CHAPTER 14: Believe

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Hmm. No NC-17 scene yet. I decided to cut it out for now. Not in the mood to edit through 5 pages of S&M. Might post it on LJ or resubmit the chapter later. Might not post it at all. Tune in to my little author's notes for news. For now, behold the secret of Draco's escape in LLDM. Enjoy the chapter and forgive the wait.

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A knock came at their door near 9:15 PM. They'd be changing in minutes so Hermione wrapped a sheet around herself and rushed to the door to tell whoever it was to firmly go away.

"What?" she fumed, pulling open the door. She gasped and took a step back, pulling up her sheet. "Professor Dumbledore, sir."

The gray-haired professor raised an eyebrow and leaned to the side to look at Draco still tied up naked in bed, snoring lightly. Both his eyebrows shot up. "Well…" he began, clearing his throat. "That wasn't what the chains were intended for but I was most foolish to think they wouldn't be used this way."

She chuckled nervously and closed the door behind her. "I'm sorry about that, Professor, but with so little hope of winning the trial—"

The professor completely ignored her and continued staring at the closed door. "Is he hurt? Those wounds look dangerously deep. Perhaps I should go make sure he's okay."

She laughed a little more and shook her head. "Speedy healing. It's a wonderful thing. Now, about the trial… I assume that's why you're here."

He nodded and, after a quick shake of the head, turned his attention back to her. "Of course. Of course. Yes! The hearing has been scheduled for noon on January 2nd. Because of the publicity surrounding the case, they wanted it done as quickly as possible."

"So we still have New Year's together? That's excellent!"

He shook his head slowly, closing his pale blue eyes. "I'm afraid they haven't given you very much time to mount a defense but I am trying my best to aid you. Oh! And Mr. Dennis Milgrahm will be acting in name of the victims."

"Milgrahm? Who's Milgrahm?"

Dumbledore sighed and said, "The brother of Mr. Alfred Milgrahm, one of the bodies found mangled beside Draco in Spain. Professor Snape is here so he might be able to help you with the evidence. Narcissa has invited him to stay during the holidays. Now that Seneca is gone, he doesn't have anywhere to go. He doesn't know you know so I beg you to be kind."

She just went along as though she had some idea of what he meant. But at least now she knew Seneca and Snape's connection. She hurried back inside as the pain hurried up her spine, warning her of the change. She locked the door and barely made it to the bed, where she curled up beside Draco and slept away tonight's aches.

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Draco awoke still in chains, the sun barely in the sky. His wounds had gone but he actually missed them for a moment. It wasn't just the memories they brought back of last night. Hermione had explored all those little spots on him, spots he had found on her almost by instinct all those times before. And, when he begged it, she had cautiously torn them to pieces.

He didn't wake her right away. He watched her as he liked, resting himself up on his elbow. She pursed her lips because she could of course see herself in her mind. It interrupted her dreams, which irked her something awful. He could read her face like a book, a private transcript of her dreams, and smirked. She was dreaming of them, of moments like last night. He slowly moved the sheets down to get a better look at "the goods" and smiled brighter. She rested on her chest now so all he really got was a sneaky though clear view of her backside.

"Draco Malfoy, didn't you have enough eight hours ago?" she mumbled into her pillow, her eyes still closed, and crawled the tiny distance between them to kiss his elbow. He laughed and went to caress her face when the chains rattled and he started trying to tug himself free from the floor.

"Do you mind?" he growled, rattling the chains by her ear. She reached blindly across his chest to the wand on his bedside table and undid them, tossing the wand back onto the floor with minimal effort.

"Go back to sleep, damn you," she growled back, feral as ever.

He kissed her bare shoulder but stopped at the twitch. It was tiny and probably insignificant if it were coming from someone else, but worrisome on her. She never flinched from his touch. She could see it coming a mile away, see it in her head. The only reason for the twitch was that she didn't want him to kiss her, which was especially ridiculous after their last rendezvous when she practically raped him.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly, running his hand gently over her shoulder as though erasing the kiss. "Something's changed."

She furrowed her brow but still didn't open her eyes. He knew she wasn't asleep and, after a minute of careful breathing meant to fool his senses, he poked her repeatedly in the same delicate spot he'd just kissed and made her jump up, eye open to the world. "Ow!" she hissed. "That was mean!"

