When Hermione woke up, she was alone. Her head was pounding in an all too familiar way and her chest was heavy with guilt. She had ruined it all- again. She felt a sob build in her throat, the thought of having ruined everything with Draco making her sick. Why couldn't she just get this one thing right?! Why did she always have to fuck everything up?!

All the fear and loathing in her chest turned to rage with her next breath. The kind of rage that was all consuming, brewing and sparking from the top of her head, to the tips of her toes, and she could no longer sit still. Yet, at the same time, she couldn't bring herself to action. Without any regard for what she was doing, she shot up from the bed and proceeded to trash the room.

She didn't know that she'd been screaming, didn't know that Draco had been in the next room and come running when he heard her. She didn't know that he stood in the doorway calling her name, didn't realize that he was trying to disable her with his wand, while she somehow found a way to block his magic. He had been seconds away from petrifying her when she suddenly stilled, the scream on her lips staggering to a gasp as her eyes fell on the piece of fabric in her hand- a worn plaid shirt.

Draco stepped towards her carefully, realizing that she was clueless to his presence, but ready to catch her should she fall, or hold her should she explode once again. Neither of these happened, however. Instead, she dazedly back up to the bed and sat down, her eyes never leaving the plaid shirt.

This shirt had comforted her all her life, it had promised her love and safety, even in the absence of anything that could be construed as such. On their worst nights in the forest, she had slipped this shirt over her head and felt safe, even when the Snatchers were close enough to be heard. She had always been able to rely on that shirt to feel better. Looking at it now though, she did not feel safe. She didn't feel loved or cared for, and she certainly didn't feel like the world would be a little bit better if she just slipped it on. The warmth that the soft, worn out fabric had always provided was nowhere to be found. Instead, she felt as though all the heat in her body had been pulled into the red plaid, and that if she put it on, she might never be warm again.

Now, instead of making her think of her father's arms wrapping around her in a loving embrace, it reminded her of all the other ways he'd wrapped his arms around her. The way he'd bruised her wrist dragging her through the house. The way his arm had wrapped around her waist as he ripped her from the staircase, where she had gripped the bannister for dear life, terrified that if she let go she might never see it again.

She remembered the times he'd lifted his hand as if to hit her, only to stop himself when she flinched. She remembered the time he'd followed through that first Christmas home from Hogwarts, and felt the pain of his beating as though it had been only moments ago.

She remembered the way he'd looked at her when she spoke about school or magic, like she was grotesque, obscene. The times he had called her useless, insane, a drain on the family. The times he had referred to her as, 'that' or 'it', as if she were nothing to him- and the truth of the matter was that she was. She was absolutely nothing to him, and he had done everything possible to make that clear. He had never wanted to protect her, not from the moment she was born so obviously different, and especially not when he knew what that difference was. He hadn't wanted anything to do with her.

"Hey," Draco's voice interrupted her thoughts as he crouched in front of her, his hands covering hers.

"He didn't care about me at all," Hermione muttered, still staring at the shirt. "He would have watched me die without a hint of guilt or regret. He wouldn't have lost a single wink of sleep."

She looked up from the shirt and her eyes locked with Draco's, burning hazel meeting soothing ice, and a sharp giggle escaped her lips.

"I've spent my whole life wearing this shirt because I thought it would protect me. I put it on to make it feel like my dad was there, holding me, telling me everything was going to be alright." She shook her head, still laughing softly. "I had made up some sort of scenario in my head where that had happened, like I was in an American television show and my dad would give me advice and tell me he'd love me no matter what I chose- but that never happened. Not once did my father hug me or comfort me. I can't even remember him telling me he loved me…" She trailed off, trying with all her might to recall any such instance, but coming up short.

She suddenly remembered the first time she'd met Lucius Malfoy in Diagon Alley, how she'd shivered under his cold glare. At the time, everyone had commented on how awful and cruel he had seemed and she remembered agreeing with them, but there was another part of her that she hadn't remembered until now- the part that had stood proudly before him because she wasn't afraid… she was immune.

"They were so similar," she mused, more to herself than to Draco.

