Chapter Nine

''It is good to be without temptations but it is not good to be without vices.'' Walter Bagehot.


Draco stood in front of her, his lips quirked in the beautiful smile that she spent her days longing for. He reached out his hand to her, and just as she stepped forward to step into his embrace, steel grey bars slammed down between them. She ran forward, clutching at the bars, desperately seeking to thrust her body through the small gaps, only able to see her vision of Draco fading into blackness. She crumpled to the floor, her heart ripping inside her chest as Draco's voice echoed around her, accusing her of failing him.

Hermione jolted from her nightmare, her sheets crumpled in tightly clenched fists, tears streaming down her face, her throat raw from sobbing in her sleep. No matter how much she tried to reassure herself, and tell herself that she had done all that she could humanely do, she couldn't shake the feeling that somehow she had doomed the love of her life. By not finding the one case that would have acted as a perfect example of precedence, by not loving him hard enough, by not stopping him being a Death Eater, by staying in his cell over night, by giving Catton ammunition, by walking away from him two years ago. If she could go back to that moment when she had gently extricated herself from his warm grasp and slid out of the door, leaving him behind her, she would have slapped herself silly, just to make herself feel a fraction of the pain that she was feeling now.

Standing up, wrapping her quilt around herself, she padded out into her sitting room and sat down on the sofa, staring blankly into the cold dark room. If she lost Draco, this would be what her life would be like, she realised. Sleepless nights, alone in a cold flat. The epitome of spinsterhood, and she would have only herself to blame. She didn't even have a photo of him, she realised, and at that thought began to cry again; great, heaving sobs that racked her entire body. She was bawling silently, unable to find the strength to give voice to the howl of despair that she needed to release so badly.

Rationally, she was telling herself that nothing was over until it was over, and that there was no point in jumping to such awful conclusions before the verdict had even been reached, but every time she tried to stop crying, further floods of grief flooded over her, leaving her helpless in the grip of a sorrow that she could barely comprehend.


She was standing next to him, her brown eyes bright as she smiled at him, stepping forward to gently kiss his cheek. As he turned his face so that he could kiss his lips, strong arms clamped around his elbow, dragging him away from her. As he struggled against the grasp that was dragging him into blackness, he saw more hands clustered around Hermione, soothing her, trying to make her forget him. There was nothing he could do, and he was stuck between conflicting tensions: wanting her to have a normal, happy life, regardless of what he thought, and wanting to keep clutched closely to himself for the rest of their lives. Before he could formulate any plan to save them both, he was locked into a grey fog that deprived him of sight and freedom. All he could hear was her crying, and all he knew was that he could do nothing to help her anymore.

Draco sat up, leaning his back against the wall, and contemplated punching it. Helplessness had never been his style, and left him more infuriated than he would have thought possible. All he was able to focus on was the fact that soon he might have nothing left of Hermione but memories. If everything went wrong tomorrow, he would be incarcerated in prison, while she was imprisoned in her day-to-day life. The constant separation would have no end in sight, and they would just have to eke out their existences through visiting hours. Or, Hermione would be able to move on, finding normality with a decent man who would be locked away behind bars like a dangerous criminal. He stared at the Dark Mark on his arm, the cause of the majority of his troubles, and thought about how he could ever have considered the mark to be something worth getting. If he could go back to that moment in time when his father had summoned him, and taken him in front of Voldemort, he would have knocked himself out, anything to get out of that horrible chain of events that lead him to his current situation.

Looking at the pattern of light cast from the lit hallway outside his cell, Draco reflected that his dreams of freedom had never seemed further away than on the night before he received the judgement that might set him free. All the dreams that he had had for his life with Hermione were as ethereal as a ghost, and for once, it seemed right to him that they were like that. What was there in this world of political motivations and bias to suggest that he should be allowed to have any chance of freedom?

Tipping his head against the wall, he wondered what he would do if he was pronounced guilty. Cry? Shout his innocence? Be dragged away kicking and screaming? Try and run to Hermione? Appeal for help to anyone? Punch Catton? All seemed completely feasible options. Nothing was certain, and Draco Malfoy, the boy who had always been so sure about his future, had grown into a man who was now painfully aware of the fact that nothing was guaranteed.


Hermione slipped through the corridors, hoping to avoid any guards, her eyes red and puffy. She arrived at Draco's cell and knocked gently on the glass. He sat up straight away, showing her that sleep had eluded him just as much as it had eluded her.

