Pregnancy hormones are a joy. XD I think it could be worse, though. I don't throw fits and I don't cry at Kodak commercials. ;) And it's a boy, just found that out Tuesday. We already knew, though. He was too much of a brat to be a girl. No, I don't find inquiries intrusive. After all, I brought it up, and it's natural to be curious about these things, no? That's why people read each other's blogs and whatnot. Still, can hardly spam too much about it here and since I don't really respond to reviews anymore, it limits the feedback. :)
This update, which I promised in my last A/N, will be the last one before I go on holiday. I'll have time to read the first reviews, but the rest will be something for me to look forward to for when I get back. And yes, even though I had to stop the responding, I still DO read each and every one and I make note of both praise and criticism and form opinions about which points I agree and disagree with. So never doubt that I read your words and give some thought to them. :) I hope what I return to will be favorable, but only time will tell. ;)
Hermione was fighting her way out of the darkness. As consciousness returned, nausea came with it. She tried to fight it down, but it was futile. The second she woke, she turned over the side of her bed and vomited, retching long after her stomach was empty.
She felt movement as Madam Pomfrey hurried to her aid, holding her hair back. "Goodness," she heard the woman say. "Seems like you were right on insisting on the bucket."
Who was she talking to? Hermione tried to lift her head again but was powerless to fight the retching that just wouldn't let up. Her eyes watered and her nose began running. It was damn uncomfortable and she didn't appreciate that someone seemed to be watching.
She felt movement on the other side as someone got up and left before coming back, dumping some paper towels in her lap.
"Why be sick from magical sleep, though?" he asked.
Oh, God. Malfoy!
Great, Malfoy had watched her vomit. What a splendid day this was turning out to be! And what had happened? Magical sleep? Was this another stupid Slytherin prank at her expense? As the retching stopped, she picked up one of the towels without bothering to thank him and cleaned her face as best she could.
Pomfrey shook her head and vanished the unsavory content of the bucket. "It could be any number of things, but a body doesn't like to be hexed into sleep unawares, so it's probably just the shock."
"I see," he muttered. "She's thirsty."
As Pomfrey went off to get her some water, Hermione realized she was thirsty. But she was right there and could speak for herself! Having composed herself, she glared at Draco, who looked extremely weary.
"Don't worry, Granger," he quietly said. "I only kept it on to make sure you were ok. I'll remove the bracelet for you now."
She hadn't even given that a thought, but she held out her wrist and with a wince he reached out and easily took it off her. Pomfrey returned with the water and, looking very pale, Draco hurriedly slipped the bracelet into his pocket so she wouldn't notice.
"She's awake now," Madam Pomfrey said, directed at Draco. "Professor Dumbledore is going to want your explanation and her friends will want to come in and see her."
Draco averted his eyes. "Yes, of course. But might I just have a word with her first? I won't take long, I promise."
The elderly nurse shook her head. "Just a few minutes, then. She needs rest."
When she left, Hermione scowled at Draco again. "She is right here."
"I know. I'm sorry. But you were out for hours and we just sort of…" His voice faltered. "Listen, I have to talk to you."
Damn right he did! "Why are you in here but my friends aren't?" she asked with a frown.
"I didn't want to talk to anyone before I was sure you were ok, so they let me stay. After all, I found you."
Found me where? She decided to cut right to the heart of the matter. "What happened to me?"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. You don't remember anything at all?"
"No. I was going back to the castle, and then I woke up here."
"Why were you going back so early?"
"None of your business." She knew she was being rude but she was just still so mad. "What happened to me?"
He flinched at her rejection. "There was a… a Death Eater," he muttered.
Hermione sat up straight. "A Death Eater? Did they catch him?"
Draco ran his hands through his hair. "No, they… they didn't. I…" It was as if he didn't know quite how to tell her something.
"Why do you have something to explain to Dumbledore?" she asked, when he wasn't too forthcoming.
"Because…" He swallowed and looked her straight in the eye. "Because, like I said, I found you. I carried you back. They don't know what happened."
"But you know it was a Death Eater?"
He was clearly agitated. "It wasn't just a Death Eater," he finally admitted. "It was my father. He didn't go after you, it seems, you were just in his way and wearing the… the bracelet. He recognized it. And he didn't really hurt you. He just put you to sleep." He looked away as if withholding something. He probably was, since it had been his father.
"So you talked to him," she coolly deducted. "You had a leisurely chat with him before you let him go. After he somehow infiltrated the Order and got into Hogsmeade on our 'secret' Hogsmeade weekend."