"Who?" He asked, his eyes full of concern.

"Our fathers."

The words sent ice down his spine. It had been years since Draco had truly thought about his father, but hearing Hermione compare him to her own- even knowing what he knew- made him want nothing more than to encircle her in a warm cocoon and lock her away from the world so she could be safe. No one should have a father like Lucius Malfoy, and knowing that Hermione had made him feel sick.

"I think that's why I always had so much grace for you." She carried on thoughtfully, unaware of Draco's nausea at her line of thinking. "Some part of me knew that we had that in common, even when I didn't remember."

"Grace?" He cleared his throat, trying to sound normal. "Is that what we're calling it when you punch people in the nose now?"

The tinkle of laughter that escaped her lightened the weight on his chest ever so slightly.

"Perhaps not in that moment," she allowed. "But there were others… I fought for you, you know. When Harry was following you through the castle, convinced that you were with Him, I told him he was crazy. I told him that if he took more than a second to look at you, he would see that you weren't evil or dangerous, but that you were in pain."

She lifted one of her hands from her lap, releasing the shirt to run her fingers through his hair, smiling when he leaned into her touch.

"I knew," she admitted. "I knew that you were in trouble. I could see it in your eyes every time we passed in a corridor. I watched you whither away like sand blowing across a beach, but no one would listen. They just wanted to see the boy they thought you were, the boy that was just like your father, but a part of me always knew that you couldn't be. I didn't realize it then, but that's what it was. The thing that made me fight for you when Harry got going, it was knowing that we were the same in some way. I thought it was just because we were both smart and swotty at the time, but it was this."

She gestured to the shirt that still sat between them, now hanging limply from her hand.

"My father never protected me."

She looked up at Draco with her eyes full of tears, but as she said the words, a sense of acceptance seemed to wash over her, lifting an ounce of tension from her shoulders.

"My father never protected me," she said it again, closing her eyes to keep from crying.

"Hermione," Draco spoke softly, cupping her face in his hands. "Hermione, look at me."

He stroked her cheek with his thumb, sitting up on his knees so he could rest his forehead against hers. She took a moment to breathe him in, to let herself feel his hands against her skin and breath against her lips, relishing in the realization that he was still there, before opening her eyes and meeting his gaze.

"They didn't take care of us," Draco agreed plainly. "But we don't need them to. We can take care of each other."

"We'll take care of each other," Hermione repeated, her hands lifting to his neck gently.

"We'll take care of each other," Draco echoed again.

The promise made, he carefully took the shirt from Hermione's lap and tossed it away, sending it out the open window where it caught on a gust of wind.

Hermione didn't give a damn, though. She didn't need a stupid shirt made of nothing more that implanted memories and hopes and dreams, not when she had the real deal sitting right in front of her.

"What happened before?" Draco finally asked, moving to sit on the bed beside her. "In the pub, what happened?

"I didn't mean to go to a pub," Hermione immediately started to apologize again. "I just needed to get away from everything, so I ran, and then when I stopped, I saw the pub and I just… I didn't want to fight anymore."

"That's not what I meant," Draco shook his head. "What happened after? What brought on the panic attack?"

"Oh, I remembered," Hermione shrugged, recalling the memory slowly. "She grabbed me and I had to run to keep up because my legs were too short…"

"Your mum?" Draco asked softly.

Hermione nodded, cradling her arm to her chest subconsciously. "I didn't understand."

"Do you remember how old you were?" Draco asked.

"I was little," she shook her head. "Maybe five? I just remember being confused. I didn't know what was wrong or why she was so angry."

"Do you remember what happened?"

"There were flowers," Hermione answered quickly. "They… they changed colours… bloomed when they shouldn't have. She was talking to a woman and it just happened, and she was so angry."

"So she grabbed your wrist?" Draco concluded.

"We went home and I went to my room. I could hear them shouting, but I didn't know what was happening. I didn't understand what they were saying."

"Do you remember now?"

Hermione nodded but didn't expand, her eyes squeezed shut at the memory. She remembered perfectly the things they'd said- the things they'd compared her to- and she wasn't about to repeat them if she didn't have to.

