CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: And the World Begins Again
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Check out the pics on my profile of all the dresses featured in LLDM so far. Some are sketches but most are pictures. Enjoy. Kudos to metarisenja, hawklawson, and j2poet (my happy beta) for correctly answering the question last chapter. The answer to a previous question is answered in this one actually.
And for those of you like myself who enjoy a little background music with their fluff, I recommend "Fix You" by Coldplay for below. Actually, the lyrics pretty much sum up my version of Draco and Hermione perfectly. It's always about the lyrics with me. Lol. Oh! And Goo Goo Dolls' "Better Days" for the ending. I've added both to the official playlist on my profile. Have a listen!
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Ron followed his line of sight and met Blaise's eyes. He turned back to Draco and let out a short string of profanities. "You idiot!" he hissed. "This is why you sent Hermione away?"
Draco didn't take his eyes off Blaise. They both looked to the entrance, their minds square-set on blood. "Watch out for them," Draco whispered to Ron. "And if something goes wrong, tell Hermione to open the third drawer from the top as soon as you see her."
"What? You're just going out there—" he began but Draco was already on his feet heading out of the Great Hall. He looked back over to Harry and Ginny, who were still trapped in a slow kiss. Resigned, he sighed and sat back down, deciding he'd respect Draco's reason for going it alone.
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Hermione helped Tonks with the bags. She felt sick at the sight of them, even without seeing the bill. They were on the path back to Gravita, walking silently from the café where she and Draco had talked what seemed like a decade ago, when Narcissa clutched her arm and dragged her into a little boutique. She'd been doing that all day – pulling her one way and another – but this was different. This was a hair salon.
Hermione's heart fell out her mouth and she struggled with every bone in her body to escape Narcissa's hippogriff-like grip. "No offense, Narcissa, but hell no," she growled. "I'm putting my foot down."
Narcissa spun around and growled, quite seriously, "Then I'll break off the foot and carry you inside myself… It's just hair, Hermione darling. It'll grow back."
Hermione had no idea how the woman could sound like she was trying to kill her one moment and utterly enchanted by her the other. She dropped her shoulders and let the madwoman drag her around, too tired to give a damn. She sat in the chair and closed her eyes, letting the lady with the ridiculously long scissors snap away at the only sense of identity she had left.
Ring or no, she was apparently now a Malfoy.
The more the lady cut, the more her resolve evaporated. She sighed and wiped away at the single tear that escaped her. She didn't know if anyone saw it and she didn't care. She was on her hammock, swaying in the breeze with Draco. And soon, she'd be in his bed again.
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Draco just kept walking out of the castle, hearing Blaise's footsteps behind him. He didn't know how far away he could project his astral self but he wanted to get as close to the Quidditch field and as far away from the castle as possible. He got to the entrance onto the field and heard Blaise call for his broom.
So this will take place in the sky, thought Draco, calling his own broom and finally facing him on the field.
"You're a fool," said Blaise, smirking madly. "You've made it too easy for me. No witnesses and no wards. All's fair on the Quidditch field."
He opened his arms out, gesturing to the vast expanse of nothing. Draco smirked, seeing himself in his enemy. He took in Blaise's posture on his broom, the way his cheekbones jutted out of his skin as though the tension in his heart had spread to his dark face. His hands were unsteady on the broom handle and Draco knew all too well what he must think of his life right now. Draco had forced him, he knew, with his public treason. Voldemort had given the order, not Blaise. But it didn't matter now.
As much as he saw in Blaise of himself, Draco understood now that he'd always had the choice to do the right thing, even before Hermione's strange morality imprinted itself on his psyche. He had passed his mission to kill Dumbledore on to this poor, pitiful boy with the mad glint in his eyes. But, unlike Draco, Blaise had no real fear. He didn't want to kill Draco because he had once been a friend, not because he was a human being. Blaise believed he was part of a greater race and that those beneath him had to obey or die. He had no obligations to his family, only to his own beliefs and his chosen master.
Draco told himself this over and over as they drew their wands at the same time, both frozen in mid-air. He knew that whether one of them died or not, Blaise's life would be ruined after this fight.
They hovered for some time, waiting for the other to strike. "I don't want to hurt you, Blaise," Draco offered, knowing it meant nothing to either of them. Want didn't fit into the equation. It never had. There was only duty and honor.
"Stupid traitor," spat Blaise. "Do you think that matters to me? You knew this was coming since the beginning. Since we both walked into Hogwarts and you realized I was the competition!"
Draco laughed humorlessly. "You were never the competition, you silly boy. I was bred to be heartless, a perfect soldier. I was swallowed by Dark magic since the day I was born. You just liked the club manifesto. There was never any competition. I was always meant to lead."
"Are you trying to get me to strike first or do you just like hearing yourself speak?"
Draco smirked and said, "Can't it be both?"