He poked her again just to be an ass and she slapped his hand away. "Mean is not telling me what's going on. I don't like this, Hermione. At first it was little things that I ignored because they usually went away. Then, we had these few lovely days together and I thought whatever worries you had had gone away but they haven't, have they?"

She rolled eyes. "You're delusional. I told you pixie dust had undetermined long-term effect but did you listen to me? Nooo, because nothing can touch Draco Malfoy."

"Nothing but you," he said with a little smirk because she'd sort of walked into that one. She tried to go back to sleep but he wouldn't let her. He pulled the sheets away and threw them onto the floor, leaving them both bare atop the bed. "What aren't you telling me, Hermione?"

She opened her eyes but didn't quite look at him. Instead, she focused on a piece of the headboard. As long as she focused there, she didn't have to look him in the eye. "Dumbledore stopped by while you were sleeping. The trial date's set for January 2nd."

"Fantastic!" he shouted. "We can have New Year's and maybe a few more nights like the last one."

She scoffed, trying to hide a laugh of disbelief. He certainly had his priorities wrong. "You mean more nights where your girlfriend ties you up to the bed, you have passionate, angry sex, give the headmaster of one of the most prestigious wizarding schools in the world a peep show, and top it off with some slightly less angry poking?"

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. "What do you mean a peep show?"

She laughed, proud to have momentarily distracted him. It was all about the little moments now. They had no time left for the life they had subconsciously planned. So, she lifted herself up onto her elbows, giving him a better view of her chest, and smiled devilishly. She stretched to give him a slow kiss on the lips. He growled and stopped them and she suddenly remembered that they couldn't be spontaneously romantic anymore, not as he drew closer and closer to his inner beast.

"Just do me a favor?" he asked, sitting up and hugging his bare knees. "Don't keep anything from me from now on. You can keep whatever secrets you had for as long as you'd like but when something else comes up, you cannot keep it to yourself. Nothing else. Not dates or verdicts or even the smallest thing. We were good for those few days, right? You had your secrets and I didn't venture into them and we just floated on with no worries for a few days. I want that. I don't care if we never touch again, if it'll make you more comfortable with whatever you're keeping. Just don't let the secrets get so big that they tear us apart. I saw it happen in my parents. I refuse to—"

She reached up and covered his mouth with her palm. "Draco, shut up. We have less than a week together. I don't want to talk about this."

He smirked. "What oh what do you suggest we do to pass the time?"

She laughed and lightly slapped him. He faked offense though his tough skin had barely felt it. "Fine. You want to know what's new?" He nodded. "The prosecutor is going to be someone named Mr. Milgrahm and he—"

"Dennis Milgrahm?" he interrupted her, his most menacing stare coming back to light. It reminded her of the old days, of the Draco that made her cry in Hagrid's hut, on Harry's shoulder… She moved back in slight fear.

"Do you know him?"

"Of course I bloody know him!" he shouted, getting out of bed. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?!"

She flinched again but this time, he ignored it and rifled through his cabinets for some pants. He didn't even bother with boxers or a shirt and she was sure those pants were meant to go with a tux so he'd just put on the first thing he saw. "Where are you going?" she called after him but he was already rushing down the stairs.

She jumped out of bed and took her robe from the bathroom, tied it around her waist, and ran after him completely barefoot. Her hair resembled her old self, up in strange, puffy places, and the color had been drained from her face. She never thought keeping something from him might hurt him or his chances at trial.

When she got to the kitchen, she found Narcissa and Snape having a hissing fight over something while Moody shook his head in a corner cross-armed. She wanted to go looking after Draco but found herself eavesdropping nonetheless. Because this was Snape, and any fight between those two couldn't be a good sign.

"…Don't you dare blame this on me!" shouted Snape, stomping like a madwoman. "I'm at Hogwarts most of the year. How was I to defend it?"

"You could have told the Order, Severus!" Narcissa replied. Moody nodded from the stool in the corner. "We could have defended it! We could have stopped him from taking the prisoners from Azkaban! You saw what happened to Lucius. If we hadn't found him, who knows—"

"Don't you dare blame Lucius on me! He did that to himself. He made a deal with the devil long before Seneca was ever taken over."

Narcissa sighed and let her hands fall from her hips. She buried her face in her hands and mumbled, "This is ridiculous. I can't believe we've come to this, Severus."

"The past isn't important," said Moody all of a sudden. His voice made Hermione jump as it always did and she cupped her hand over her mouth to keep from gasping behind the half-open door. "But we can't let Draco get sent to Azkaban. If he does, You-Know-Who might as well invite him over for tea."