"Then Dad came and he grabbed me," she skipped on. "He was holding me so tight. My fingers started tingling and I was scared because I didn't know what the feeling was, I thought they were falling off. When I told him he sent me to the basement without supper or books… I think the bruise was there for a while."

As she spoke, Draco took her hand in his, twining their fingers together and lifting her wrist to his lips.

"I'm sorry," he shook his head. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"It doesn't matter anymore," she shrugged.

"Of course it matters," Draco argued.

"No, it doesn't," Hermione insisted. "It's over, he's gone."

"Is he?" Draco countered. "Because my father's being a lifeless shell in Azkaban hasn't exactly kept me from feeling his influence in my life, and it certainly doesn't seem like your father isn't affecting yours."

"Yeah well," she shrugged uselessly. "There's not a lot to be done for it, is there? We can't exactly keep them out of our heads."

"No, but we can talk to each other about it," Draco reasoned. "I've heard talking about things helps."

"Well, you shouldn't believe everything you hear." Hermione spoke flatly, letting go of his hand and getting to her feet.

"Hermione," Draco called after her, trying to keep the tension out of his voice. "We need to talk about it. You need to talk about it."

"It's fine-"

"It's not fine," he shook his head. "And I'm not talking about today, I'm talking about what led to today. Hermione, we need to talk about it."

"I know." She sighed, her shoulders drooping in defeat. "I know, I just… Not right now Draco, please."

When she walked out of the room without a second glance, Draco dropped his head into his hands and let out a quiet groan. Why did it always have to be like this? Why couldn't things just stay good- just once? Why did there always have to be two steps forward and twelve steps back?

Even as the thoughts crossed his mind, though, he resented them. He knew that she was doing her best, that she was trying harder than he could even imagine. Still, he couldn't help but hate it. Not her- he could never hate her- but he could certainly hate the situation. All he wanted was to be able to love her, and yet here he was, cursing himself for the effort. Why did everything have to be so fucked up?!

Draco stayed in the bedroom for a few more minutes, gathering his thoughts and pulling himself together, not wanting to take his frustrations out on her. When he stepped into the living room again, Hermione was standing by the fireplace, her bag in one hand and the jar of floo powder in the other.

"I'm going to my lab," she told him, looking at the floor.

Draco nodded slowly, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"I just… I need some space," she carried on. "I'm sorry."

"Take all the time you need." Draco shook his head, doing his best not to let her hear how forced the words were. "I think I'm going to go to Blaise's."

Hermione nodded, still not looking at him. "I-I'll see you later?" she asked nervously.

"You will," Draco said firmly.

She gave another nod, a small sigh of relief leaving her lips. "I'll see you later," she repeated. Then she threw the powder into the grate and stepped through, leaving behind a cloud of green smoke.

"She's gonna come around." Blaise comforted his friend as they sat around his study with glasses of scotch.

"Because that seems right up her alley," Draco scoffed, tipping the contents of his glass back. "She's gonna run."

"No, she already did that," Blaise argued. "She ran, and then she came back."

"No, I came and got her," Draco corrected. "I didn't give her a chance to run."

"Draco, you're ridiculous. If she wanted to run, she would have. She's had millions of chances, and she's consistently come back to you every time. She needs you," Blaise assured him. "She knows she does."

"She doesn't need me," Draco shook his head. "Hermione Granger doesn't need anyone. And besides, it's not like she has a reason not to run. We're not… whatever."

"You're deluded," Blaise laughed. "You most definitely are 'whatever'. You live together, and the only reason you're not sleeping together is because you're an idiot."

Draco opened his mouth to argue with this, a million arguments in his head, but Blaise held his hand up to cut him off.

"She needs you," Blaise insisted. "It's not a bad thing to need people, mate."

"He's right, you know."

Both men whipped around at the gentle voice, completely surprised by the sudden appearance of the curly-haired witch.

Behind them, Hermione stood with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, eyes full of uncertainty and her lip trapped between her teeth, her glance darting back and forth between Draco and the floor. "It's not bad to need people," she clarified.