Blaise rolled his eyes and shouted suddenly, "Expelliarmus!"
Draco's wand went flying out of his hand, landing on the ground below. Before he could make sense of Blaise's sudden speed, barrages of spells were being barked at his head and he instinctively sped off round the field, trying to dodge him. One caught his arm, making his eyes go feral and his speed increase to reckless levels.
Just as he reached the edge of the field, he dove rather than fly over the stands. He broke through the flags and ducked beneath the rafters, zigzagging between the stands. Blaise couldn't keep up with his motions. He was swerving so quickly.
Just as Draco resurfaced from beneath the rafters, sure he'd lost Blaise and now had a clear line of sight towards his fallen wand, two cloaked figured emerged out of nowhere and blocked him on either side. He couldn't swerve without knocking into their large, glob-like shapes in the corners of his eyes. They didn't have to remove their cloaks for him to know they were Crabbe and Goyle. Nobody in Slytherin house rivaled their girth and height.
He also knew they were rubbish with wands and moved too slowly. It didn't matter since they crashed into him at the same time, crushing his tiny body between their massive shapes. He couldn't go astral or risk passing right through his broom onto the far ground below. Instead, he tried to fly closer and closer to the ground.
But, Crabbe and Goyle just pulled back and collided into his sides yet again. Just freakin' great, he thought miserably, trying to shake them off. I'm the cream to their Oreo cookie.
The drifted away again and Draco relaxed too much for too short a time. Blaise had escaped the rafters and was watching, his wand in the air before Draco, waiting with a smug smirk to take him down once and for all.
Just say it, Draco thought, shutting his eyes. Just say it once and you're cooked. Do it. Kill me, you coward!
"Avada Kedavra!" shouted Blaise, waving his wand dramatically over his head with a proud smirk. Draco felt something cold strike his chest and his whole body went limp. He never got to reopen his eyes. His body impacted the earth below and he felt the dent on the ground around him. He was lying in a small crater, but he knew he was still alive. He wondered for how much longer. Nobody but Harry Potter had survived the Avada Kedavra curse and, as much as he hated to admit it, he just wasn't as lucky as Potter. There was no one there to protect him. He'd sent the only person who truly cared about him away.
Her. You're doing this for her… Goodbye, Hermione, dear. I hope I've made this place just a little bit safer for you and your beautiful books.
That's when he heard the husky voice from Mad Eye and Dumbledore, both spouting disarming spells at the three figures standing around his shattered body. Strangely, though he was sure he could feel several sharp objects protruding through his body – most likely his own broken bones – he was not in pain.
Huh. Curiouser and curiouser.
He heard Dumbledore's slow footsteps and the shuffle of his robes as he bent down on the grass. "It's all right now, Draco," Dumbledore whispered. "Sleep."
All the voices disappeared, the numbness too. He was aware of something soft beneath his head—a pillow? He opened his eyes and realized he was back in his room, his bed. He was woozy and the world was still spinning from that fall but his body was intact and his spirit was rejoicing with his win. He'd done what he set out to do since he switched sides. He incriminated the infiltrator before he could get to Dumbledore and open the doors to the Dark Lord. Blaise would either be incarcerated or expelled, since he technically didn't kill anyone. Voldemort had no access now to the other students, not until Christmas vacation.
He let out a huge sigh of relief and heard something orange, tall, and fuzzy in the corner chuckle. "Weasley, that you?" he croaked. Though he wasn't in pain, his soul seemed to have dragged back a little of the trauma.
"Relax, man. You're fine." The orange fuzz walked towards him, dragging the vanity chair beside the bed. "Go back to sleep."
"You told Dumbledore?" Ron nodded. He was smiling and Draco got the strangest sensation that he owed Weasley something. Ugh. That was going to leave a bad aftertaste if he ever said it aloud. "Why?"
"Same reason you went out there at all."
"Stupidity?" he groaned, collapsing back down with his hand over his eyes.
Ron chuckled again and it made Draco want to punch him. His head was still spinning like he had a hangover and Ron, the little bastard, was taking a little too much pleasure in his pain.
"No. Hermione," he corrected, sliding into his chair. "Now, go back to sleep."
Despite the confusion, he shook his head. "I don't like to sleep without her. I get—"
"Nightmares. I know. She told me. Look, I know I'm not her but me and Harry will keep watch from the other room. You're safe now, man."
Safe. Ha. I'll never be safe as long as this monster lives inside me, he thought but he drifted off to sleep nonetheless, too exhausted to prove Weasley wrong.
