Behind the Veil

Pairing: Dramione
Rated: T (language)

A/N: Thanks Yuli for beta'ing this one! My commas would suffer without you :)

Chapter Ten

"Look, Draco, I'm tired of all these secrets. I thought we were through with all these questions and mysteries and all that. I just want to know the truth about everything. No more lies, please."

Draco nodded. "Okay." Hermione could feel her chest pounding. There had to be answer. There just had to be. "The truth is, I did come back."

xx

Hermione stared at him with a look of pure confusion on her face. When words finally came out of her mouth, they were: "No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. I came back." Hermione meant to interrupt him again, but he continued, "But I didn't see you because I thought you had moved on."

Hermione sat there in shock, disbelief, and confusion. "You're not making sense."

Draco sighed. "I know. Just let me explain."

After realizing that she was at the edge of her seat, ready to strike, Hermione sat back. She had to allow him an explanation; after all, she had asked for the truth.

February 2003

Draco left the Australian Ministry just as lost as he was when he left the British one. His mind was whirling. He didn't know what to think or what to do. He didn't know how to deny his mother her wish, nor did he know how to tell Hermione what had happened back home.

And what confused him more was that Hermione wasn't responding to his letters. He didn't think that she'd be so upset when he had left a note. He didn't know how many times in the past 72 hours that he thought that perhaps he should have awoken her so this mystery of how she was feeling wouldn't be weighing down on him as well. He kept thinking that perhaps she knew what was happening in Wiltshire, had somehow found out through other means, and that perhaps she was taking the initiative to stay away from him first.

But that was impossible, because no one knew the truth. He knew it was his delusions from lack of sleep that was causing all of these thoughts, but he couldn't help but think them anyway. He Apparated immediately to their flat, ready to greet her, ready to beg for forgiveness if need be. He needed her. He needed everything about her, and most importantly, he needed her strength to fight his family, to fight for his right to be with her.

They hadn't told anyone back home about their relationship. They hadn't told anyone anything. But that didn't matter; they could start now, because he wasn't going to let her go without a fight. His mother wanted him to be married and for him to provide her with grandchildren. Those he could give, but only if Hermione was at his side.

He unlocked the flat and stumbled into it. "Hermione?" he called. There was no response. He searched all the rooms frantically, ready to find her, ready to just tell her everything.

But she wasn't there. He looked at the wall clock, which read 6 o'clock. Perhaps she was out to dinner. Draco stumbled out of their flat and banged on their landlady's door, asking if she knew where Hermione had gone. Luckily she did. She was at some restaurant that Draco didn't care to remember the name of, just how to get there.

When he arrived, he immediately saw her at the back of the restaurant through the front window. This wasn't the type of place he thought she'd be dining alone at, but perhaps she wasn't dining alone? Draco walked toward the front entrance, but just as he was about to enter, he saw her stand.

She was greeting someone, a man. Draco hid in the shadows once again. It was probably just a friend; Draco knew it had to be just a friend. The man gave her an embrace that lasted too long for Draco's taste, but he waited, knowing a hug didn't equal infidelity.

But as he watched further, he knew there had to be more to this than having dinner with some friend, what with the way they were talking to each other, her laugh rolling off her tongue easily. But what convinced him was the way she began to lean toward the bloke as they began to whisper to each other, all smiles. She was flirting with him; it was obvious to all who looked on.

Draco backed out of the restaurant. He placed his back against the wall once outside. No wonder she hadn't owled back. She was busy dating other people and moving on. While he was trying to come up with ways that would allow them to stay together, she was off flirting with other men. Immediately his mind began to wonder how many others there were. Was that the only man, or perhaps just one of many?

What was he thinking? He had been worried for nothing, working to make sure she got to stay in his life, while she was out living one without him after he had disappeared from her life for 72 fucking hours, or perhaps even before that.

And for the first time in the past 72 hours, Draco felt grateful. Grateful that out of this hell that he was placed in, he was able to see that she didn't love him as much as he loved her. And he was able to see it before it went too far.

