Difficult

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The world didn't end, though. There weren't any screams floating in from Hogsmeade, shrill and sharp, penetrating the castle walls, warning us, reminding us; there weren't any Death Eaters storming the grounds, masks on, wands raised, blasting open doors and filling the air with an unnatural green light.

There wasn't any of that.

There wasn't much of anything.

"I just don't understand," I said to Harry the next morning. "I was so—so sure that something was going on…"

His normally bright green eyes were dull and tired behind his glasses.

"Something is going on," he replied groggily. "That's pretty obvious. It's just—not what we thought."

I glanced around at the now empty Common Room. Ron and Parvati had long-since gone to bed, shuffling up their respective staircases with guilty faces and hastily mumbled promises to return should anything happen.

Except nothing had.

"McGonagall's not going to be too happy with us, is she?" Harry yawned, stretching his arms over his head. "All that fuss for nothing."

All that fuss hardly began to describe what we'd done—we'd sprinted through the halls, frantic, frenetic, dread and adrenaline and a potent sort of expectation spurring us on, forward, even after we'd woken up Professor McGonagall and she'd reacted slowly, skeptically, the wrinkles on her forehead deepening as she considered our evidence.

And oh—but we'd been shocked when she'd sent us back to Gryffindor with little more than a stern lecture on being out of bed after hours—we'd thought she was mad, hadn't we? That, or senile, but it didn't matter now, not when it turned out she'd been right.

"I still—I still don't think we're completely wrong," he went on, sighing. "You saw their Marks. You saw Malfoy disappear. Something's definitely going on. There has to be."

I bit my lip.

"Do you think they'll send someone to search for them? When they realize that they're missing?" I asked.

"Malfoy and Parkinson, you mean?"

"And Blaise Zabini."

"If he's even gone."

"Well—yeah," I said awkwardly.

He hesitated.

"I don't know what they'll do," he said. "I imagine that yeah, they'll probably look for them, but…"

"It's not like they'd tell us," I finished for him, leaning back in my chair.

"Yeah." He brightened. "Hey—d'you think McGonagall might believe what we told her when she finds out about the three of them being gone?"

"I don't know," I replied wearily. "It isn't like she didn't believe us—she just didn't think it was important. Or that it meant what we thought it did."

He nodded.

"Yeah. It's just—I feel like she's asking me to sit here and wait, you know? For them to come and find me. For—well. You know. It's…frustrating."

I stood up, unable to sit still any longer.

"Should we go get some breakfast, then? Starving ourselves isn't going to help anything."

He shrugged.

"Sure."

We trudged towards the portrait hole, our feet heavy, before pausing.

"Do you hear that?" he asked curiously.

"Sounds like someone's fighting with the Fat Lady," I replied, surprised.

We exchanged bewildered glances before exiting the room.

"—come on, you know who I am, my bloody twin sister lives here!" Padma Patil was shouting at the portrait, her hair in a loose, messy braid down her back. She blinked when she saw us.

"Padma?" I interrupted cautiously. "What are you doing here?"

She took a deep breath, her face anxious.

"Can one of you please go and get my sister?" She shot a dirty look at the Fat Lady. "Your portrait won't let me inside without the password."

"Is something wrong?"

"It's just—Blaise, my boyfriend—he's come back, and he—" she began, her voice quavering.

"What?" Harry and I exploded. "He's back? When? Where is he?"

She narrowed her dark eyes quizzically.

"He's waiting for me in the library, but—how did you know he was gone?"

"Parvati mentioned it," I replied vaguely. "But, er—Harry, why don't you take Padma into the Common Room, I'm really in a bit of a hurry, I have—ah—detention, and I really don't want to be late…"

"Detention? At eight in the morning?" she asked dubiously.

"With Snape," I explained quickly. "He's—ah—quite unreasonable."

And then, before either of them could bother arguing with me, I took off down the hall, filled with uncertainty—why had Blaise returned? Was Draco back, then, as well? And Pansy? I raced into the library, my mind buzzing with questions, and immediately saw him.

