When The Darkness Fades Chapter 11
A/N: I feel like the last chapter came out a bit confusing and honestly I think it was. Even to me. But, apparently that was the way it wanted to come out so don't shoot the bloody messenger. I'm going to be bouncing back and forth between this story and I think Luminescent Nocturne for tonight so expect to see more coming. –MoonlitShadow
Hermione took her dinner in her room that night much to her boy's disappointment.
She needed time to think.
Time to figure out what exactly had happened when she was with Theo and how she felt about it as well the entire situation that had now arisen.
She had almost slept with Theo.
Without Draco and Blaise.
How were they feeling about her and Theo's little afternoon tryst?
How was Theo feeling about almost ridding her of the one thing that she truly had left of her own?
The whole thing was confusing and muddied by her feelings of lust and insecurities of being in a new environment.
Would she have given the precious gift of her virginity to Theo that afternoon if he hadn't stopped her?
Would she have said no?
Would she have been strong willed enough to say no?
She scoffed at the thought.
Of course she would have been.
She was Hermione Granger, the Smartest Witch of their Age.
She had enough wear withal to know what she was doing and make sense of everything.
Nothing had ever stumped her before. So why was she feeling so unsure now?
The deep feeling of regret seeped into every pore of her being as she sat at her window seat staring at a plate of cold, untouched food.
Exactly who was she now that she was going to be married?
Had she already lost who she once was?
Hermione didn't know the answer but just like every question or problem that needed solving, she was determined to find out.
Deciding that she had done enough sulking, she got to her feet and began to pace the length of the room.
In a fleeting thought she wondered how the boys were fairing down around the dinner table without her.
Were they noticing her absence, or was it like the old days when she wasn't there at all?
Pushing the thought aside, she made her way over to her massive wall to wall library of books and began pulling out ones that had information on The Sacred 28.
Perhaps if she knew more about who she was dealing with, she'd be able to figure out how she felt about them.
Dropping the huge heaps of books onto her bedroom floor, she sat amongst them and began turning through the pages eagerly.
There were pages upon pages of information about how the Sacred 28 came to be and why they were a force to be reckoned with in the Wizarding World.
Yet, she couldn't seem to find anything on their distinct laws that governed them.
She was curious about the marriage law that had bound her and her boy's together.
Why was it so important that she was the witch that needed to be chosen?
How did they even make such a decision?
What was the process of elimination that they had used to come to that conclusion?
So many thoughts ran through her mind and began to make her head pound with an impending headache but she ignored the pain and carried on.
Book after book she searched and to no avail.
There was nothing about the marriage law or anything that said that it even existed.
She was confused, distraught, a bit hurt.
The first two she could understand. But hurt?
Why did she feel pain?
Was it because she needed validation that it had been the law that had indeed chosen her and not her boys?
Or was it because she was now stuck with her decision that wasn't even hers to begin with?
Hours went by as she began to drift off and felt herself beginning to need sleep desperately.
But she didn't care.
Sleep was for the weak.
And Hermione Granger wasn't weak.
Several times throughout the night, her boys had each come and attempted to coax her out of her room but she had refused each time.
She knew that they were growing worried about her state of unease and she could hear their voices speaking lowly outside in the hall.
She attempted to ignore the shooting pain that traveled up her body and into her heart as her thoughts began to focus on how her boy's must be feeling and how much she missed being with them.
She didn't need them.
At least for right now.
Or that was what she had been telling herself as she half sat half laid on her bedroom floor only clothed in her underwear and robe that was fully open and wrinkled.
She hadn't a clue if it was because of her earlier bout of sexual antics with Theo or if was because she had stayed there on her bedroom floor not caring if it was or not.
Her mind began to grow muddied and her thoughts began to slow as she blinked and saw that the room had become dark all except a thin, pale sliver of moonlight that shone through her balcony door.
She had closed the curtains hours ago.
She must have forgotten one.
She wanted to be alone.
She didn't want herself to feel the way she had about Theo again.
At least not without a sense of rational thought first.
She found it insane that she even felt that way at all.
She wondered if these feelings were actually hers or if they were the effects of the powerful magic that now bound them all together.
Curling herself around a large book she lay back on the cold, hard wooden planks of her bedroom floor and fell into a dreamless; restless sleep.
Outside her door, Draco and Blaise paced back and forth as Theo looked on now wracked with guilt.
He hadn't meant to cause such harm to their brand new relationship and was feeling terrible because of how Hermione had reacted.
He thought he had done the right thing by stopping them before they had gone any further, but now he realized he shouldn't have been in the midst's of such passion to begin with.
"How could you, Theodore?"
Blaise growled as he rounded on the disheartened brunette.
Theo shrugged now completely void of emotion as he stood under the glare of one of his best and only friends.
"Now she's never going to trust us."
Draco said simply as he stopped and glanced nervously at Hermione's bedroom door for the millionth time that evening.
"You just couldn't keep it in your bloody pants, could you?"
Blaise said yet again making Theo growl in frustration.
"I told you already. She came and found me. What was I fucking supposed to do? Tell her go away?"
Draco shook his head and ran a hand through his now messy platinum blonde locks.
Leave it to Theodore to make a mess of things.
If he was going to fix it he needed to do it fast and do it right.
Stalking down the hallway towards the stairs, he left the other two to sit and argue while he formed a plan of action.
Because if it was one thing Malfoy's were known for, it was action.
