Chapter 10: The Reluctant Hero
The day boy, having resolved to wade through the hazards of the dark, took a great blow from his efforts, brought low by his hazardous expeditions; the grand health, the blessed constitution over which the monster had taken such pains - blessing him with light, and showering him with favor - yielded, and he found himself in pain and misery, a victim of his own wandering. His fears grew rampant and unchecked, for he trembled in the prospect of the monster's rage; he feared that should the monster discover he had been victim to his own deficiencies, the monster might grow angry, and angrier still at the gaping fractures in his sun-drenched benediction. For the day boy's weakness would surely have meant the monster's own failure, and then the monster would slowly grow to hate and mistrust him, looking on him as an artist would his wretched canvas - enflamed with disappointment - and seek to destroy his own work.
This was the day boy's fear, but it was only one among many; he was hardly the live thunderbolt he had once been. For in his trials he had known companionship, and felt compelled to fealty in his afflictions; and as much as he feared the wretched shadows of the night, it was within the dark that he had come to know something, a truth brighter than any other he'd been taught; a glimmer of goodness, which lit his soul more radiantly than the sun; and it was the loss of this, out of any, that the day boy feared most.
The day boy, cast out of favor, looked upon the night girl, seemingly with new eyes, and wondered if in his fear he had wronged her; "Thank you," he said, though gratitude did not come easily, and had never been taught. "You are like live armor to my heart; you keep the fear off me."
Out of everything he had endured, she was the purest form of torture, and he felt himself shatter, twisted and contorted in the delicateness of her grasp, the moment her lips meant his.
I want this, he thought, take me, lay me to waste, confine me to rubble, let me amount to nothing but this -
There was a sureness about her, a certainty that belied the exquisite fragility of her movements; she leaned into him as naturally as she breathed and he drew her in, and she was in his arms, and he held her like he could draw time to a close - like he could force it, kicking and screaming in its petulance, to trap him in its clutches and pull the shades around them, so that he'd never have to fucking feel anything else but her lips against his.
It was slow melancholy, syrupy sweetness; between the pounding in his chest and rushing in his ears he abandoned his capacity to think, her hands traveling slowly up his arms and over his shoulders, coming to rest around the carved edge of his cheek. There was a thoughtfulness to their placement, a spirit of intention, like she'd looked at his face before and wondered what would it be like to touch him? and finally given in, shivering as the pads of her fingers brushed against the strike of his jaw.
He pulled her against him. Lay me to waste.
She pulsed and shimmered in his arms. Confine me to rubble.
Every touch an apology, every breath a request - let me amount to nothing but this - and he yearned, and he ached, and for every kiss in his life that had been born of greed and selfishness and petty craving, each one was left a laughing sin in the wake of this. Of her.
There was a push then, a shift; a lurch. More, said her hands on his skin, more, said his hips against hers, more, begged the space between them - and then a voice that rang in his mind -
You don't know what she's made of.
A crushing truth. A remorseless bite of reality.
"Stop," he murmured, eyes still closed.
He was emptied. I'm sorry.
She was cold. You should be.
She pulled away slowly and he felt the rush of air between them like a slice to the throat; the savagery of her absence. The immensity of their separation. It hung heavy and still and he suffered beneath it but knew he was right. Knew, somewhere, he had missed something in her words, missed something in her intent, and was set upon now to find it. To not be destroyed by her.
By his need for her.
She didn't need to say anything. He turned his back - the only way he could leave, for surely her eyes would have rooted him to the spot - and left, padding softly out of the room, clutching the still-throbbing ache at his side and feeling broken beyond repair.
For the briefest moment she wondered what it would have been like if things had been different. If things had deviated half a step over the course of time; if instead of this, the mangled determination of her conscience that gave way to a foolish, incapacitating yearning - this, a nothing-kiss with a stranger she could only half trust - she might have seen it take place elsewhere. Instead of this strange, half-willing captivity, she might have kissed him in a castle alcove, or a wooded clearing; she pictured her life in flashes and glimpses and tried to fit him in, tried to put the bitter sweetness of his touch against the backdrop of a life she might have lived, where instead of right and wrong and dark and light she might have come to know him. To wake with the knowledge of what made his pulse race, what made him growl in her ear with satisfaction.
To know what made him weak, and what made him wild.
But then he was gone, and he was right, and she knew it, and she fought the urge to mourn for him, for herself; for her stunning dearth of knowledge about who he was, and for everything in their lives that had contributed to the vastness of her ignorance. That she did not recognize the look in his eye. That she couldn't translate the meaning of his retreat.
