A/N: Hey all, sorry it was basically 3 centuries since I last updated, but I think it's finally getting interesting again. Unfortunately, that last chapter makes me think that this story has to be a lot longer than originally intended. Sorry if my experimentation is a bore, but that's just how it goes. I'll try to keep it going fairly regularly now. If I don't, feel free to rant at me. Ranting is good!
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
Inopportunities
Chapter 10: Trustworthiness
"HERMIONE!" Harry and Ginny yelled at me simultaneously the instant we appeared in Grimmauld Place's dusky kitchen.
"We thought you were coming back with us! We thought we could trust you better than that! Obviously not!" Harry shouted, making the kitchen echo.
"Well I'm sorry, but you two were just going to give up. I had to find out what was going on. I wasn't going to leave until I saw Ron."
"I didn't see him, I told you that!" said Harry.
"You weren't looking very hard," I told him, "About two minutes later, I saw him. He was sitting in the chair by the fire! Great friends you are, just leaving him there with Malfoy!"
"Do you think we should go back?" Ginny asked, biting her thumbnail.
"Of course! How can you both be so stupid?"
"Alright, Hermione, relax," said Harry, clamping his hand on my shoulder. "I think the best thing to do here is for you to go back to your flat. If there's anything going on, you wouldn't be the best person to take care of the situation, in your state."
"Actually, I think I'm the only person around here who is capable of thinking clearly. Neither of you were in the right state just now to save your best mate and brother from whatever it was Malfoy was doing."
"What else did you see?" Harry asked me.
"Malfoy showed Ron something and he jumped out of his chair," I explained.
"Who jumped exactly?"
"Ron jumped up, once Malfoy showed him some ring or something."
"What the bloody hell does a ring have to do with anything?" Ginny exclaimed from over near the fire.
"Don't ask me, alright? I was about to go in there and see what was going on when you two showed up!"
"Hermione, I really think you should go back to your flat," Harry said again. "We'll send someone over later to tell you what's going on."
I stared at him grudgingly for a full minute before I turned and disapparated to my empty flat, where it rained outside and there was no Ron around to cheer me up.
BREAK
I had tried willing myself to sleep. I considered digging out my cauldron and making a sleeping potion. I even put on my jacket and walked halfway to the drugstore before realizing that I would never be able to get to sleep tonight.
Therefore, I swilled down four cups of tea and sat, resolute, in my most uncomfortable chair. My eyelids were traitorously drooping around four in the morning, and I was just getting up to make myself some coffee when there was a sharp rapping on my door. I tripped over my own feet in my hurry to get to the door. When I had finally undone all the locks, I ripped open the door and flung myself at the tall, muscular man standing in the shadow of the dark hallway. I had no doubt it was Ron.
"I'm so glad you're safe! Harry and Ginny made me come back here, but I wanted to go into Malfoy's so badly and get you out of there! Are you alright?" I asked, talking into his shoulder, "Did Malfoy-"
I pulled away from the man when I realized that this wasn't the way Ron's shoulder usually smelled. Ron usually smelled like a mixture of chimney smoke from his mother's kitchen and fresh air from riding his broomstick. This scent was more like cologne – something expensive – and it smelled musty, like he'd been inside a damp house for a considerable period. I glanced up at his face quickly, feeling the adrenaline rush through me.
"Well Granger, did I… what, exactly? You think I did something to… someone?" The way Malfoy emphasized that last word made it capable for me to taste his disdain for Ron. My arms were still oddly wrapped around his neck, and his were tight around my waist. My heart sped.
"Draco… What happened? What were you and Ron doing?" I asked hesitantly. We were still standing in the doorway. His face was mostly covered in shadow, so I could barely make out his expression.
"Why don't I come in and tell you all about it?" he said quietly, and we both extricated ourselves from the strange embrace. I stared at him for a moment. This was not what I was expecting. I was expecting Ron to come tell me that everything was fine – and then maybe we could have picked up where we had left off before everyone interrupted us back at the Burrow.
Just then Sasha opened her door and peered down the hallway at us. She raised an artistically shaped eyebrow at me – her eyes were heavy with sleep.
"Hermione? Everything alright? I heard a noise out here so I just…" she stopped talking when she saw how Draco was looking at her. Even in the darkness I could see his lip slightly curled in disdain and his eyes narrowed into that quelling look – enough to shut anyone up.
"Yes, Sasha, everything's fine," I lied quickly. I stepped aside so Draco could come in, and then shut the door as silently as I could manage. The last thing I needed was for Draco Malfoy and Sasha to get into a disagreement at four in the morning.
After I had closed the door, I turned around to find Malfoy standing by the window with his back to me, his fingers running through his platinum hair.
"Weasley had to go away rather suddenly," Draco said quietly, still not facing me.
"Where did he go?"
"I didn't really think to ask. Weasley's life usually doesn't concern me. But Potter told me you'd be expecting to hear from someone, so I thought…" he turned around slowly. His face was pained – it was an oddly sincere expression on his face, and it softened my attitude towards him, even while I was panicking about the lack of Ron.
"He didn't give you any message for me?" I was starting to feel dizzy with disbelief. Malfoy drew closer to me. He sighed deeply.
"I'm afraid not. Are you feeling alright? You look pale," he said shortly. His hand extended towards me, as though he would steady me. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I felt my eyes start to prick with sudden tears and my knees weakened beneath me.
"What about the Death Eaters?" I asked, searching for something else to think about.
"Well, I uh… I actually took care of that a few months ago, Hermione."