Draco made his way quickly down the stairs and through the darkened rooms of the house until he reached the living room where he threw open the French doors leading out into the gardens and stepped out into the cold, snowy air.
His breath appeared in chilled huffs as he shivered and wrapped his pale arms around himself.
If Hermione wasn't going to come out, then they were going to have to come in.
Not wanting to startle her by tearing down the bedroom door or apparating into the room, he devised a plan that made him quirk an eyebrow at his thoughts but still make him pleased that he still had at least some of his cunning traits intact.
Standing underneath his new fiancé's balcony, he huffed out another cold breath before going off to fetch his broom.
Making his way through the snow and ice, he trudged over to the small shed that stood in the back of the property.
Back when he was in school he would've balked at having his broom stored in such a fashion, but now that he was older, possibly wiser and just more practical in general he couldn't find it in himself to care about the state of his broom.
He rarely used it anymore anyways.
Nowadays all he had to do was think about a place and apparate or floo himself to wherever he needed to go.
Grabbing his broom out of the shed and locking the door behind him, he started off in the direction of his distraught fiancé.
If there was another thing Malfoy's were known for, it was romance.
Yes, they were feared by many and were horrible people when it came to morals often times but no witch in the Wizarding World could deny the charm of a Malfoy man.
His father had had many lovers before he had met his mother and had only managed to slow down the trickle of his mistresses slightly in the recent years.
Draco had learned a lot of things from his father over the years and wooing the average witch was definitely one of them.
Not to say that Hermione was average by any means.
He had watched her for years at Hogwarts with her friends as they gallivanted around the Wizarding World saving everyone from a rather untimely death.
She had always been bright and the allure of her knowledge was something that he tended to crave the most.
He had never truly been with a woman in a way that he craved Hermione, but he was sure if he had she would wanted him even less than right now as he stood in the freezing cold at ten in at night looking up at her darkened bedroom.
Shaking his head, he swore to himself at the sheer fact that he was so dead set on wooing the one woman who he knew for a fact had hated him the most over the course of their lives.
Shakily mounting his broom, he kicked off and sped towards her balcony.
He hovered momentarily on the other side of the railing as he tried to figure out whether or not she had already gone to bed.
Confusion was written all over his features when he landed outside the door and saw that her bed's covers were still freshly made.
Casting a wordless spell over the doors lock, he quietly made his way into the darkened room and was immediately greeted with a sight that broke his heart into pieces.
There lying amongst scattered books was his fiancé whose hair was matted against her forehead and her clothes rumpled and skewed.
Quickly making his way over to her, he shook his head when he saw that her cheeks were tear stained and the skin around her eyes was puffy and red.
Carefully bending down, he took her gently into his arms and began to lift her off of the mound of books.
She stirred slightly making him bite his lip in slight frustration before he decided that the best course of action would be to settle himself on the ground where she previously had laid.
He clutched her sleeping form tightly to his chest and watched as she nestled herself into him making a small, yet fleeting smile form on his thin lips.
Looking about the room, he saw that her dinner sat on her window seat untouched making him look quickly down at her in concern.
She hadn't even eaten.
And now she had cried herself to sleep on the bloody bedroom floor?
What on earth did Theo do to her?
He couldn't even imagine what could've caused the usually spunky witch to become so tattered and upset.
He sent a solid death glare towards the bedroom door and vowed that once he had gotten things fixed with their fiancé, he was going to have a definite talk with Theo about his apparent inappropriate behavior.
He sighed and ran his thumb over a small pool of tears that had settled at the corner of one of her eyes.
His poor little witch.
She looked utterly destroyed and he had no clue why.
It was then that he caught sight of the books that they were apparently sitting on.
His brows raised towards the ceiling when he saw that they were a collection of books on the Sacred 28.
Could Hermione have been questioning her decision to marry them?
Was she regretting the fact that they were destined to be together?
Merlin only knows what she had been thinking.
Draco cast a worried glance down at her and then over at the books.
What should he do?
It wasn't like he could wake her and ask her.
Or could he?
He debated the idea back and forth before deciding against it.
If she wanted to wake up and tell him she would have.
But he needed to get to the bottom of this so they could find a solution.
He knew if he just let the problem fester then it would get worse with every passing day.
Sticking his tongue against his cheek he tried to wrack his brain for a possible plan of action and was frustrated beyond his limit when he found none.
If Hermione was questioning her decision, then there was nothing that could be done now.
They were in this union now whether they liked it or not, for better or for worse.
Right now he was thinking it was leaning towards the worse side but he couldn't be sure until Hermione woke up and finally gave them all a piece of her mind. Oh Merlin, did he wish she would.
He would give anything to have her yell or scream or do anything but lay here in his arms after crying herself to sleep in a bout of misery.
He knew that Theo and Blaise were probably wondering where he was and what kind of fool hardy plan he had concocted but that didn't matter now.
All that mattered was the small woman who lay haphazardly in his arms who apparently had been distraught enough by her thoughts to lock herself away from them all.
She obviously wasn't finding any of them a comfort enough to come and tell them what was on her mind.
And that was when it hit him.
They needed to find someone that did.
Carefully rising to his feet, he cast a wandless sleep spell on his fiancé before he marched over to the bedroom door and flung it wide open startling both Theo and Blaise who looked at him as if he were mad.
"Theo, Blaise grab your cloaks. We're going to find us a Weasel."