Blaise Zabini was tall and dark-haired, with high cheekbones and a wide, well-defined mouth—he would have been handsome, I thought, except for the fact that he looked exhausted and dirty, with pale purple circles ringing his startlingly blue eyes, and mud caked around the edges of his clothes.

"Granger?" he asked, astonished.

"Where are they?" I demanded, not bothering with an introduction.

"I don't know what you—" he started to say, indignant.

"I know about last night. About the Marks," I said loudly. "I was with Draco when his started to hurt. I saw him disappear."

His sagged against a bookshelf.

"Oh," he said, defeated. "I didn't—wait a second, where's Padma?"

"Gryffindor," I answered promptly. "Waiting for Parvati. Where are they, Blaise? Where did you go?"

He regarded me steadily for a seemingly endless moment.

"Draco's in Hogsmeade," he finally replied. "He has a house there. I don't know where Pansy went. And I—I was with my parents. I'm not supposed to be here. I just came back to tell Padma that she needs to get out of here. She needs to go home. You all do."

My throat went dry.

"What do you mean?"

He met my eyes.

"You know what I mean."

And I did; of course I did.

"Why are you telling me this?" I whispered.

He shrugged.

"Because I would hate myself if I didn't."

"I…see."

Except I didn't. I didn't see, because I didn't know him, not even a little bit—he'd always been quiet, unobtrusive, a nameless, faceless Slytherin who laughed at Draco's jokes and kept his head down during dinner. He didn't owe me anything—he hadn't needed to give me an explanation.

"How long?"

He didn't feign ignorance this time.

"I don't know. Maybe until nightfall."

I absorbed this slowly.

"You said Draco was at his house in the village?" I asked.

"Yeah," he responded. "That's where he said he was going."

"Thank you. Just—thank you."

He gave me a crooked smile.

"He loves you, you know."

I stared at him.

"I didn't realize you were close."

"Oh, we're not. But Crabbe and Goyle made a joke about you the other night, in the Common Room, and he got kind of…scary, actually. Told them if they said another word he'd make sure no one would hear them scream when he—well, you get the idea."

I bit down on the inside of my mouth, hard.

"He's always had a way with words," I managed.

His eyes softened.

"Yeah. He has."

I heard a grandfather clock chime from the corridor, the sound jarring.

"I should go," I said thickly.

"Good luck, Granger."

"You, too, Blaise."

And then I left, worried about nothing except how fast I could get to Hogsmeade.

OOO

The courtyard looked exactly the same as it had the previous Saturday—unkempt and desolate, a picture that might have been pretty had anyone bothered to look after it.

"Draco!" I called out, my voice spiraling through the crisp morning air, thin and piercing and desperate. "Where are you?"

"Hermione?"

And then—there he was, emerging from between a pair of tall French doors, his hair tousled, his pants dusty, his eyes wide.

"You're here," I said, momentarily frozen with relief. "You're—you're alright. You're actually here."

"You found me," he replied, taking my hands. "I knew you would. But listen—we need to go, it's not safe here—"

"Well, actually, it was Blaise Zabini—he told me where to go," I explained, lacing my fingers through his as we walked into the decrepit old drawing room.

He glanced at me sharply.

"Blaise is at the school?"

"He was there to warn us."

"Jesus Christ," he swore. "Please tell me you're fucking joking."

"No," I said, puzzled. "Why would I be?"

He didn't answer; I furrowed my brow.

"I ran into Pansy on my way back into the castle last night," I said suddenly, something dim and murky and unpleasant—unwanted and unbelievable—creeping into my thoughts. "She said that she'd felt her Mark getting darker for the past couple of days. But—she also seemed to know what was going on. And seemed to think that you did, too."

"Did she?" he asked politely, his back straight, his posture tense.

"What was she talking about, Draco?"

"Nothing," he replied edgily. "She was fucking with you—surely you realize that. But seriously, Hermione, we need to get out of here—"

"No," I said, jerking away. "What was she talking about?"

I watched him, my heartbeat sluggish, my thoughts shattered, the pieces scattered—but he hesitated, for just a fraction of a second, and that was when I understood.