"See? The voice of reason," Blaise smiled warmly at the new arrival. "How you doing, Mi?"

"Hey Blaise," she waved shyly.

"How was the shop?" Draco asked, looking her up and down for some sign of what state she was in.

"Fine," she shrugged. "Harmony keeps it running so well, they hardly need me at all."

"Ah, but without you who would try to blow the building up all the time?" Blaise joked easily. "You bring all the excitement to their lives- plus, you write their paycheques."

"I have a goblin at Gringotts that does it, actually."

"Oh, well in that case, I suppose you're right," he shrugged. "Although there's still the almost being blown up thing."

"Blaise, stop talking," Draco rolled his eyes. "You bring down the intelligence of the whole block."

"Well, I never!" Blaise gasped, hand flying to his heart dramatically. "And in my own home, the home that I brought you into with open arms-"

"Right!" Draco interrupted his spiel, slapping his knees and getting to his feet. "I'm hungry. Granger, wanna get some food?"

"Yeah," Hermione let out a small breath, a smile peeking through her lips. "Yeah, that'd be good."

"Oh, I know a great place-" Blaise started to speak again, but Draco silenced him with a quick flick of his wand.

"Bye Blaise," he waved cheekily.

Blaise offered a two-finger salute in response, earning a chuckle from the rest of the room.

"So, food?" Draco asked Hermione as they walked towards the floo.

"I- I was hoping maybe we could talk," she answered uncertainly, wrapping her arms around herself again. "I- if you want to, that is."

"I love talking," Draco reached out to her carefully. "I would love to talk."

"Okay," Hermione nodded slowly. "Okay."

"Okay," he smiled and offered his hand.

When they got to the flat, Draco followed Hermione's lead, trailing after her to the sofa and waiting for her to make the first move. When she looked up at him pleadingly, however, he spoke up first.

"There's a part of you that believes him," he said matter-of-factly. "Believes that he's right about you."

He wasn't asking, and Hermione didn't bother answering. They both knew he was right.

"He's wrong," Draco continued sternly. "And I know that you think I'm only saying that because it's what I always say, but I'm saying it because it is true. You're brilliant and beautiful and kind, and he is just too thick and too far up his own ass to see any of it. He doesn't even deserve to be able to look at you. He is nothing but a spec of flobberworm dung trying to belittle you, and you can't let him."

"There was a time when he was right," Hermione mumbled. "If this had been a few months ago, he still would have been."

"No," Draco shook his head. "He thinks you're something that he can control, someone who should fall down at his feet and thank him for looking at you, and that is not you."

"But it was," she insisted. "I spent years pining after him-"

"You were pining after an idea," Draco corrected. "When it came down to it, you walked away because you knew he was bad for you. You did what was best for yourself, and that's not the girl he was describing last night. That girl would have trailed along behind him while he dragged her through the depths of hell."

"I didn't need him for that," Hermione scoffed self-deprecatingly. "I did it all on my own."

"And you got yourself out all on your own too," Draco countered.

"You got me out."

"No, I gave you a hand up," he insisted. "You did all the hard work."

Hermione gave a non-committal shrug. "I didn't do it very well."

Draco chose to ignore this self-deprecation. He knew that she would come around to the idea eventually, now wasn't the time to push it.

"There's more to it though," he urged her gently.

Hermione nodded, taking a deep breath and trying to gather her thoughts. As she did, Draco waited patiently, his hand continuing to run up and down her back slowly.

"You can tell me," he assured her. "Whatever it is, you can tell me."

"I know," Hermione sighed. "I know… I just-"

She stopped again, a hand slipping into her hair and tugging harshly at her scalp.

"There's a sentence in Les Misérables that's more than 800 words long, did you know that?"

"No," Draco shook his head, smiling slightly.

"You would think that was the longest sentence in a book, but it's not," Hermione continued. "Donald Barthelme wrote one that was 2,569 words long, all about long sentences, in a story called The Sentence."

"He sounds like an imaginative bloke," Draco mused.

