"I was worried," she admitted later, as she lay curled in his warmth.
"Good," he said sleepily, nuzzling into her. "Now you know some small fraction of what you do to me constantly."
"I do not," she said, surprised.
"You do, yes," he responded calmly.
She was silent for a long moment, considering. "Would you have come back, if I hadn't made you talk to me?"
She felt him breathing, counted several breaths before he answered. "I don't know. I was planning on staying away."
Hermione closed her eyes. She had sensed as much, but hadn't expected him to admit it. "Is that all it takes to make you leave?" she asked. "One moment of idiocy? Of callousness?"
"It wasn't what you said, Hermione," he said finally. "It was why you said it. It's not about the one moment; it's about what you think of me in general."
She sat up, unwilling to have this conversation without being able to properly look at him. "Does this go back to what you said, about you not deserving me? Is that how you think I feel?"
"Isn't it?" he asked.
She pulled the sheet up around her, armoring herself against her own vulnerability. "No," she said. "I might have once." She shook her head. "Though honestly, I wouldn't have thought of it in those terms. I'm not exactly a catch."
"That's-"
"I'm not fishing for flattery," she said, cutting him off. "I'm only saying I'm practical enough to know I'm no one's dream girl." She continued on, over the beginnings of his protest. "I might have said you didn't have a lot to recommend you."
"Nothing redeeming," he commented, distracted from his original intent. "I remember."
"But that was before I really knew you," she said. "Now it's different. Now I know there's more to you than I ever thought. I didn't say I was sorry for what I said just because I wanted to smooth things over. I wanted you to know I was sorry, whether or not it fixed anything, because I was. Because you didn't deserve that reaction from me. Because you deserved better."
"What do you think of me now?" he asked. "Really."
She wanted to shrug, but was unwilling to treat the question with so little respect. She knew it couldn't have been easy to ask. She remembered asking something similar once herself. "Truth?" she said, unsurprised to receive a quick nod from him. "I think you're very intelligent, and that you have this wonderful, curious mind. I think it's more flexible and open than I ever could have anticipated. I think you can be sweet, and charming, and fun. I think you can also be . . . distant, and cold, and infuriating. I think you're still deciding where you stand on things, that you're still putting the finishing touches on your conscience, on your sense of right and wrong. But I like the direction it's going in. I think you have a very large capacity for compassion, and that you're . . . disposing of the locks you'd put on it before."
"I think you make me feel safe," she said, and noted the surprise flit across his face. "I think you make me feel beautiful, and strong, and whole. Not whole, like you complete me," she added quickly, nervous at how he might respond. "It's more that I feel like you see who I am as already complete. You aren't expecting me to change, to be something better, to be something more."
"I can't imagine what you could change that would make you better," he said, kissing her hand. "Though we should probably talk a bit about the number Weasley did on your head." She looked away, and tried to tug her hand out of his grasp, but he held tight. "For someone with your beauty and your brains, with your strength and your heart, for someone universally revered, you have a surprising streak of insecurity."
"I am not universally revered," she mumbled.
He laughed. "Well, at least you admit to the rest of it."
"I wasn't-" she began, blushing, but he cut her off with a kiss.
"You should," he said. He pulled her back down into bed with him and dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Thank you," he said. At her confused look, he added, "For having good things to say about me."
She smiled. "It's not hard. I had all that time to worry about what I would be losing if you didn't show up."
"I told you I should be late more often," he teased.
It didn't even occur to Hermione to worry about having nightmares as she drifted off to sleep that night. She felt perfectly safe, wrapped in his arms.
A/N I know it was short. I'd been intending to do this one in combination with the last chapter, but then I decided 29 needed a little more scandalous detail, and that the jump was too extreme with just a section break before this, so . . . Anyway, the real reason I'm doing an author's note is because I have a question/pair of questions for you.
How much Draco/Hermione/Muggle world interaction do you want to see? I'm tempted to sort of summarize over it and jump to fun confrontations (i.e. Harry, Ron, Ginny, etc.), with just the stuff I need to forward developing relationships, but I do like the Draco/Hermione moments, so I'm very torn. Thoughts?
If you do want to see more muggle-y stuff, is there anything in particular you'd like to see Draco introduced to? My list originally included things like clubs, concerts, and sporting events, but they're all sort of fluff, so I don't have a strong need to show any of them in particular, and would be fairly comfortable just sort of referencing that they've done it (which you know from the above question) and moving on.
Anyway, let me know your thoughts sooner rather than later, because right now I'm in a bit of an indecisive holding pattern, and that tends to lead to me getting distracted by other stories, and yada, yada, yada, it's months before I get back to this and by then I've forgotten where I meant it all to go in the first place.