That they were strangers. Despite whatever tricks the pulsing in her chest could play on her, that much was true, and he was gone, and he was right, and she knew it.
"What was that?" Harry said loudly, and she sighed, wishing she could shove him, or throw something. A piece of her wanted to do something childish, if only to feel something break under her grasp.
"Me taking what I need," Hermione muttered, not wanting to discuss it. "I thought that was obvious."
"That's not what that was. You're lying to me," Harry informed her. "And you're lying to yourself."
"What do you want me to say?" she countered angrily, feeling stiff and helpless in her maddening confusion. She turned her back on him, drawing her knees to her chest, wishing she could be rid of him. Or be with him; anything but this punishing in-between.
"Oh, he's a twat but he means well," she heard behind her. "He just wants you to be careful who you trust."
Hermione's heart stopped momentarily and she turned slowly over her shoulder, holding her breath.
"Ginny?" she asked, catching the flash of red and promptly twisting around to face her.
"Obviously," Ginny said, lounging against the pillows and tucking herself in beside Hermione. She always had such an incomprehensible ability to make herself at home. "I'm probably the best person for this job, don't you think?"
Hermione sighed. "I suppose you are."
Draco paced the floor of his study, feeling an urgent need for movement that was simultaneously rooted in some crude, inexplicable desire to remain. It was far too late to go anywhere, of course, even if he wanted to leave her.
Leave, he corrected himself, determinedly detracting her from the statement.
He grunted his discomfort over the still-inhibiting wound and walked over to his desk before pausing, recalling with a sigh that he and Theo had drunk the last of his firewhiskey reserves, and he'd been too distracted to replace it. Times like these, he thought morosely. These were the times that called for house elves.
And then he winced, remembering the woman upstairs and the girl she'd once been.
In his directionless waffling he wandered over to his bookshelf and pulled a heavy leather volume from the shelf, one that he'd never thought to open before; it was a prerequisite for every Sacred Twenty-Eight home, a gift from the Dark Lord himself.
Victorem: The Reign of Lord Voldemort.
He flipped it open, wondering how many poor fools had been gently required to contribute to it, to the thousands of pages of history rewritten for his pleasure. An entire world recast in the arc of his triumph. Even Draco, who was certainly guilty of similitude in the wake of his own ego, had felt his stomach lurch at the unfettered distaste of the Dark Lord's vanity. History, he thought. Surely it was not so easily reconfigured?
A foolish consideration, in retrospect. History was always written by the victors.
What, then, was he?
He flipped the book open, testing the weight of the pages between his fingers; the Dark Lord had not been sparing with his evolution of purebloods, and the entire volume read like a tribute to Draco's family tree. He saw his mother's name and shuddered, nearly upending the book, but quickly flipped toward the end, looking for something.
The Dark Lord pushed the boundaries of magic, making himself invincible against the threatening clutches of death. Despite being tested at the first peak of his victorious eminence - killed by an infant, more accurately, Draco thought with a scoff - his Lordship returned, building yet a greater regime, with an ascendancy so unanimously unquestioned that could scarcely have been fathomable; indeed, the likes of which history had never seen -
Draco slammed the book shut, somehow furious with the unutterable ludicrousness of the text; which, of course, should not have surprised him in the slightest. He shook his head at himself and reopened the book, skimming the pages.
No mention of Potter. Certainly no mention of Granger, or Weasley, or any of the others. No Order of the Phoenix. Nothing even of Dumbledore except of his death, orchestrated by the Dark Lord himself - Draco's name omitted, and Snape's - as though the only thing that existed of the life that Draco had lived had been Lord Voldemort's imagined achievements, the proficiency of which Draco wondered if the Dark Lord himself even believed. Is this how he remembered it? Had he truly deluded himself so fully?
No, Draco thought, remembering the Dark Lord's continued railing over Potter's reappearance. The bodies on the floor when Potter resurfaced were proof of that. The panic on Lucius's face, an echo of his master's disbelief - you said he was dead, Narcissa, you said he was dead!
No. No rewritten text would ever allow the Dark Lord to forget Harry Potter, whatever the rest of the world believed.
Draco threw the book aside and sighed, suffering again the irritating throb of his injury. This book - the bulky traffic of lies that was Victorem - was a far cry from his own experiences. Its very existence shamed him; for the first time, he wished he could lay his hands on a copy of Hogwarts: A History. It would be like recovering a life that had long since been dead and buried. A time capsule of something easier. An entire world that had never happened, if the Dark Lord were to be believed.
