Chapter Eleven
Draco sighed and looked into Hermione's face.
"I don't know how to tell you this, or where to start" he began.
Hermione's smile faded, but reappeared quickly. "Just start where you feel is best, and take your time" she replied.
"Well," he started, "for a long time Hermione, I have admired you. You are so smart, and beautiful and not like any other girl I have ever known. Over the summer holidays my mother was talking to me about you and she let something slip, that you were my equal. I didn't know what she meant and she made start to think. So I did some research into your family, the Grangers, and told my mother what I had found out. As I told my mother what I knew, which was very little, she in return told me what she knew about your family".
Hermione's expression had faded into a simple face, of no expression, except a little bewilderment.
"You have looked into my private life?" Hermione stuttered.
"Well yes but not really yours, its more your family's", Draco began but was interrupted.
"What do you mean my parents?" Hermione yelled.
"And your grandparents and their family".
Hermione sat, her grandparents, she had never heard about them before. She nodded for him to go on.
Draco sighed and continued: "Well I looked into your mother, but it was hard to find anything, I assumed it was because she was muggle. But I was mistaken. Your father was easy to source, but your mother is a hidden secret.
When I began the search I couldn't find records of your mother before her marriage to your father. She had a mother, but no father. She had no brothers or sisters, no paternal grandparents and only a maternal grandmother. And then I stumbled across a name Claude Pierpoint. The Pierpoint family was a powerful and wealthy family that died out when Claude did.
This is the story I found out about the Pierpoint's, the most recent one. Claude was born one of four children, the second son of Aloysius and Renee Pierpoint. They had two other sons Guy and Aloysius and a daughter Lucine Renee.
This happy family was devastated by the loss of both Guy and Aloysius II in one of the various wizarding world battles that raged at the time. Lucine lived with her parents until they died, caring for them after their lapse into illness after their son's death.
Claude continued on, growing up in his brother's shadows, and after they died, in their memory. He became distant to his family, and eventually mingled more and more in the muggle world with its fantasies that captivated him. He fell in love with a witch from a new and poor wizarding family, Aimie. Aimie gave birth to Claude's beloved twins, Rene Claude (named after his fathers beloved mother) and Aimie Lucine (after her mother and Aunt). But Aimie died shortly after the birth, after only five years with Claude. He was devastated and separated his family in the increasingly dangerous situation that boiled up around him.
Little Aimie was sent to distant cousins to be brought up. Rene stayed with his father.
When Aimie was five, she was found and used against Claude. Tortured, the poor child died in the care of her captives, she had never lived with her father. She couldn't give the captives what they wanted to know. She only saw her father one day a month.
Rene grew into a strong young man, a teen with a high intelligence and military mind. As he got older he rebelled against his father, switching sides in a feud that cost him his life, one of his fathers friends killed him. Claude was beside himself with grief and withdrew into private life aged only 50. He never forgave his friend for killing his son and heir, even if he switched sides".
Draco paused and looked at Hermione. "Do you understand everything so far?" he asked tenderly.
Hermione didn't look up and replied "yes". She suddenly sat up straight and looked him in the eyes, "what does this have to do with me?"
"I'm getting there 'Mione, just hear me out."
Hermione nodded and sat back down in the bed. "Continue", she said to him calmly.
Draco sighed heavily and continued on.
"Claude became a recluse. His only companion was a maid in his house, Cicely. The woman was young, and had run away from her poor wizarding family. Claude had taken her in, struck by her beauty and grace. Cicely was the only person Claude talked to. Even though he was 50, Claude was still a handsome man, with hair still dark and a figure kept in tone with his many hours spent at his private gym. What else could he fill his time with?
Cicely and Claude fell in love. She became his mistress, and less and less his maid. Claude loved Cicely, he planned to marry her, but he got sick. It crept up on him slowly. He was told that when it struck full force he would go within days. Claude decided not to tell Cicely, it would break her heart. He continued on life in a normal way, Cicely none the wiser to the illness that raged inside him.