"You knew," I whispered, the words wrenched from some dark, hollow corner of my soul. "You—you fucking knew, didn't you?"

"Hermione, we don't have time—" he began impatiently, his eyes darting around the room.

"How could you?" I interrupted softly, stumbling backwards. "How could you know about something like this and—and not fucking say anything? How?"

He clenched his jaw.

"Look, there's a lot you don't know. About—about what's happening. About how I'm involved. Did Blaise tell you anything else?"

Palms splayed out, I dug my fingernails into the powdery plaster wall, needing it to stay still, to keep me on my feet—because I couldn't trust myself to stand up, to not fall over, to not run right towards him and collapse in his arms and let him lie to me, because I didn't want to know, because I didn't need to know, because—because—because—

"Tell me, then," I commanded, my voice harsh and gritty and almost, but not quite, firm.

He shook his head.

"Don't do this. Please. Not now."

I stiffened; there was a loud crash in the garden.

"Don't do this?" I repeated, struggling to find a way to continue, to explain; except he had to know—surely he had to know—what he'd done wrong. What he'd risked. What he'd hidden from me, and what it meant—the scope of the catastrophe he was propagating, just by standing there, defenseless, refusing to explain.

"Hermione," he said urgently, glancing at the window. "I'm serious. We don't fucking have time for this. We need to go. Now."

I stared at him, stunned—did he really think that he could just brush this off? Pretend that nothing was wrong?

"You aren't seriously suggesting—"

"What I'm suggesting," he interrupted fiercely, reaching for my arm, "is that we fucking leave."

I tore myself away from him.

"You're fucking insane if you think I'm going anywhere with you until you—"

I stopped, startled—because his gaze had finally snapped up to—into—mine, dark and stormy and grey, and there was a sort of deadly desperation there, a threat and a prayer all at once; and then my breathing was shallow and my spine was tingling and I was aware of an even, rhythmic thrum of fear being filtered through my bloodstream—what else had he not told me? What was he so scared of?

"Yeah?" he roared, his face pale. "Then by all means, fucking stay—but I'm guessing it'll be hard to listen to my explanation when you're fucking dead."

Dread, cold and thick, settled in the bottom of my stomach.

"What do you mean?"

"I can't—" He broke off before continuing quietly. "I can't save you from everything, Hermione. Not today."

Oh.

My cheeks turned pink.

"Fine. Let's go, then," I ground out, turning around and hauling the closet door open. "To the castle?"

"No," he said shortly. "We're not going there. We're using the fountain."

Dazed, I followed him through the beautifully molded French doors—but then I tasted bile, a lurid, sour sting on the back of my tongue—because the last time I'd been here, the last time I'd seen that fountain, I'd been shell-shocked and afraid and so, so sure that the world was crumbling beneath my feet.

Except now—the fountain was gone.

"Shit," Draco swore, holding out his arm to stop me from going forward.

There was rubble everywhere—dusty pieces of pale gray marble strewn haphazardly over the hedges, across the brick-paved courtyard, the ground dotted with angry black scorch marks and singed chunks of olive green moss. Smoke was wafting from the decapitated head of the statue, creating an eerie sort of halo that hovered like a ghost over her pretty, almond-shaped eyes.

"Oh, my God," I gasped. "What happened?"

"What happened," he snapped, "is my father."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"He knew I was here waiting for you," he explained tersely, kicking at a decimated bunch of shrubbery. "He fucking—he knew that you would be here, eventually. He knew that I was going to take you through—through his—stupid—fucking—fountain to keep you safe. He must've told someone. He must've—fuck!"

I shook my head, confused.

"You were trying to hide me."

It wasn't a question.

"I was trying to protect you," he corrected me, his face pinched.

I gazed at him in wonderment.

"You would have me abandon everyone I love—leave them to fucking fight alone while I—I sit ensconced someplace safe and sound and far, far away?"

He stared back at me angrily.

"Everyone you love?"

"That's not fair."

"None of this is fucking fair, Hermione," he replied, turning towards the house. "So, excuse me for trying to level out the playing field."

"Level out the—what?"