He closed his eyes and was met with a flash of golden brown curls, her joyful laugh; her arms wrapped tight around the book. She was always carrying it. How many times must she have read it?
He had to find it. He had to find it.
He leapt to his feet, ignoring the sharp stab in his side, and ran.
"I'm glad to see you," Hermione said, walking with her through their camp. It was a year or so later; after finding Harry, but before tripping into whatever she'd had with Bill. "Surprisingly glad, I think."
"You never did feel comfortable with me showing up once Harry and Luna got together," Ginny said with a shrug. "Guilt or whatever. Not like it bothered me."
"It did bother you," Hermione reminded her, though she instantly felt a nudge of shame at her selfishness. You always have to be right, don't you? she scolded herself. Can't just let her live with her delusions?
"Fine, it bothered me," Ginny said curtly, and more than a little petulantly, as was her way. "But I got over it. We were apart for so long." She kicked fiercely at a rock, sending it rolling across a patch of loose, unsettled dirt. "She was better for him."
"Well," Hermione began, "I don't know - "
"No, I mean it," Ginny said, her eyes flashing as she looked up. "She really was better for him. I'd have just contributed to the chaos," she added, eyes instantly cast down again. "I'd have just wanted him to rush in without thinking. She made him smart."
"She was very clever," Hermione said hesitantly, not wanting to linger on the topic. "But you had so many other things to think about."
"True," Ginny sighed. "My parents, for one thing."
"Yourself," Hermione reminded her. "Going back to Hogwarts must have been - "
"Torture," Ginny hissed bluntly, nearly baring her teeth in her ire. "There wasn't a moment I wasn't watched, or else I would have - "
She broke off, and Hermione waited. She suspected she knew what was coming, and wasn't sure she was ready to hear it.
"I didn't know how near you all were," Ginny whispered. She looked up and Hermione joined her, seeing the towers of the castle emerging beyond the canopy of trees that surrounded their camp. "Just barely a breath away in the forest - and I had no idea - "
"It wasn't safe," Hermione said gently. "We'd have come for you - Harry wanted to - but with Death Eaters watching your family, if you disappeared - "
"I know," Ginny erupted, startling Hermione. "I know that, I don't need - " she broke off, shutting her eyes. "I don't need the reminder."
"I'm sorry," Hermione offered, but Ginny shook her head.
"Doesn't matter," Ginny assured her, squaring her shoulders and feigning brightness. "That's not why I'm here, anyway."
"What is it you're here for, then?" Hermione asked, and they began to walk again, perfectly in step. "Are you here to convince me to trick Draco and then turn on him too, or was that just Bill's idea?"
"Oh, everything is so black and white for Bill," Ginny said flippantly, waving the thought away. "Not that you've done him any favors either." She glanced at Hermione. "The whole 'spirit of the wolf' thing?"
But the spirit of the wolf entered her, and the maid grew withdrawn, and enflamed with contempt; and in her loss, she turned her life to the hunt, her heart cold as ice in her chest.
"I thought it was poetic," Hermione insisted, and Ginny laughed.
"It was," she agreed. "Though a bit harsh."
"Poetry is not intended to flatter the subject," Hermione sniffed.
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Well, mission accomplished," she said playfully, nudging her. "As he could hardly be flattered by being the 'sweet little maid, beloved by all,' or whatever else it was you said."
"I was making a point," Hermione said firmly. "Besides, it's hard to find much flattering about the whole situation."
Ginny nodded thoughtfully. "Fleur was the friend," she guessed, "and Macnair the wolf?"
"Yes," Hermione confirmed, nodding. "Unfortunately there were few other ways to metaphorize Fleur's death."
Ginny was quiet for a moment, her head tilted in thought.
Memory, more likely.
"It was so unexpected at the time," Ginny said quietly. "I think we thought there would be some victory still, some way we could still scrape out a win - "
Hermione nodded her solemn agreement. "I know. Death Eaters coming into our homes was just - " she shuddered. "Unfathomable."
They stood in silence, heads bent in quiet mourning. Hermione remembered the day it happened, Bill bursting into their camp - I've killed Macnair, he said bluntly, his voice so hushed, so icy in its lack of feeling; he killed her, so I killed Macnair - and only moments after, the Patronus bearing a message from Arthur - Bill's wanted for murder, he can't come back, we can't leave the house, don't reply, I have to keep your mother safe -
"Anyway," Ginny interrupted, suddenly tossing her hair and striding forward, "like I said, that's not what I'm here for."