After three years of domestic bliss, Cicely found herself pregnant. She feared what Claude would think; children were a touchy subject with him. She kept it a secret from him. For three months she hid it from him but she was growing bigger. Claude one day fell ill. He thought it was the start of the end and sent Cicely on a holiday so he could continue to hide his illness, hoping he would get better before she came back. Cicely left for five months, she didn't want to leave Claude, she had noticed his pale face and sweaty body, the look of sickness.
After Cicely left, Claude got worse. He tried everything to get better but nothing worked, he slowly sunk further into illness.
At the end of the five months, Cicely gave birth to a little girl.
Cicely left her baby daughter in the care of a friend while she went back to Claude, who lay dying in his mansion. Claude was glad to see Cicely and came clean about his illness. They spent only 48 hours together, doing all the things they loved, Cicely unable to tell Claude about his daughter.
It wasn't until Claude brought up Amie and Rene that Cicely felt able to tell him about his daughter. Claude expressed his sorrow that him and Cicely couldn't be a proper family and that he couldn't give her a child.
Cicely came clean at this point and told him about his daughter. Claude cried with joy and Cicely left him briefly to get his daughter for him. She arrived back swiftly (the wonder of magic!) and Claude spent his last moment playing with his baby daughter in utter bliss with his beloved Cicely.
As Claude got weaker, the daughter was left to sleep on the large armchair at the end of his bed, and Cicely and Claude got talking and named their daughter.
Claude died with Cicely in one arm, and his new daughter in the other.
This daughter was raised as her father wished in secret in the muggle world. Claude wished his daughter to never be recognised as a Pierpoint.
Cicely and her daughter lived a quiet life, until Cicely died when her daughter was 16. The daughter, whom was named Violet Claude Amie, was left alone in the world".
Hermione suddenly sat up and grabbed Draco by the shoulders.
"That's my mother's name. What are you trying to say? Is this my family?" Hermione's face was passive, hiding the growing anger within.
"Yes I am but let me finish", he said sitting her down again.
"As you know your father, Thomas Granger, met Violet and married her, hence you were born. So yes it is your family". Draco finished.
Hermione sat quietly. She suddenly sprung up and started to question Draco.
"How long have you known all this?"
"Since the holidays."
"And why did you look into it?"
"Because I knew nothing about you."
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Because I wanted to find the right moment."
Here she paused, then launched into a violent assault on Draco.
"So you have kept this from me! I can't believe you did this. I can't believe you dug into my past! My family is my private matter, I still don't understand why you delve into my past, we weren't even a couple in the summer holidays!" Her face was red; her eyes ready to burst with tears.
"Well," Draco started, "I have liked you for awhile and because I'm a Malfoy and you're a muggle I wanted to see if you had any secrets, that it would be easier for us to be together if I found some of them out, that could mean it wouldn't be so bad for us and look so wrong".
That came out wrong.
"So wait a minute, you wouldn't go near me until you knew if I was from a wizarding family or really a muggle? Right now I am so angry with you I cant bare to look at you. I just can't believe you, what you have done and what you are! Pathetic that you only felt you couldn't be with me because I was 'lower' than you. And here I was thinking you had changed!"
She spun around; the tears that welled in her eyes began to fall down her soft cheeks in streams. She went through his bathroom door into the bathroom, slamming his door on the way through and hers again when she got into her room.
She flopped down onto her bed and let everything all out. Everything made sense now about her family. Why she only had one set of grandparents, why they lived the muggle life and why her mother knew nothing of her father or mother's family.
But most of all she was angry, so incredibly angry, that Draco had kept this from her all year, that he had searched into her life and her families without asking, to check if she, SHE, was worthy of him, THE Draco Malfoy. She punched her pillow and burst into another fit of tears and sobs. She was never going to talk to him again, she decided.
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Hermione had just given Draco a large piece of her mind, taken what he had told her the way he hoped she wouldn't, and left through his door with a slam.
"I didn't mean it like that, I wasn't searching you to see if you were good enough. I was trying to work out why you're so brilliant, fantastic and utterly breath taking. I wanted to know why you were so beautiful and so smart", Draco's words of explanation fell on deaf ears, or rather by the end an empty room.
"Hermione, I love you", Draco said to the empty room. "Please don't leave me alone."
Please reveiw, i dont get many and i would really like fed back as to whether all you guys like my story! So please if you read this review! Any ideas welcome
Meme