"Hi,'' she whispered. "What are you still doing awake?''

"Same thing as you probably." He stood up and walked towards the door. "Are you coming in?"

Her eyes welled up with yet more tears. "I can't."

"Of course you can, don't be silly," he cajoled, alarmed to see her tears, and desperate to hold her.

"No, you don't understand." She let out a juddering little gasp that nearly broke his heart. "Now that I've finished defending you in the trial, they've removed my security clearance for your cell. I'm stuck out here."

Draco stared at her, unable to find any words to express what he was feeling. He felt like he was going to explode with rage. They kept finding ways to take the most precious thing in his life away from him. "They can't do that!"

"Unfortunately, they can." She whispered, her face close to the glass as she desperately tried to find some way to get closer to him. "They can and they have." She lifted her hand and pressed it up against the glass.

Draco half laughed and pressed his hand up against hers, wishing they weren't separated by the cold, unfeeling pane of glass. "So they've reduced us to corny expressions of longing now?"

"The hits just keep on coming, don't they?" She tried to inject some kind of mirth into her voice but failed miserably. Resting her head against the door, she let a few more tears trickle down her face.

"Hey," he said softly, not caring about his own plight, just wanting to make sure that she was ok. "Come on lawyer-girl, you've done an amazing job."

"And what if I haven't?" Her head jerked up, and she looked fiercely at him. "What if you end up in here forever? I'll never forgive myself."

"Yeah, but it's me in here. Not you. So stop panicking. Just my life ruined."

"And you don't think mine will be? How the hell am I meant to live without you?"

"You thought you could do it once. I'm sure you'll be fine." He shot at her, unbelievably elated when her head jerked up with the familiar fire in her eyes.

"You can be such an unbelievable idiot sometimes! If you hadn't been such a prick, I wouldn't have had to leave!"

"Well, you shouldn't have been so incredibly challenging and gorgeous. It's all your fault." But the recognizable smirk was already on his lips, taking the sting out of the bickering. "That's the look I wanted to see. What's all this pathetic crying about Granger?"

She smiled back at him. "It's nice to know that prison doesn't stop you being irritating Malfoy."

"It's my speciality." He pressed his face closer to the glass. "Hermione, I promise you, everything will be ok."

"Do you know that?"

"Always wanting to know the concrete answer. No, I don't know for sure that I'll get out of here, but everything will be ok, no matter what. We'll get through it somehow, no matter what that means doing."

She nodded and stroked his face through the glass. "I just wish I could come in."

"You're not alone in that wish. How do you look good even when you're getting snot and tears all over my cell door?"

She laughed properly, and sniffed hard. "I'm not getting snot everywhere!"

"Yeah yeah. Hermione, I love you but I'm not going to let you spend the night out in the corridor."

"You can't make me go."

"I'm sure I can think of something."

"Draco?"

"Hermione."

"Are you scared? Honestly?"

"Absolutely terrified." His grey eyes met hers, and she could seek the fear in them. "I don't want to be in here all my life."

"Then why are you just listening to me moan? You should moan back!"

"I want to make sure that you're ok. You seem to be getting a far worse deal out of this than seems fair."

"I don't care." She leaned forward and looked straight at him. "I love you. And I am going to love you, no matter what happens. But we don't need to worry, because everything will be ok. It has to be."

He nodded solemnly. "Go home Hermione. Please. Sleep."

She smiled at him. "We've got to be ok."

"We will."

She mouthed 'I love you' at him, and slid away into the night, hoping against hope that the hearing the next morning would bring them the result that they so desperately needed to hear.

AN: Hey everyone, just a quick little chapter that I hope you enjoyed. The next chapter I put up should be the last one for this story (providing I don't have some unplanned flash of genius...yeah, right), so make the most of it! Anyway, please please please review, because they make me everso happy. Also, for those of you who are long-time readers and enjoyed my story Magic Mistletoe, you may be interested to know that I am going to be doing another Christmas special this year. And yes, if I say so myself, it will be rather excellent, because the idea is just fantastic lol. And if you haven't read it, I would strongly advise you go and read it because I am a shameless self-promoter lol. You can get to all my other stories by clicking on my author name and going to my profile. Anyway, love etc...petitesorciere xxx