Hermione sighed, envious of the younger witch's resilience. "What, then?"
"Well, you're not too far off. It is about Draco," Ginny confirmed, flashing her a somewhat shameless look of non-apology. "I happen to serve as a wonderfully poignant cautionary tale," she added wryly, and Hermione shook her head, gesturing her invitation.
"Go ahead, then," she grumbled. "Say your piece."
"I will, thanks," Ginny chirped back. "And as you might know, my tale starts with a diary."
"I'm unfortunately quite informed on the beginning," Hermione noted, lips pressed together firmly.
"Ah," Ginny said sagely, her pretty mouth pursed in a playfully admonishing frown. "But like all stories, it's the ending that counts."
Draco walked through the dark corridors of Malfoy Manor, headed to his rooms. He was sure the book was somewhere; he had probably thrown it in the study he'd used as a boy, a little replica of his father's that still made him sick to think about - the comparison, that is; the desperate tendency towards imitation - and never thought about it again. His rooms had been a shrine to him while he was away, so his mother would not have touched his things.
He muttered a Lumos and pushed the door open, coughing as a stale, cool draft filled his nose; the air of a room long unopened. A floating series of dust particles swarmed around the lit point of his wand and he reached up with difficulty, tapping it to the overhead light fixture and filling the room with a bathing glow.
He walked over to his numerous shelves, searching for the volume; it would be newer than his other books, hardly touched, and he scanned the titles, finding the elaborate scripted H.
He grabbed it quickly, pulling it down, and settled himself on the floor, absently flipping the pages as he brought a hand down, nursing the ache in his side.
One oddity to note is that the Founders seemed to believe that boys were inherently less trustworthy than girls; while the boys' dormitories do not possess gender-specific limitations, the girls' dormitories were outfitted with a protective jinx, which would prevent the entry of the opposite sex -
Well, that explained that, Draco thought, recalling Goyle's expulsion through the air from his attempt in fourth year. He flipped a few more pages.
The Founders were very careful to protect their school from intruders, and while some were more adamant about non-wizarding threats than others - Salazar Slytherin was notably fearful of the threat posed by any impending Muggle incursion - all four agreed to ensure that no witch or wizard could Apparate or Disapparate inside the castle, so to prevent -
He continued his progress, continually flipping pages and catching brief glimpses of vaguely familiar text.
The Great Hall, one of the castle's finest architectural spaces, was further enchanted to resemble the night sky -
He sighed, wondering what he had meant to gather from this expedition into lunacy, but continued aimlessly.
The castle, which has been home to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for over a thousand years, is perhaps the most unique magical building in Britain. Due in large part to its extremely advanced age and the sheer amount of magic present within it, the castle has developed some form of sentience or awareness, which is evidenced when the headmaster's office seals itself to all but the castle's chosen successor in the post, or when it wards itself against outside threats. There have also been isolated incidents reported in which it would appear that the castle has provided its students or instructors emergency portkeys when threatened; an exceedingly rare occurrence, of which very few examples exist.
Fucking say that again, Draco thought skeptically, asserting it must be 'exceedingly rare' indeed if he'd never heard of such a thing. Clearly, despite the threat of death and torture he suffered over his final two years of schooling, the castle had never felt itself a friend to him.
One such instance, which occurs in the sixteenth century, details the events of an altercation wherein a wizarding student named Francis Ambrose was said to grab onto a candelabra that appeared mid-argument with a particularly vicious troll. Ambrose was later heard from in a charming letter to his mother from the South of France, detailing his subsequent refusal to return to school after having grown quite content living in a small den of wood nymphs. This event, while not remotely the most bizarre to happen within the castle's walls, is particularly well-documented due to the lingering questions regarding the geographic significance of Ambrose's journey. Whether his having turned up conspicuously near Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, or whether a similar seventeenth century disappearance of then-Transfiguration Professor Cecily Wilmot to a thin islet in Norway near the rumored location of Durmstrang Institute, was coincidence or not remains to be confirmed.
Draco looked up, suddenly feeling his heart pound in his chest. Surely if there were examples of the castle interceding on account of something as trivial as an argument with a troll - whether 'particularly vicious' or not - something might have appeared during the Battle of Hogwarts, and then maybe -
The door swung open. "Draco?"
