
"He was looking for the Hallows," Draco prompted.
Hermione shook her head. Her curls trembled around her neck with the motion, and Draco lowered his mouth to press his lips to one shoulder. "So, what did he want?"
"What all three of us wanted," she said. "To keep them out of the hands of – "
"Of people like me?" Draco asked.
"Among others," she admitted.
"And now?"
She leaned ever so slightly back against him. It was the merest hint of a shift of pressure, but Draco decided to take it as an invitation and ran his hands along her sides. His palms slid over the fabric, rough skin catching here and there against the satin, and then he pressed them in against her hips.
"Now I want to find whatever bastard killed Ron," she said.
"It seems to me," Draco said, "that our interests have aligned. Find the Hallows, find the killer."
"You'll have to be honest with me," she said.
Draco tightened his grip on her. She had a lot of nerve, talking about honesty. Not that he'd told her the whole truth of course. I want to find the Hallows would have gotten him tossed out of her store, probably with a curse and a kick. But Potter, well, she'd go looking for Potter. And she had. He hadn't lied. Not really. He'd just left a few things out. But she'd been anything but truthful.
"Tell me," Draco asked. "Did the waitress at that godawful tea shop really see Harry?"
That got him a small laugh. It tried to sound guilty, that laugh, but it failed. "No," she admitted. "But I needed to find out why you were looking for him, and trudging around school and the forest seemed like a good way to go about it."
She turned in his arms, and Draco was shocked to see that her eyes were brimming with tears. "I never thought… how can Ron be dead?" She tipped her face up and seemed to study his expression. "You will help me, Draco, won't you?"
"Draco," he said musingly.
"What?"
Oh, the confusion on her face. He wasn't sure whether he should believe it or not. "We called each other by our given names once, Hermione. I just never expected to hear you do it again."
"You were… why did you leave?" she asked.
He didn't pretend not to know what she meant. "Oh, I could tell you a story about that," he said, "but I'm not sure you'd believe me."
"Try."
"Perhaps I got a note from Astoria claiming she was pregnant. Asking what would I like to do about it. It was hardly something I could let her face alone, so I left."
"You and Astoria never had children," Hermione pointed out, but she was listening to him. And had been paying attention to his life, apparently.
"No," Draco said. "We didn't. Perhaps the story goes, I went down to the bar that night and found Potter and Weasley there, and they made it clear I wasn't good enough for you and if I didn't clear out on my own, they'd be happy to help."
She twisted to look out the window again, and Draco pressed his lips first into her shoulder, and then her neck. When she didn't pull away, he whispered, "And perhaps the story is I looked at you sleeping there and realized I wouldn't do anything to you but pull you down into the gutter with me, so I left before I ruined you as surely as life has ruined me."
"Draco," she said softly.
"Or maybe I'm just an arse," he said more drily. Story time was over. "You decide. Hermione."
She kissed him then, slowly and sweetly, and he supposed that meant she'd decided.
. . . . . . . . . .
A/N – Thank you, all, for reading along with this story. You're giving me the gift of your time and there is nothing more precious.