Shit. Shit. Shit, she thought. It didn't take her long to figure it out. Seneca belonged to Snape and Voldemort had been using it to hide away prisoners he helped escape from Azkaban. But that could only mean one thing. If Azkaban was no longer safe, it meant the Ministry or possibly the Dementors had fallen under Voldemort's control. The war was raging while she did naughty things in the bedroom. Fan-freakin'-tastic.

She felt Draco calling her name and hurried down the hall towards a room she'd never been before. It was full of things Narcissa had saved from the Manor but hadn't quite had time to set up around the house. Draco was there, tossing boxes about like piles of old clothes.

"What's going on?" she asked, grabbing his shoulder to get him to stop. His eyes were huge, frantic. Hers begged him to explain.

"I'm trying to find his address. If we can go to Dennis directly, maybe I can explain and get him to stop this whole trial." She still didn't understand and she silently urged him to explain. She felt slightly better to know she wasn't the only one keeping secrets. "I knew Alfie, his brother. He was one of my guards when I was being tortured. He was a good guy, young, but he'd been bitten years ago and Voldemort was recruiting the wild packs. So, he joined up. When Voldemort ordered me killed, he refused and Pettigrew killed him in front of me. His death was my fault. The other two guards I was found with did try to kill me and I had to defend myself. I don't remember much that happened because I got hit in the head and passed out but when I was woken up by Weasley and the Order, I was lying naked in a field with the dead bodies of Albert and another guard."

She sighed with relief. "Draco, do you know what that means? You might not have killed anyone! You could have been mistaken for dead and thrown out the castle or something."

He scoffed and stormed past her. She gripped her robe closed and ran after him, back up the stairs. "You know why I was allowed to escape, Hermione. They wanted me to bite people, turn them. Why change me otherwise? Why let out a prized specimen?"

"Because you couldn't be turned!" she defended. "They could turn you into an animal but they couldn't make you kill! There's a chance, Draco! There's a chance you're innocent of the charges!"

He shrugged and closed the bedroom door behind her. He ruffled his hair and picked a shirt up off the floor.

"Don't you care?" she asked softly, watching as he moved about the room in search of his signet ring and cufflinks.

"I care about the trial."

She knew there was little she could say to convince him otherwise so she let her own feelings seep through the thin veil between them. She closed her eyes and found him in the mist, took his hand and let it happen, let her calm be his calm, her purity of heart be his.

You have to believe you're innocent, Draco. Believe as I do. Otherwise, it won't matter if you're free. The guilt will eat at you. I know you and I know you're a good man. Just believe.

He stopped moving about and crossed the room. He took her hand and looked at the signet ring on his finger. "You could never love a monster, right?" he said, remembering her words all those months ago.

She opened her eyes, suddenly lost in the mist. Was he retreating? Had he heard something in her head, a secret she'd inadvertently let slip through the veil. "So you can't possibly be a monster," she corrected. "Because I love you more than anything."

He nodded but avoided her eyes. Instead, he changed the subject back to the matter at hand. "We need to find Dennis."

She gave a single nod of approval. She'd do anything to save him from Azkaban and, apparently, from Seneca. "You can't leave Grimmauld Place, but I can. I'll find him, tell him the truth of what happened."

Draco sighed and let go of her hand. "I already found him. The day I left the Burrow, I asked Mr. Weasley to take me to see him, to tell him Alfie died a good man. I wasn't able to get out of the Ministry's watch but I managed a letter. It explained. He—Why would he do this?"

Hermione didn't want to say it because, though she knew she was correct, it meant that her world wasn't bright and cheery and naïve the way she saw it. But they both knew the truth. Alfie may have been a righteous man but his brother was in league with the Dark Lord.

Hermione and Draco didn't really talk much after that. They found themselves in the now empty kitchen, waiting for the rest of the house to wake. Aurors patrolled the halls and Draco tapped his fingers on the wooden table to the tune of their footsteps in the distance. Hermione got annoyed around 8 a.m. and slapped the back of his hand lightly. He stopped and shot her a smirk. "I was wondering how long before you did that."

"Two hours, Draco. Two freakin' hours. If you knew it bothered me, why didn't you stop one hour and fifty minutes ago?"