He quickly replaced the book on the shelf. "Father," he said, trying not to appear startled and fighting a flinch at the abrupt twisting motion as he turned toward the door. "I hadn't meant to wake you."
"You didn't," Lucius said slowly, but provided no other explanation. "What are you doing here?"
"Couldn't sleep," Draco mumbled, which was certainly true. At Lucius's questioning stare, he sighed. "Like I've said, you can always change the wards if you've grown tired of my appearances."
"I see no need for such things, Draco," Lucius replied. "I am obviously not driven with the same need to block you out that you so unquestionably employ against me."
"I've told you," Draco reminded him, "it's not my fault the wards are set that way." It's not my fault you're not Black blood.
It's not my fault you don't have anything left of Narcissa.
Lucius stiffened. "I'm aware," he said, then cleared his throat, abandoning his momentary inclination towards sincerity and adapting his usual authoritarianism. "Were you looking for something?" He squinted at the bookshelf, seemingly trying to guess which title had struck Draco's fancy. "Has the mudblood given you any hints?"
"She has," Draco replied.
Lucius waited, but Draco remained silent. Lucius narrowed his eyes, displeased.
"I would warn you, Draco," Lucius began, visibly struggling against his temper, "your stubbornness will be your undoing. I am a resource for you," he added, somewhat imploringly. "I have served the Dark Lord successfully for far longer than you have even been alive - "
"And unsuccessfully, too," Draco added sulkily. "Whether he chooses to recall those things or not."
"He does not," Lucius snapped angrily, his grey eyes flashing, "and nor should you. Or would you wish him to marinate in your failures as well?"
"I told you," Draco retorted, "I'm already - "
"I don't care what you told me," Lucius cut in. "What I see, Draco, is you making a mess, aimless as usual - showing up in my house in the middle of the night - "
"Your house," Draco repeated, a little stung at the possessive.
Lucius scowled.
"You are the one who turned your back on me," Lucius reminded him. "You are the one who has done nothing but disappoint both me and the Dark Lord - in your ambivalence, in your lack of gratitude - "
Gratitude.
Draco wondered what he was supposed to be grateful for; his father sacrificing him to the whims of a madman? Strapping him with the task of murder when he was little more than a child, without a care to how it broke him? And when Draco nearly floundered - where was he then? Where were Lucius's resources then? Where was he when Nott died, when Narcissa died?
Where was he during the Ministry raid? Painted a fool by his own hubris, his many forces humiliated behind their masks -
Draco shook his head, vigorously scrubbing himself of any thought of that day. Not now.
He strode forward, gritting his teeth to prevent any sound escaping him that might give away his injury, and brushed past his father.
"I won't come back to your house," he assured Lucius, leaving his father to choke on the dust of the room and its contents.
"It's different," Hermione said, feeling her face go pale. "With Draco. It's nothing like what happened to you."
"Oh, fuck, of course not," Ginny said, laughing despite Hermione's tentative approach. "Still, there's some element of trust. Knowing what's real."
"The irony," Hermione sighed at that - of knowing what's real - and Ginny grinned wickedly before slowly letting her smile fade.
"The remainder of my life was determined by the trust I put in a diary when I was eleven years old," Ginny reminded her. "Everything. My fate, my parents' fate - "
"Don't call it your fate like it's over," Hermione insisted quickly, alarmed by the finality of the tense. "Don't act like it's over, Ginny - "
"Oh, no, certainly not," she agreed, shrugging. "But, of course, if I had known that he would come back - that he would still want ownership of me - " she shuddered, and Hermione found she couldn't blame her. "If I'd known he would lay claim to the piece of my soul that he'd experienced - "
"You were a child," Hermione whispered. "It was a mistake."
"And I certainly suffered for it," Ginny determined grimly. "He was . . . fascinated."
Hermione reached out, sensing sadness in the other woman's voice and brushing the coppery strands from her eyes.
"Your soul would fascinate anyone," Hermione assured her, a twisted form of comfort. Ginny, smiling through her struggle, seemed to understand.
"So," Ginny said, taking Hermione's hand. "As I was saying." She smiled tenuously. "Trust."
"Trust," Hermione repeated. "Do I trust him?"
"Do you?" Ginny prompted.
Hermione paused.
"I think," she said slowly, "that I want to. Because we have so little," she explained. Because he's all I have.