Draco pushed off the wall and began to walk off. He'd go back to London, and he'd pay any price to get there. He wanted to be as far from this place as possible, even if the price meant marrying someone else.

April 1st, 2004

When Draco finished his explanation, Hermione stared at him. "I don't believe you." Draco meant to further his explanation, but Hermione continued, "I wrote you. I even wrote you about Dennis, telling you how I was looking for you through him. I wrote to you about how I thought I saw you, and how I wanted desperately to find you because I was worried about you." There had to be more, there had to be something else, because this story he was fabricating made no sense.

He wasn't looking her in the eye as she spilled this out to him, but when she stopped to allow for his reason, the reason Hermione wanted so badly to exist, he said, "I know that…now."

He looked up at her then, and Hermione asked, "What do you mean now?"

"I wrote you, too," he said. "I owled you, wondering how you were. I left you a note saying where I had gone."

Hermione shook her head frantically. "No, you didn't. You didn't leave any letters at all. You just disappeared!"

Draco shook his head before reaching for his wand. Then he said, "Accio letters." Hermione watched as a neatly tied pile of parchment soared from his bedroom. They landed in Draco's lap and he picked them up gingerly. "Here are the letters you wrote. I didn't get them until recently."

"How recent?" Hermione interrogated.

"The day you were attacked at Malfoy Industries." Hermione didn't have time to absorb all this information before he continued, "I know this is crazy, but you said you wanted to know everything. Well, here's the truth. All the letters that we wrote were intercepted. We were forcibly removed from each other."

Hermione scoffed. "I don't believe you."

Draco began, "Herm-,"

"No!" Hermione demanded as she sat ramrod straight in her seat. "No, that makes no sense. You have them right there. You have my letters, and I have none. You never wrote me any."

"I did, but they never got to you," he insisted.

Hermione shook her head. "You have my letters right in front of you."

"They gave them back to me," Draco said slowly.

"Well then, where are your letters?" she demanded. "The one's you claim to have written me."

Draco sighed, before he spoke softly, "I don't have them."

"Of course you don't," Hermione said. "So you want me to believe that someone intercepted all the letters between the two of us, but gave mine back to you just recently?" Hermione couldn't help but let out a scoff at the idea of it. "Say this elaborate lie was all truth, Draco. Why would they give them back to you now?"

"To tell me to stay away from you."

And suddenly, the confusion, frustration, and anger melted away. She didn't know how to describe the way she felt. The closest word she could come up with was amusement, because suddenly, his lies didn't even add up. "Let's pretend I believe you," Hermione said, barely being able to conceal a smile, realizing an overreaction, and an angry one in particular, was unnecessary. She should have been smart enough to expect this to happen. "Giving letters back to you wouldn't have made you stay away from me. Giving someone personal letters doesn't repel the person from the writer; it brings the two people closer to each other."

Hermione paused, before shaking her head. "Why am I even bothering to explain this? What's more important to say is that you almost had me there. I believed in you. I trusted you again, and now I feel so incredibly stupid. Your lies never stop, and it took me this long to realize they never will."

Hermione stood to leave. She had to admit to herself that he could spin a lie, but even the strongest lies unraveled with a single loose thread. A part of her couldn't even believe she had fallen for it again, fallen for the same mess of lies and deceit. How could she have even thought for one second that this was some big messed up misunderstanding that could be fixed with time? Now she had all the answers, and it wasn't a misunderstanding. It was a cycle, a game that she stupidly kept playing with him.

She was reaching for the floo powder when he called out, "Do you honestly think that I would play you like that, after what we had together?"

"What else am I supposed to believe?" Hermione grasped the silver substance in her fist and answered without turning around. "And what exactly did we have? Some fun before your engagement to some perfect pureblood witch?"

She was about to step into the fireplace when suddenly his hand grabbed her, turning her around. "Have you even considered for a second that I might be telling the truth? That I wouldn't lie to you?"

"Let go of me," she said darkly.

His grip on her tightened. "Have you?" he demanded.

"No!" Hermione yelled. "I haven't considered the fact that you're not lying to me. I won't."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because that just makes it worse!"