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Hermione stared at her emotionless exterior in the mirror. The lady had stopped cutting minutes ago but she was still in a strange sort of thoughtless state. Strange for her, that is. She just didn't recognize the person in the mirror. This girl was pale as she was, had the same large chocolate eyes, but her usual mane of bushy brown hair was smoothed down and cut just above the shoulder. It was the same color, she knew, but it somehow looked blonder. She wondered if it was this new inner Malfoy-ness seeping through her scalp. And it fucking curled at the ends. Instead of pin-straight as usually done to contain the damage, it cascaded in waves and layers. God help her, her hair had depth and style. She couldn't pretend to be just a bookworm anymore.
"Well?" the lady asked Narcissa, not Hermione. Her opinion was irrelevant.
"She looks lovely! Thank you, Contricia!" squealed Narcissa.
Tonks noticed Hermione's distant expression and knelt down before her. "You okay, kiddo?"
"I think I'm going to barf."
"You look beautiful, you know."
Hermione nodded and gave her a small smile. "Thanks. I still feel like a fake though. A MudBlood in—what was that thing?—haute couture is still a MudBlood to these people. I don't like to pretend. I never wanted to be like them."
Narcissa suddenly turned her attention back to the girls, having obviously overheard. "Don't you dare speak that way!" she snapped. "What would Draco say if he heard you now?"
Hermione shrugged and followed them back to Gravita. She packed everything that night and waited for the sun to rise again on her balcony, doing homework to convince herself she was still the same old girl that mounted that invisible carriage Friday night. Sometime around dawn, she finally slipped into bed. Exhausted, she plopped down above the covers and didn't get up again for four hours.
She expected to dream of the usual things, maybe even hammocks, but all she saw was a gray mist within the darkness of her mind. She knew she was dreaming, as one usually does, but she felt much too lucid to be fully asleep. The exhaustion had brought something out of the shadows, a mist that she fought to walk through.
"Draco?" her dream self cried out. "Is that you?"
Of course it was him. She knew that gray anywhere, even in dreams. She knew the feeling she got inside the mist. His eyes. When she looked upon them, even the memory of them, they ignited her down to her bones.
"Can you hear me?" he asked timidly.
She smiled brightly in her bed, caressing the pillow as though it were his face. "I can hear you but I can't see you."
He laughed and it made her feel like his arms were wrapping around her, warmth spreading all the way to her toes. "I'm working on it. I just wanted to see if I could do it, if I could find you in all the noise."
"Can you feel me like I feel you?"
"No," he answered sadly. "Are you on your way back?"
She reached out into the mist, trying to draw the warmth closer. She delighted in it, demanded more until it burned her alive. "Yes. Did you wait for me?" she whispered, feeling the connection dropping away.
She could feel his smile as though it were her own. "I'm waiting now."
She let the mist wrap itself around her outstretched arm, feeling more and more like skin. "That's all that matters then."
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The castle was different the next morning. Hermione and Draco had slept through the beginning of the worst. Students had been expelled for trying to kill one of their housemates. This was worse than Slytherin versus Gryffindor. This was Slytherin versus Slytherin, good intentions versus pride. Allegiances were being questioned all over the world. And all the while, they slept.
Though nobody knew the real circumstances for Blaise's attack on Draco, they could piece most of it together from public knowledge. They did not, however, know the extent of Hermione and Draco's connection. Her condition was still safe. He was the monster taking advantage of an innocent, sweet-minded dreamer with a Hagrid-like soft spot for magical creatures and that's the way it should be, according to him.
Harry and Ginny were taking their turn watching over Draco. They were afraid any Slytherins might try to finish the job and they couldn't stand to see Hermione's face when they told her they let her boyfriend get killed. Again.
Ginny kept going to check his pulse to see if he was still alive. She expected him to drop off any moment but Harry knew better. He knew the curse was instantaneous, that he would have died already if he'd truly been affected and not his astral self.
It was October the 6th and Draco was still alive. The castle was waiting on her to celebrate. Hermione had woken just enough to make it to the carriage then fell asleep again. Therefore, the ride was considerably shorter. When she opened her eyes, reluctantly, she could see the lake in the distance and the castle and the Quidditch field and the Whomping Willow, which nearly struck them as they landed abruptly, overloaded by shopping bags.
She didn't wait for the carriage to stop completely before jumping out and running straight through the light lunch crowd. When they saw her, they knew to part. Nobody had seen Draco since it happened. They could only assume he'd been harmed and, despite her dreams of his warmth and reassuring smiles, she feared it too. She ran upstairs and mumbled out the password to Liam before skidding into her room. She looked around and saw Harry and Ginny's school bag on the floor by her bed. She pulled open the bathroom door and her eyes landed squarely on the blond figure in bed.
Harry jumped up, startled. "Whoa! I almost didn't recognize you! Are you trying to give us a heart attack?" he hissed, his own heart now as quick as hers was from running. "Relax, 'Mione. He's fine. He's just asleep."
"Is he—Did he—" she began but had to bend over to catch her breath. They could more or less figure out what she was saying, in between grunts. "He had me so—Why the hell are you here if he's just asleep?"