He nodded, clearly collecting himself for a confrontation. "Yes."
"While I was knocked out—"
"Sleeping!"
"—and God knows what he intended to do with me."
"He didn't intend anything. You were just wearing the bracelet. I imagine he knew I would notice when he took you."
"And what did he want with you?"
He shrugged, leaning back and avoiding her eyes. "To come with him."
"Right. And then I'd have been free to go." She knew her sarcasm probably wasn't fair—after all, he hadn't gone with his father—but it just rankled at her that she'd been attacked by his bloody Death Eater father and that he was acting as if it didn't mean anything.
"I would have made sure that you were and I didn't go with him. I stayed. No harm was done."
"Where are you going with this?" There was something about how he was telling her about this that roused her suspicion.
"I was wondering…" He hesitated. "When we… When Dumbledore asks you, could you perhaps leave out the part where the Death Eater was my father?"
She stared at him in disbelief. "What?"
"I was honest with you, and I know you want to do the right thing, but couldn't we keep just that part between us? I don't want… I don't want anyone else to know that Father was here and attacked a student. I don't want him to be in any more trouble than he already is."
"You're asking me to protect your father? The man who attacked me and tried to take you back to Voldemort?"
He flinched again. "No, I'm asking you to do me a personal favor. Please. I won't ever ask anything else of you."
"After last night you're asking favors of me?" She was aware that her voice had risen, but she was just that incredulous.
He buried his hands in his hair, looking thoroughly vexed. "I'll pay you. I'll slave for you. I'll do whatever you want if you just… keep quiet about this."
"You would really ask me to lie for you and your Muggle-hating father in this?"
"You wouldn't really lie!" he objected. "If they ask you if you saw him, you say no. If they ask you if you know who he is… well, you only have my word for it anyway, don't you? And I'm a bit of a liar when it suits me, everybody knows that."
"He's evil. He doesn't deserve to be protected."
"He's my father." Draco shot up from the chair and began pacing. "He taught me how to play Quidditch, he taught me about life, he gave me the best of everything, and for as long as he could he tried to keep the Dark Lord's attention off me. He's not evil, Granger, he just doesn't think like you do."
"No," Hermione calmly responded. "He thinks it's fine to murder innocent people just because they weren't born to magical parents."
Draco sneered at her. The first sneer she could recall having seen in a while. "Father is not a murderer. He told me he was actually a bit relieved when You-Know-Who first fell, but once you've got the mark, he never lets go. The only way out is death. Father is the head of a family; he chose to be alive instead of being a martyr. He does what he has to in order to survive."
Hermione leaned back. She disagreed, but she acknowledged that Draco would never think worse of his own father than he had to. "What about you?" she asked. "You chose not to go back. Where does that leave you?"
Draco sat heavily back down. "Well, as soon as I leave here, it pretty much leaves me fucked. I can either go hide somewhere for the rest of my short life or until You-Know-Who should fall, or I can try to have a life and be dead all the sooner for it."
"You really think he'll kill you?" Hermione asked, aghast. "You're just a boy who doesn't want to play his game!"
"I know he will. I refused his amnesty. I'm sort of hoping that your side will somehow defeat him first, though. I don't make a very good martyr."
The certainty that Voldemort would take his time to pursue and kill him seemed strange to Hermione. "But there's no reason for him to bother, is there?" An ugly suspicion hit her. "You don't have the Mark… do you?"
He sighed and rubbed his face. "Yeah, I do," he said in a flat voice, completely throwing her off guard. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm not sure if he cared whether I wanted it or not. Father had messed up, so he took it out on the son. Mother went ballistic, but there was nothing she could do. She cried for weeks."
"But I haven't seen…"
"I always wear long sleeves. No reason for people to hate me more than they have to." He swallowed. "Last night you almost saw. That probably would have cooled your blood, no?" He laughed bitterly and looked away. "Now you know, and I'm leaving you alone, I swear, but please… don't mention my father."
He looked back at her and his eyes were pleading with her to just do this one thing for him. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She couldn't protect his madman of a father. And she couldn't process the fact that he had that foul brand on his arm.
He was quiet for a few seconds. "We're going to have to leave out the bracelet in this," he then said without much emotion. "Last I was here, Blaise made up a tale that we were dating and I had unknown to you performed a bonding spell to take on your injury. We should stick to that to explain me feeling and finding you, although you're free to 'finish' me when you tell them about it, and I'll be assuring them that I removed the bond again. If we tell the truth about the artifact, we might both be expelled."