"How? It means that I didn't lie. It means that I cared about you. It means that what we had was real…that I loved you."

Hermione raised her gaze to look him square in the eye. "No," she said softly. "It doesn't. If everything was true just like you said, it means you didn't care about me enough. It means that you didn't love me enough to fight for me. It means you took one look at me with some other man and turned the other way, because I wasn't worth it."

His grip on her faltered then, and Hermione quickly took her chance. She stepped into the fireplace and dropped the floo powder without looking back.

The next moment she was alone in her flat. She stepped out of the fireplace before locking the floo, just to make sure that he couldn't follow her, though she was almost positive he wouldn't. She didn't want him to come in and confuse her even more.

With that done, she collapsed on her couch, her purse at her side. But as she felt it, she soon realized that something was off about it. She stared at it before realizing he had put something inside.

She dug her hand in and pulled out a wad of parchment. Hermione knew instantly what it was: her letters. He had somehow slipped them in her purse without her knowing.

She took the letters and threw them as far as she could, though they didn't land too far. She stared at them, hoping that if she looked long enough, they would disappear. But as she stared, the only thing that changed was that tears began prickling at her eyes.

He had played her again. His story didn't check out, it didn't make sense. It was only confusing, incomprehensible, and most importantly a lie. It didn't make sense for him to not come back or fight for her if he had truly loved her.

He was a bastard. That was all there was to it. He was a bastard that was mighty good at lies and manipulation. And she fell for it.

Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she didn't know whether to be angry or upset. She had promised herself that she would never let someone use her again. She had said she'd know the next time, but he had reeled her in again all the same.

Hermione stared at the letters sitting there on the floor in a neatly tied bundle, mocking her. They represented everything she wanted to forget: her feelings, her regrets, her stupid, gullible self. She Accio'd them back to her as her tears streamed down her face. She didn't want to remember what she had written when she was fully in love with the bastard. She gripped the edges of the parchments, ready to send all of them flying into the fireplace, when her hand stopped.

One particular note she had written stood out in her mind. She wanted to find it. She knew it out of everything could help her find closure over the feelings she'd had for this man that were so real for her, but nothing to him.

She pushed all the notes to the side and reached for the last note at the bottom of the stack, the last message she had sent to him, the one she really needed to read again to gain closure from her emotions for him. She had sent it to him right after she had found his engagement announcement in the paper.

She gripped the paper and read each word back slowly to commit them to memory. It was a long note. An essay almost, and she had written it at her darkest moment. In it, she didn't beg him to come back to her. She didn't ask him what happened between them. She merely acknowledged the truth. The truth that she knew both then and now, but had still needed to write down to get the closure she had needed.

She read in the letter how she knew now that the answer to all her questions was perhaps the most basic answer of them all: blood. She had never been good enough for him; she never would have meant anything to him because of her blood. He'd had his fun with her, but in the end, he still stuck with pure blood.

And then Hermione reached the most important paragraph of the entire letter, wherein she'd written that she was going to move on, that she didn't need him, and that she would release him to his fiancée in order for her to heal. Tears dripped down her face as she read the final words, and the promise she'd made herself so long ago:

You didn't break me. You didn't destroy me. And blood will never stop me.

Hermione stared at the letter and read it again and again as she sobbed. She tried to believe the words and commit them to heart, just as she had one year ago. She wasn't broken. He would never break her. She was done pining for him.

But the tears continued to flow.

April 2nd, 2004

Hermione awoke to the sound of a knock on her door. She rolled over and barely missed falling over the edge of her couch, soon realizing that she hadn't gone to bed last night. She grabbed a pillow and placed it over her head. She wasn't ready to see anyone.

"Hermione!" the voice screamed.

Hermione contemplated casting a silencing charm before realizing that it would be too much work. She settled on an irritated, "Go away, Katie." The knocking persisted.

When the knocks continued for ten minutes, Hermione groaned in frustration and got off the couch. She made her way to the door and flung it open. "Go away, Katie," she said before trying to slam the door back into place.

But her lack of sleep made her reflexes too slow and Katie caught the door before Hermione could complete her plan. This gave Katie a chance to take a good look at her. "You look like shit, Hermione."