"D'you really think your friends have a fucking chance?" he asked. "Do you have any idea how many Death Eaters he has? People you wouldn't even—begin—to imagine—they're with him. All of them. He's threatened their families and blackmailed them and—and now they're fighting for him. Harry Potter is not going to win this time, Hermione. And if you're standing next to him…well, it's like I said. I can't save you from everything. Not today."

I balled my hands into helpless, hapless fists.

"I don't recall asking you to save me from anything," I responded tightly.

"No, you wouldn't, would you?" he snorted, starting to walk back towards the house.

"Where are you going?" I demanded, chasing after him.

"Inside."

"That's it, then? You're not going to say anything?"

He spun back around, his expression thunderous.

"You want to know what I knew, then? Fine. I fucking knew that something was going to happen last night—my Mark had been itching like fucking crazy for days, and I'm not an idiot—I knew what it meant. And I knew that the Dark Lord was planning on attacking the school—my father and Bellatrix let that slip when I was getting Marked, probably on purpose, as a test—to see if I'd tell you. At least that's what I'm fucking assuming. And there was no way—no way—I was going to give them another fucking reason to go after you. Not before I knew how to protect you."

I stood still, my senses bristling with a peculiar sort of electricity—because everything, all at once, seemed much too bright and much too loud—the early morning sun, peeking through the clouds, and the faraway buzzing of a bumblebee, exaggerated, magnified, and that couldn't be real, I had to be hallucinating—but no, his face—it was clear, it was still there, pale and perfect and etched with derision—and how had he come to mean so much to me? How had I ever been able to gaze at him and think anything at all except—Oh, but this is what love looks like. This is what I've been waiting for.

"And so I took you with me to the forest, just outside the grounds, and let you watch me disappear. Because you know what else I fucking knew? That you would figure it out. You would understand what it meant. You would—you would be able to warn someone."

And why was I continuing to try so hard to push him away? Why was I still searching for reasons not to trust him, reasons not to love him—why did I still want him to be the villain? How many times was I going to make him prove that he wasn't—not anymore, not even close—and how many times was he going to let me?

"And I knew that when an attack didn't come immediately, that you would come looking for me—you wouldn't have been able to fucking help yourself. And so I came here, and told my father what I was doing, had him make an excuse for me—and I would have been able to get you away, I would have, except—someone had to go and make sure that I fucking couldn't."

"Draco."

"What?" he snapped.

I moved closer.

"Stop."

"Why?" he asked suspiciously.

I placed my hands on his chest, gingerly, feeling his heartbeat flutter, skip, pound out a rhythm that wouldn't have made sense to anyone but me.

"Because it's much harder to kiss you when you're talking."

And then I fell into his arms, my lips crushing his, and knew exactly what heaven tasted like—like tepid tea and a drizzle of peppermint, as if he'd popped a mint in his mouth hours earlier and the residue was still clinging to his tongue. I heard him groan, faintly, his hands sliding down my waist, grasping my backside, yanking me closer—and when he picked me up, pushing me back into the dusty, musty drawing room, kicking the door shut, I was conscious of how very much I'd missed the feeling of his teeth digging into my skin, his breath hot on my neck as he flipped my skirt up, up, out of the way—and then I was plopped, unceremoniously, onto a wooden bench next to the closet, and he was on his knees in front of me, running his fingers along my legs, my hips, softly, delicately, drawing wispy, barely-there circles until I could couldn't stop myself rom jerking forward—

"Please," I said, dizzy from something, from him, from the way he was nipping at the sensitive flesh behind my knee.

"Please, what?"

I didn't know, couldn't know, and even if I did, I couldn't say it out loud, I couldn't, I wouldn't, I couldn't—

"Please—please—oh, God," I mumbled, arching my back as he pressed his lips into my inner thigh.

"What is it you want, Granger?" he asked.

I don't know.

I don't know.

"I want—I want—" I stammered.

"Well?"

I met his eyes.

"I want you," I whispered finally, reaching for the buttons of his shirt. "I fucking want you."

OOO

Afterwards, we both slid to the floor, sweaty and disheveled.