"Of course." She could concede that much. It wasn't like the teachers would be spreading tales anyway.
"But you won't leave out my father's name?"
"No."
For a long moment, he just looked at her, his eyes going from pleading to desolate as he realized she wouldn't budge. Then he abruptly stood, his face shuttered. "You're punishing me for this past month? So be it. I'll tell them. Not like I'd ever get my family back anyway." Before she could say anything else, he turned and left.
Friends were a blessing, they really were, Hermione reminded herself. They really deserved this explanation they had been waiting patiently for for the last month. What did it matter that she was feeling so tired and would rather forget everything that had happened? She leaned back against the soft pillow of the sofa in their common room, relieved to have told the whole story. Well, most of it, anyway. She had left out certain details, such as the exact trade that had gotten her off the hook early or the fact that Draco had told her he bore the Mark. They just didn't need to know those parts.
She looked at her friends digesting what had been happening right under their noses. Ginny wasn't really looking at her. She hadn't been since Hermione had heard Zabini's revelations. Her embarrassment was on a level that Hermione found hard to comprehend, but then again, she hadn't tried walking in Ginny's shoes. Harry was looking angry and Ron was frowning; that was as could be expected. Now she'd have to spend time and energy she didn't have on convincing them not to go after Malfoy. Great.
"I should have known," Harry growled. "That slimy git. Of course he would jump on a chance to humiliate you, we knew that. We suspected he had something on you, but we thought it was blackmail, not an actual slave device."
"You didn't know," Ginny quietly soothed him. "I even noticed the bracelet and found it odd that Hermione would wear something so expensive so casually, but I didn't say anything."
"So, everything… It was just him pulling your strings and pushing our buttons?" Ron looked up at Hermione, the frown deepening, his eyes showing both relief and confusion.
"More or less. But it affected him as much as it did me, if not more. As I said, he couldn't keep it up, and in the end he ended up protecting me from others from his house."
"Of course he did!" Harry looked like he was hard pressed to suppress his fury. "He knew that if anything were to happen to you, he'd be done for. He was looking out for himself."
"It wasn't that bad, Harry. Most of the time he just wanted company. It's not that easy being him this year, you know." Understatement.
"You say that like I give a damn. He made his bed and now he has to lie in it."
"Oh, that's easy for you to say, isn't it? In fact, it's rather easy for all of us." Hermione was rapidly becoming annoyed.
"What the Hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You are The Boy Who Lived, everyone has been grooming you to be a hero ever since you entered this world. Ron and Ginny have been raised 'blood traitors' by members of the Order. And me, I'm a Muggleborn. None of us ever had to pick a side, we were born into it. Well, it was the same for Draco, except he was raised on the other side of the fence, and now he's been trying to jump it in spite of his upbringing and… circumstances, but nobody's giving him a break. His old friends have pretty much turned their backs on him, and none of the 'good' guys want anything to do with him because of what he used to be. The only ones that don't condemn him are Nott and Zabini and that's because they're pretty much trying to stay neutral in the war in spite of especially Zabini also being a bigoted prat."
There was a brief silence as Hermione fought to catch her breath. Then Ron broke it. "Everyone has a choice, Hermione. Nobody promised it would be an easy one to make."
"Malfoy didn't even really make it, even though you seem to want to give him credit for it," Harry coldly pointed out. "He was set a task, failed at it, and chose survival. He never said he wanted to fight for our side or make a stand against Voldemort and old prejudices. He never showed any remorse. He is just hiding behind the Order until the threat to his own person goes away."
"He's trying," Hermione hissed. "You don't make that kind of change overnight!"
"Why are you defending him?" Ginny glanced at her but then seemed to be addressing her knee. "He might not have been horrible all the time, but he did do some pretty mean things."
"I'm not saying he's my new best friend or, well, a friend at all, but he deserves a chance, just like everybody else."
"In other words, we're not allowed to teach him a lesson," Ron drily concluded.
Hermione shook her head. "You don't have to. He already learned it."
To her own surprise, she really believed that he just might have.
Preview? Um... would this be sufficiently compelling? XD
Blaise's jaw was clenched, his hands gripping the arms of the chair, and his eyes were furious. "You're going too far, Draco," he said in a lethal voice. "I advise you to shut up."
Draco leaned back, gaining a strange sense of satisfaction from goading Blaise. "You started it," he felt it prudent to point out.
"And I'll finish it, too, if you don't shut it," Blaise growled.