"Faulkner wrote one that was 1,289 words in Absalom, Absalom. Proust wrote a 958 word one in A la Recherche du temps perdu. The current world record is held by Jonathan Coe, though. The Rotter's Club has a sentence in it that's 13, 955 words long."

"That seems rather excessive, you'd think he'd have run out of ideas long before then."

"I don't know," Hermione shook her head. "I sometimes feel like I'm thinking in one single, never-ending sentence. Nothing ever seems to change, so what's the point in putting a period where there should really only be a comma?"

"That's the joy of being the author of your story I suppose," Draco offered. "You get to choose the punctuation you use."

"How very existential of you," Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Hey, you're the one listing overly long sentences," he shrugged. "I'm just trying to level with you. Would you like a different analogy?"

"I almost went with him." She admitted, completely void of feeling. "When he put his arm around me and suggested we leave, there was a part of me that was ready to."

Draco tensed at the confession, a sharp pain settling in his chest at the thought of her willingly going with the Weasel.

"Did-" he started to ask, but found that his throat was constrained. "Did you want to go with him?" he forced out.

"No!" Hermione faced him, finally meeting his eyes, if only for a moment. "I didn't want to, not at all. I just…"

"What?" Draco's tone softened.

"There was just a part of me that thought it would be easier." She shrugged, tucking her feet underneath her. "To just let him do what he wanted. It's what I'm used to doing after all."

"So what stopped you?" Draco asked.

"I didn't want to hurt you. If I had gone with him, it would have been bad for me, but I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would do to you," Hermione reasoned. "You've done so much for me, I couldn't stand hurting you like that."

Draco was silent for a moment as Hermione stared nervously at her hands, taking in the depth of what she was admitting to.

"You did it for me?" He finally questioned. "That's why you didn't go with him?"

"I mean, I didn't want to go with him in the first place, but I can be a lost cause sometimes," she tried to explain. "I do things that aren't good for me, I make awful decisions, but I'm trying really hard not to do that anymore- despite this morning- and a big part of that is because of you. I don't want to hurt you, I don't want to mess you up like I've messed everything else up in my life."

"You are not going to mess me up," Draco took her hands in his. "First of all, I'm pretty messed up as is, so there's not much you can do there-"

"Draco-" Hermione started to argue, but he spoke over her.

"I'm glad you didn't go with him," he assured her. "And I truly appreciate that you thought of me."

"Appreciate," she nodded vaguely. "Well, that's good."

"I more than appreciate it," Draco scooted closer to her. "I think you know that, but I also know that you scare easily."

"I don't want to be scared of this," Hermione pleaded. "I don't want to be scared of you. When Ron touched me last night, I was terrified, but I knew that you wouldn't let him hurt me. I believe it, completely, and that's something that hasn't happened in a long time. I didn't want to go with him, and even though there was that voice in my head telling me to just let him… there was an even louder one telling me to stay with you. So no, right now I don't want you to say the safe thing, I don't want you to try to keep me from being scared. I need to know that I'm not making a mistake here, that I'm not crazy."

"You're not crazy." Draco responded immediately, leaning forward to take her face in his hands. "You are not crazy and you are not making a mistake, and I want you here. I want you, Hermione. All of you. You're right, if you had let that ass leave with you, it would have killed me because I care for you- deeply. I want you."

As his words washed over her, his hands stroking her cheeks and his voice fueled with passion, Hermione couldn't help the tears that gathered in her eyes.

"You're not crazy," Draco said again, pressing his forehead to hers.

She let out a shaky breath, a few tears escaping as her relief took hold. With shaking hands, she reached out for him, one hand reaching his neck while the other found his face.

"I want you too."

A/N: Okay, I'm horrible, I know! I'm sorry that these updates are becoming so few and far between. My best friend just got married and it has been taking ALL of my time, and now my other best friend is getting married in a month, so I'm still in wedding frenzy. I wish I could say that the updates will get better, but that's a lie, so I won't.

I hope you like the new chapter, and I promise to try and get a new one up as soon as I can. Love you guys!