Ginny nodded slowly, looking thoughtfully at the ground, and Hermione waited, surprised to find how badly she needed the other witch's opinion. She found she wanted someone brave.
"Bill wasn't wrong," Ginny said hesitantly. "You should take what you need. But maybe you need more," she added. "Maybe it's a matter of taking what he can give you."
"What does he possibly have to give?" Hermione asked, shaking her head in uncertainty. "What can I possible expect from him?"
Ginny pulled her into an embrace. "Maybe more than you think," she whispered.
He didn't know what possessed him to come back to her room, but she was awake, and she was waiting.
"I shouldn't have left like that," he sighed, and she seemed to register his apology. She tilted her head, considering him, before sitting up, raising her hand to gesture to his side.
"Does it still hurt?" she asked, and he nodded.
"It's definitely not comfortable," he muttered, and she made a little face of agreement. Of course not, she seemed to say, and he half expected her to roll her eyes.
He half wanted her to.
She made a beckoning gesture and he drifted toward her, too spent to argue. Alone, he would only think of Lucius. Of everything he'd lived through. At least here, he had her, the fucking enigma that she was. He needed a distraction, and then he could pursue his portkey theory in the morning.
He lay down beside her and she shifted, running her fingers lightly over the dark slash of the scar.
"There once was a mermaid who lived in an underwater kingdom," she murmured, her touch fluttering over his skin. "She lived with her widowed father, the sea king, and existed in a state of questioning; for she knew not who she was, nor who she could be, except for her life within the context of the sea."
"One day, she swam to shore, rising to the surface, and she came across a prince; from a distance, she was curious, and pursuing an unknowable force, she swam to his ship, wishing to witness his kind up close. In her progress she encountered a violent storm, and in her wish to protect the prince from harm - the prince she scarcely knew," she added, and Draco felt his brow furrow in question, "she saved his life, delivering him unconscious to shore."
"But his saving was, in some ways, her undoing," she added, "for the life she had delivered to the prince was then sapped from her own, and she drifted into melancholy; longing, for the first time, for more."
There was a tenderness to her tone, and he felt it again, the rapture of her stories; the entrancing murmur of her voice.
"There was a sea witch in the kingdom, and the mermaid turned to her, to beg for an end to her relentless disconsolation. The witch, having nothing to lose by either the mermaid's gladness or suffering, offered her a potion; one which would render her speechless, and cause her pain like that which none had ever experienced," she said, and he shuddered at the grimness of the tale, "and then, as if pain were not enough, the witch tasked her with an impossible choice - to obtain the prince, and own him, or else surrender herself to the waves. The mermaid, desperate for her soul's relief, agreed, scarcely conscious of the difficulties that awaited her outside the protection of the sea."
"The mermaid swam to shore and drank the potion, and the prince, not knowing who she was, fell quickly for her beauty, for the way she was so steeped in sun," Granger continued, and Draco went rigid at the phrase. "But being cursed with voicelessness, the mermaid suffered in silence; the longer she remained with the prince, the more steadily she grew vulnerable, battling her own judgment under the weight of the choice the sea witch had thrust upon her; knowing as she did that pain, the prize for her desperation, was inevitable."
"She agonized over her choice - the prince's impending loss, or her own - and wondered whether she should ever have saved him. And for however she wished to declare herself, in the staggering pain of her cursed existence, she remained voiceless to protest."
She stopped, and he felt his heart sink. That's the story, he thought. That's it. That's your story. Voiceless and frozen, cursed and pained -
But then she spoke again, and he closed his eyes in relief.
"But more can be said without a word," she ventured. "For feebleness may wane, and a reluctant hero is a hero still," she told him, and he heard it as a promise.
A reluctant hero is a hero still.
He wrapped her in his arms and held her.
"Thank you," he said, though gratitude did not come easily, and had never been taught. "You are like live armor to my heart; you keep the fear off me."
a/n: Inspiration taken from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, and from drsallysparrow, who has used this fairytale allusion before; check out her take on voiceless Draco in her drabble series, Sally Drabbles, as Chapter 13: Smart Mouth. This chapter is for I was BOTWP, for your thorough analysis of each chapter; so excited to have you reading! (Psst . . . she was one of the original readers of Clean while it was a WIP, and I keep tabs on these things.)
Also: if you're into music, find my profile on Spotify (olivieblake). The playlist Nightmares and Nocturnes features the moody piano stuff I use to dream up this odd little fic. This chapter brought to you largely by Killing Me to Love You by Vancouver Sleep Clinic.