"That was…"

"Yeah. I know."

There was a second of silence, and then he twisted, slightly, in order to face me.

"What's wrong?" I asked, noticing his expression.

"It's funny," he said quietly. "My father always told me that I should be proud of my name—because I was a Malfoy. I was a Malfoy…and that fucking meant something."

"Draco…" I trailed off.

He smiled, sort of, or maybe it was just an awkward tilt of his lips, a way to acknowledge his vulnerability without saying the words out loud.

"But, see—the funny part—the funny part is that he went and pledged his fucking loyalty to a man who—who is so fucking ashamed of himself that he not only changed his name—but decided to fucking eradicate any living reminder of who he was. Of what he was."

I held my breath, my lips dry.

"My father is a Malfoy," he remarked sardonically. "But d'you know what else he is?"

I shook my head; he gritted his teeth.

"He's a fucking coward."

I studied him stupidly.

"You're angry."

"Yeah," he spat, suddenly vicious. "I'm fucking angry. D'you know what I wanted to be when I grew up, Hermione? Well? Do you?"

My tongue felt thick and scratchy in my mouth, like sandpaper—but I knew I had to answer him.

"No."

"I fucking wanted to be him. I fucking wanted to be my father. I mean—Jesus Christ—I already look just like him, right? I wanted—I wanted—" he choked out, a muscle ticking at the base of his neck.

"You don't have to—"

"No," he interjected ferociously, "I do have to finish."

He paused, as if waiting for me to argue, and when I didn't, he continued.

"I wanted to be him. I wanted talk to people in that—that cultured, ridiculous drawl, the one that the Weasleys were always making fun of—and I wanted to know things, the way he did, about politics and the Dark Arts and—even though he'd never admit it—that museum in London, the muggle one, with the giant antiquities section. I wanted—I just thought he was magnificent, you know? And I fucking wanted to be just like him. It's why I wanted a Mark so badly."

He flexed his hands.

"And then he went to prison. And when he came back…he was different. Or maybe I was just older, and I understood more, but—but he was…smaller, I guess—no, he was scared. That's it. He was fucking scared. And he started talking a lot about leaving England—too much bloody rain, he said."

He tipped his head back, screwing his eyes shut.

"But I still—I still wanted to be him. Because he was perfect. Because if he said something, it had to be fucking true, and when he walked into a room—people fucking stopped, didn't they?"

A long silence followed this pronouncement.

"Yeah," I said tentatively, shifting my shoulders.

"Except—" he said. "Except—he's not that fucking fantastic, is he? He's a coward. A—a fucking coward—and a fucking Malfoy. Can't forget that."

I flinched at the bitterness in his voice.

"You aren't your father, Draco."

He dropped his chin to his chest and sighed.

"I fucking know that," he snapped. "But—I'm a Malfoy. And that still means something, sort of. It's just—I don't think it's anything to be proud of."

And then he shrugged—fatalistically, as if he couldn't be bothered—and I finally understood what it meant to love someone.

What it meant to love him.

Because this wasn't about understanding what was wrong; it wasn't even about understanding what was right. It was about needing to erase that looming, lurking emptiness from his eyes, about making sure that he still knew how to smile—because he looked lost, broken, like he was ready to give up, and—

I had to fix this.

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."

He turned back towards me, his eyebrows drawn together.

"What the fuck does that mean?"

I bit back a nervous, horrified giggle.

"It's Shakespeare," I replied, twisting a thick coil of hair around my finger. "From Hamlet's soliloquy. Act three, scene one. It's—well, it's rather famous."

"I know that," he said irritably. "I'm not fucking illiterate. But what does it mean? Why'd you say it?"

I cocked my head to the side.

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" I said. "It means—that once you're aware of the—the enormity of something, of how important it is—you know to be scared. Hamlet was talking about death, of course, and how knowing it's the end—permanently, I mean—is what makes us so terrified of it. But—"

"Do you have a point?" he interrupted, nonplussed.

I flushed.