Ginny stood up, obviously bored out of her mind with her book in hand. "We were just making sure he didn't have any nightmares. But he's all yours now. Harry and I are going to commandeer your room for a while since we haven't slept all night ourselves, watching his pasty little self snore away."
Hermione smiled brightly and hugged them both, perhaps a bit too roughly. They eager took their chairs with them into the next room. "Love the hair!" Harry called as Ginny dragged him away and shut the door behind her. Hermione watched them go before slowly turning back towards Draco. He slept on his side, his hand up by his cheek. He wasn't snoring but he was surely sound asleep, dressed in his Hogwarts robes.
The smile was still plastered on her face. Oh sweet home. She dragged her feet towards the bed and reached out to caress his hair back from his eyes. She whispered his name sweetly into his ear but he just muttered something unintelligible and continued dreaming without her. He turned from his side to his back and nestled back in. She watched for a few more seconds, remembering the boy she'd met all those years ago and the boy who landed half-dead on the Weasleys' dinner table.
She remembered Lucius' words back at the prison, all that hate smothered beneath the surface. She tried to imagine Draco capable of that hated, smothered or otherwise, and couldn't. She'd been right. He was a greater man than Lucius could ever be. He could never hurt her, not with words or hands or anything of that matter. Screw the werewolf books. She wanted him, all of him, buried deep inside her.
And, most of all, she wanted desperately to prove to him that he was not a monster like his father. She wanted to show him what her words back at Azkaban had proved: that he was loved. Always.
She thought back to all those fairytales where the prince kisses the princess and she'd wake up from the hundred-year sleep, longing to see his gray eyes upon her again, surveying her with that deep-seeded lust he so poorly hid. So, without an ounce of regret or hesitation, she began her show of affection and bent down to kiss him softly on the lips.
He returned the kiss and she knew he was finally waking. She didn't deepen it, merely moved her lips along his jaw, towards his neck. She wished she could have reached that spot on his clavicle but his clothes were in the way. She knelt onto the bed and threw her leg over his, straddling him in her new black skirt and white, button-down blouse. She was starting to think she picked out that outfit for today subconsciously knowing she'd need something easily removable. As much as she liked Draco's feats of strength tearing up her favorite blue dress, she did not want a repeat of that night in any way or form.
He moaned, his eyes still closed, and moved his hands up and down her thighs. He threw his head back and she could feel his excitement beneath her.
"Good morning, Mr. Malfoy," she said, quite proud of herself that she could excite him in his sleep. She tried to feign a sultry voice but she could never quite muster the act and her voice sounded too different for a moment. "I have a little surprise for you."
He grimaced and let his hands drop down to the bed again. "Oh God, Pansy, just go away. For the third time, I do not want to sleep with you."
"PANSY?" she shouted. "Pansy? What the hell would Pansy be—"
He opened his eyes, startled awake, and smiled brightly up at her. "Hermione! You have no idea how happy I am to—"
"Pansy?" she growled again through gritted teeth, her hands on her hips still atop him. The anger was making her cheek rosy and flushed and the sweat from the run was making her once perfectly wavy hair stick to the back of her neck most uncomfortably. She went to pull it back into a ponytail and get up off him when he caught her wrist.
"Don't you dare touch that hair," he warned. Yea, he could do the whole seductive thing so much better. Even when he sounded rude and demanding, it made her wet her knickers with anticipation of his touch. "And relax about Pansy, would you? I'm a gentleman… most days."
She made a huffing noise. "It's the nights I'm worried about!" Her body went slack, wanting to reclaim the lust she'd felt when she first saw him lying there. It was only natural they argue about the silly, insignificant things though. It was their way but it needed to be set aside just for that day. "I'm sorry. I was just trying to be romantic and, well, we both know dreadfully well how much I suck at it."
He suddenly realized his physical state and her curious position atop him, her blouse half undone and the lingering feeling of warm, wet kisses all along his face. He smiled and pulled her down atop him so they'd be chest to chest. He kicked off the sheets and rolled them so he'd be on top, locking her wrists up by the sides of her head.
"Don't move," he whispered as always, licking the spot below her ear. Damn him. He was good, she had to admit.
"This time," she warned, undoing the buckle on his belt rather forcibly, "Don't you dare stop."
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Next chapter's all about the repercussions it'll have on the school and more Draco/Hermione fun, including flying lessons. Time will move a bit quicker because we have to get to Christmas at some point. Lol. The proposal happens then during a very hilarious argument. Nope, it's probably not who you think.
Might post the complete sex scene next chapter if you guys really want to read it. But, finally, they do go through with it and it does not suck. Yay for them!
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THIS CHAPTER'S QUESTION: What secrets still wait to be uncovered at the mysterious Malfoy Manor?
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Reviews are better than escaping certain death. Well, you know, not really but you get the idea. Review!