He laughed and leaned over to kiss her, letting a quiet moan escape his lips. Good. Another little moment to distract them. She took his hand from the table and playing around with the signet ring on his finger. She noticed he'd put it where a wedding band would be and smirked, humming his song softly to the empty kitchen. She ran her hands through his silky though unbelievably messy hair and took in all the distracting little tidbits that erased the plot of their lives.

A few minutes later, Ron got out of bed and scratched himself all the way down the stairs. He went in search of cereal and milk, not even noticing the puffy-faced couple sitting on the tiny kitchen island. When he went to set down the bowl, he jumped. "Geez! You sure are quiet werewolves. Positive you're not vampires?"

Draco rolled his eyes and pushed the bowl of cereal away from himself. "Yes but we do bite so shut up and eat your cereal like a good doggy."

Ron narrowed his eyes at him and took his bowl to go, the box of cereal under his arm. "Don't bother!" called Hermione after him. "She's still asleep. The potion knocks her out a tad, I'm afraid."

"And that's not her favorite cereal," added Draco in a dull voice, his cheek resting on his fist like a bored child during first grade math. "I'd go, ironically, with the Cheerios

Ron went to say something smarmy but decided to close his trap and walk back to the cabinet in search of Cheerios. Draco and Hermione chuckled softly in the background. "What you two waiting for anyway?" he asked as he jumped up to reach the boxes on the top shelf.

"The one on your right," said Hermione, guiding him to the little yellow box. "And we're just waiting for company, I guess."

That wasn't true in the least. They were waiting for the others to wake to tell them the Dark Lord had a stronger hold on their world than any of them knew. It just didn't seem fair to wake everyone up for that. For all they knew, the adults already knew and were trying to keep it from them. To top it off, if the Ministry was truly infiltrated like they thought, they couldn't trust the adults at all. They only had Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Pansy to talk to since they could barely talk to each other anymore. They didn't really need to, which left this void where meaningful conversations once existed.

"Oh oh," said Harry, rubbing at his eyes on the way down the stairs. Ginny followed, holding his hand with a fresh I've-just-been-laid grin on her face that she couldn't hide even if she wanted to. "Are we having a Justice League meeting in the kitchen?"

"Are we invited?" joked Ginny.

Draco and Hermione nodded and gestured for them to sit. Their faces told the others this was serious. "Shouldn't we wait for Pansy to wake?" asked Hermione but Draco just shook his head. "She's one of us, Draco."

"I'm sure Weasley will tell her eventually but that's his mess. Pansy can't even trust her own allegiances."

Ron didn't say anything, which the others took as collaboration. Pansy couldn't be completely trusted. So, they continued, "We're mounting an operation and we've got to do it before New Year's."

"O… kay…" said Harry, urging them to continue.

"I can't leave the house," said Draco. "But you guys can. Now that we know who's leading the charges against me, we might be able to stop this whole from ever taking place."

"How?" asked Ginny, leaning forward as though intrigued by the idea.

Ron glared at her. "It's scary how excited you get about dangerous escapades."

Harry laughed and took her hand on the table, encouraging her madness. Ron watched as the two couples behaved. They sat so closely together, so comfortable in each other's presence, and he could barely talk to Pansy. Maybe they could be like Draco and Hermione and not even need to talk.

"What's the plan?" he asked.

Hermione sighed and leaned forward to whisper, "We need to find out where Dennis Milgrahm lives and pay him a little visit."

"What, we're just going to talk to the guy into dropping murder charges?" asked Ginny, a tad disappointed.

Hermione shook her head. "We can't. You see… he's in league in Voldemort."

Ron flinched. "You want us to tail a Death Eater?" he hissed. "Are you crazy? We should tell one of the Aurors to do it!"

"Look, they probably know. But they don't have evidence."

"So how are three kids who barely passed their OWLS supposed to mount a spying operation and find enough evidence in less than a week?"

At this, Hermione smirked. "Because you're not just three kids. You're three kids and a werewolf… a werewolf with super hearing, one who, as far as Milgrahm is concerned, is in league with Voldemort."

At this, Draco snapped to face her. "What?"

She just smiled back, trying to pretend this wasn't serious or dangerous or all those god-awful things that turned Ginny on. Through gritted teeth, she cemented her point. "You heard me. I'm going to the dark side."

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Yes, she'll have to pretend to be a Death Eater and all that good stuff to penetrate Seneca, but she won't be doing it alone. Do you seriously think a couple of Aurors can stop Draco Malfoy from trying to help his mate? Never!

Reviews are better than inadvertent peep shows.