"Of course I do," I said quickly. "What I mean is—your father—he isn't a coward, Draco. He's just…scared for you. Doing the right thing—whatever that may be—might not seem as important to him as making sure you're still alive at the end of this."

"Getting you killed—when he fucking knows what you mean to me—isn't just not doing the right thing," he snarled.

"But—it is," I argued. "Because by sacrificing me—even if you despise him for it afterwards—he was guaranteeing that no one would find out about you trying to protect me. He was saving you."

"That doesn't make it okay," he said stubbornly.

I sighed.

"How do you think I felt when I realized you intended to fucking hide me until the war was over?"

He went painfully, abruptly still.

"That was different."

I brushed his hair back from his forehead.

"No, Draco," I said gently. "It wasn't."

And then he pressed his lips together, hard, tight, but not before I saw them tremble, a faint, almost imperceptible quiver, and my breath caught.

"We need to go back," I said. "To school, I mean. We can't—we can't sit in here forever. They need us."

He studied me then, his eyes sweeping slowly, deliberately, across my face, as if he were trying to memorize my features, as if he would be tested on them, as if he knew it would never be like this, never again—and I wondered, for the very first time, if this was how it would end. It had seemed inconceivable before, hadn't it? That one of us wouldn't make it out alive. That we wouldn't have a happy ending—because somehow, despite everything else, we were supposed to have that, weren't we?

"I'm not that brave, you know," he said. "Not like you. I doubt having me there will make much of a difference."

He was, though. He was brave. Because hadn't he been the one to realize what was happening between us? Hadn't he been the one to face it, accept it, recognize it—and didn't that count for something? He was strong in all the ways that I wasn't; he knew himself, and he knew what he wanted, and he would never apologize for that. He had been able to look at me—a too-skinny girl with frizzy hair and an overbite, a girl who had represented, for so very long, everything he hated—and understand that it didn't matter, not when something so inexplicably precious was sitting there, right in front of us, waiting to be picked up.

And it was like listening to the radio, with white noise weaving in and out of the song that was playing—and sometimes the words were clear, and sometimes they made sense; but then there would be a crackle, ten seconds of crunchy, unmistakable static, and when the music came back you'd be lost, uncertain, angry at the interruption.

Because that had been our relationship. Moments of almost incomprehensible beauty interspersed with violent gusts of denial, tears and rage and disbelief—disbelief that it was real, that it would last, that it would ever even matter.

And now, now that it was almost too late, I realized that I didn't want any more static.

I didn't want any more interruptions.

"It will make a difference to me," I replied, knowing that I should tell him everything I was thinking, everything I was feeling, but unsure of where to start. "Having you there, I mean."

He helped me get to my feet, his grip firm.

"I know," he said quietly. "Should we go?"

I gazed up at him, my hands on his shoulders, feeling the warmth of his body beneath my fingertips, beneath the crisp white cotton of his shirt.

"No. Wait. I just—I want you to know something," I blurted out.

"What?"

I felt a bead of sweat slide down my chest, felt it linger in the crevice between my breasts, felt it soak into my skin—like it belonged there, like it knew something I didn't.

"I want this to work. I want what we have—I want it to mean more to me than why I'm mad at you. I want to know that when we fight, it doesn't mean it's over. I want—" I broke off, my voice cracking. "I want you. I want you when you think you know better, even though you don't—and—and I want you when you're lying and doing something so incredibly stupid, just because you're trying to protect me—and I want this whole—mess at the castle to just fucking go away, because if something were to happen to you—I don't—I couldn't—"

"Hermione—" he began, stepping closer.

"No—please, let me finish, okay? I just—I need to say this."

He nodded, his expression serious.

"I used to hate you. I used to think you were vain and arrogant and cruel and—everything about you was wrong," I whispered. "And now—now, I just want to get every single moment I wasted hating you—I want to get them all back. Because you were right there, all along, and I was too stupid to see it."

He swallowed.

"We need to go," he said gently. "We only have until it gets dark, and I want—I want people to be prepared."

"I know."

We walked towards the doors, our steps even.

"I love you, Hermione."

I smiled tremulously.

"I know that, too."

OOO