I looked up at him quickly. Draco's behavior was certainly becoming enough to distract me. He had used my name. He was looking at me like he was the one abandoned by a lover.
"What do you mean you took care of them?"
"I mean, they can't bother us anymore. I'm not proud of what I did, but I'm glad it's over. They trusted me, you know. I knew about every move they were making concerning you all. But I never gave anything away. I've changed a lot…" He stared closely at me, and I felt like some particularly incomprehensible puzzle.
"D'you mean to say that you got rid of your… your parents as well as the others?" I asked him, trying to make him stop looking at me like that. His eyebrows got closer together and he squinted, but he never removed his eyes from my face.
"Yes," was all he said. He looked down and put his right hand in his pocket and made a fist with it, like he was holding on to something – probably that ring from earlier. Suddenly he looked up at me sharply. "I didn't mean what I said earlier," he blurted out. "I don't actually… hate you anymore. Not ever."
I stood up and walked over to the kitchen, thinking to make that coffee he had interrupted. I still wanted to hear from Ron tonight and I wasn't going to be sleeping through the arrival of a message, or Ron himself. I wasn't really sure what Draco was talking about, so I tried to move around, making a lot of noise, so this couldn't get any more awkward.
"So you just mildly dislike me now?" I asked, trying to get rid of the serious tone in his voice. He jerked slightly, like he was scoffing. All I could see was his back, so I wasn't sure.
"Hermione, I want you to be able to trust me from now on. Coming here tonight was meant to be a sort of peace offering. I want to show you something so you know you can trust me when I say I've gotten rid of the Death Eaters – of all of them." He was standing now, walking towards me as I dug into the coffee grounds.
He pulled his hand out of his pocket and showed me what was there. It was the same ring he had shown Ron earlier. I was halfway expecting to see it, but it was even more breathtaking up close. The emerald shone in his hand in a million tiny facets, and the diamonds around the outside of the band were clear and brilliant. What I hadn't noticed from the window was that the band actually twisted itself around to form a snake – with the mouth almost devouring the emerald and the tail forming a small curlicue beneath it. I had never been much for jewelry, but something about this ring made my breath catch in my throat.
"What does it mean, Draco?" I asked him, wide-eyed at the beauty of it. He raised his head a fraction to look into my face. This was probably the closest we had ever been to each other (besides that mistaken hug), and my use of his name stunned him as much as when he had spoken mine.
"This was my mother's ring," he told me. I looked at him in pity and a degree of fear. How could he possibly do that to his own mother? And how was this supposed to make me trust him? He must have read my confusion in my face because he quickly started talking.
"I didn't have to get rid of my mother, Hermione. She gave this to me before she… My mother was the only person in my family or friends with a slight degree of good in them. She may have been a Death Eater, and married one, but at least she understood what love was. So when I told her what I had to do she… removed herself. She wasn't happy anymore. My father was always abusive to her and there was really no living with the guilt of what she had done before. She didn't want me to be like her. So she told me to do what was necessary, and what was right. She trusted me. And this is proof. This was her most special thing. Now I want you to trust me." His voice was rough when he finished speaking.
"I can't promise anything Draco, but I will try. I'd like to trust you. I never thought it was right for us all to still hate each other." I spoke to him quite honestly. His mouth formed a slight smirk – or what would have been a smirk on the old Draco. This time I thought it was actually a smile. We were still too close. I moved over to the couch and sat down, shivering.
"Will you do me a favor?" I asked him.
"Anything," he said quickly, moving to sit next to me. His face was almost eager.
"Stay with me until I hear from Ron? I don't feel like being alone tonight." His face closed off when I said that, but he nodded all the same and sat, somewhat tense, on the opposite end of the couch.
BREAK
When I woke up the next morning (which was closer to noon), I groaned in frustration at having actually fallen asleep. I was in my own bed, however, which puzzled me for a moment. I looked through my bedroom door into the living room and saw Draco, lying on the couch, eyes wide open, with his legs dangling over the arm. I walked into to the living room and Draco sat bolt upright. He was mussed, and looked tired, but he wasn't allowing himself to sleep at all.
"Has there been a message?" I asked him.
"Unfortunately not, and I've been awake all night… so I would have seen. Sorry," he said half-heartedly.
"Oh, it's not your fault… I just thought that maybe…"
"Maybe he cared for you more than to just leave you in the lurch like that?" he finished, a look of disgust on his face.
My stomach bottomed out. I had been giving Ron the benefit of the doubt all night, but when Draco phrased what happened last night like that… I didn't know what to think anymore. But Ron wasn't that good of an actor that he could say and do things to me like yesterday and then abandon me the next moment without caring.
"You haven't seen him for two years, maybe he's changed too?" Draco said standing up and straightening out his vest. "Impossible to know anything anymore," he muttered, apparently to himself. My eyes narrowed at him.
"I'm fairly certain I can trust Ron not to leave me without some kind of rational explanation." The words came out of my mouth, but they had none of the conviction I wanted to place in them. Draco smiled at me with half of his mouth, which could have looked encouraging, and could have also looked smug. But I had promised to try and trust him.
"Why don't we go and ask Potter and Weasley's sister?" he suggested, brightening. His full-blown smile caught me off guard. He looked almost handsome when he did that. I did a slight double take and then went into my bedroom.
"I'll be ready in a half hour," I told him from the doorway. My face felt warm as I closed the door, watching him watch me with his half-smile. Had Draco Malfoy really just spent the whole night watching over me while Ron was nowhere to be found? Things were getting strange around here, indeed.