Hermione made a face back. "Thanks, that's exactly what we girls want to wake up to in the morning."

She turned on her heel and was making her way to her bedroom when she heard her door shut and Katie call out, "Wait, Hermione." Hermione didn't, so Katie ran up and blocked her path. "What happened?" she asked.

Hermione swallowed. "You were right. Draco is a fucking arse and bastard whom I never want to see again."

Katie shut her eyes and the guilt could be seen on her face. "What happened?" she asked again.

"I don't want to talk about it," Hermione said, making her way back to her couch since that path wasn't blocked.

"Just tell me," Katie said.

"No."

An hour later found Hermione finishing up what happened between her and Draco last night and his insane story that made no sense. "I'm sorry, Hermione. I didn't know it would have ended that poorly."

Hermione leaned back. "No, I'm actually thankful, I think; now I know never to fall for his act again."

Katie smiled sadly. "Want to go over to my place and just have a girl's night?" she asked.

"I'm not twelve, Katie."

Katie laughed. "And yet here you are, pouring your heart over Draco like a sixteen year old girl."

Hermione gave Katie a face, which Katie returned.

Three hours later, Hermione left her house to spend the night at Katie's.

April 4th, 2004

Separation from Draco when he didn't disappear off the planet was something new for Hermione. She had never experienced it. Staying at Katie's was one of the only ways Hermione could think of to remove herself from the burden of Draco on her mind. Distraction was the best, if not the only, remedy she had in her arsenal to fight back against the demon that had come to possess her mind in the form of Draco Malfoy.

She had been just as trusting as she had the first time, and the cycle had repeated almost perfectly as it had the last time. One thing she had thought was that it would perhaps be easier to get over him the second time, because if she had done it once, doing it again would be easier.

But this time was different. She couldn't just up and leave the country and physically banish all locations that reminded her of him. No, this time she was stuck.

She was stuck with her home, stuck with her life, but, most annoyingly, stuck with her job.

She floo'd into Malfoy Industries at her normal time and made her way to her work space.

Sitting there, as neat as could be, was a letter from Draco. Hermione stared at it for a long time before someone interrupted her concentration. "Hermione?"

Hermione looked away from the letter, not realizing her gaze had fogged over. "Yes, Hannah?"

"What do you have there?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.

Hermione grabbed the letter and immediately fisted it into a ball in her hand. "Nothing." She knew her face was blushing and that it was very obvious she was lying, but it was too late to do anything now.

"Touchy, are we," Hannah said. "Keep your love letters to yourself then," she said, turning away with a wink.

Hermione sighed in relief. It would be best to not tell Hannah and the entire floor that she was receiving personal letters from the CEO.

Finding her vanishing bin, Hermione dropped the letter in and watched it disappear, hoping no more letters would arrive.

1:00 PM

No letters arrived after the first, which left Hermione with a feeling of relief and something else she couldn't yet place. He hadn't written her again; had she not been worth the time or effort for him to write once more? She knew she was being ridiculous, but she couldn't help her thoughts as she made her way to the cafeteria.

Once there, she heard the news readily enough from one of Draco's secretaries. Eavesdropping was always a simple thing to do in lunch lines. "…pretty much have the next two days off because Malfoy is out on business in Lancaster."

"You don't think he might return on short notice?" another secretary asked.

"No, says he's doing some 'personal' business up there. If you ask me, he's probably getting ready for the wedding. The Greengrasses hold estate in Lancaster."

"But why would he personally go up there?"

"Who knows, pureblood tradition, probably…"

Hermione digested the information. He was writing Hermione letters all the while getting ready to marry his fiancée. What she ever saw in the man was beyond her.

And it seemed once the veil of lies was lifted, all other lies fell into place, showing what kind of person he really was: one that didn't deserve her attention.

Her mind agreed with her decision to move on. If only her heart would follow suit.

A/N: Thanks for reading :) Only 2 chapters left!

Random Writing Fact: Before I did research on this chapter, I could have sworn that floo powder was green. I guess not…