We were caught up and lost in all of our vices… the walls kept tumbling down…grey clouds roll over the hills bringing darkness from above… How am I gonna be an optimist about this? Oh where do we begin? The rubble, or our sins?
Bastille
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The floor seemed to fall away beneath him as Draco stabilized their landing. His mind was covered in a fog that he couldn't sift through. The reality of his present truth was too much for his mind to accept. He needed to reverse the last hour and change his decision, convince Hermione that she never needed to see her parents again. Now that the truth was exposed in his mind, he knew that he would never be able to run from it.
He also knew that he could never lie to her.
"What was that?" Hermione was frantic and confused as she questioned him.
Draco look numb as he stared her with a silent, and shocked expression on his face.
"Draco? What is going on? Why did you drag us out of there? You could have given me fair warning at least! Were we in danger? Was it your father? Did he follow us there?"
Draco opened his mouth to respond, but his voice betrayed him and nothing came out.
"Hello?" Hermione waved a hand in front of his face. "Talk to me! You're starting to scare me. What's happening?"
Without warning, Draco's heart sank through the pit of his stomach and seemed to shatter across the dissipating floor. He clutched his side, feeling as though he may become ill.
"I can't tell you," he managed to get out with a struggle. His face was contorted in discomfort, the guilt of his truth seemed to burn through his entire being like acid.
"What do you mean you can't tell me? Is everything alright? Are we in danger?" She repeated. Hermione couldn't accept that as an answer. Draco was acting incredibly odd and Hermione's instinct was sound off bells, alerting her that all was not well.
Draco gulped, his mouth was dry and his throat felt constricted. He gave himself a moment before he managed to speak again. "I mean, I can't tell you…not to your face. I-I just can't do that to you."
"I don't understand-," Hermione shook her in annoyance. This dodging of answers was getting old with her very quickly. She was about to turn away and walk away from him went he reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her.
"Look, I know what I have to do…and I'm going to do the right thing here…," Draco's eyes were pleading with her to not walk away. His heart rate was accelerating and his palms started to sweat as his nerves increased. "I just…I can't bear to see your face when…" he couldn't keep talking. The words just wouldn't form.
Hermione felt how serious he was being and grew concerned. She placed her arm tenderly on his shoulder and tried to encourage him to open up. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. I'm here for you Draco. I'll protect you from whatever is happening."
Draco couldn't help but choke out a nervous laugh. "Protect me?" He shook his head. "I should have been protecting you…a long time ago."
Draco did his best to collect his courage and do what needed to be done. "Look Hermione, I need you to know now that I love you. No matter how things progress from here on out, I need you to know the truth of that. I've never been perfect, and I never will be. I've made mistakes and done things I regret, things I will never be able to take back…," his throat began to tighten again. "But none of those actions affect the way I feel about you. The way that I'm always going to feel about you."
Hermione became increasingly worried as she listened to him talking like this. For some strange reason she felt like he was going to run away from her. She moved in closer, hoping that he'd pull her into his arms and console her. She waited for his kiss to assure her that everything was okay, but it didn't come.
"I don't understand…" she expressed softly.
"I know you don't, but you will and you have to know how sorry I am."
"Sorry about what? Just tell me?" She pleaded. He was starting to scare her now.
Draco shook his head adamantly, "I can't. I'm sorry. I wish I had the courage to tell you to your face…but I just can't bear to see…I just can't. I'm sorry."
"So what then?"
Draco took a deep breath and shakily replied. "I supposed I need to see Potter."
"What?" That was the last thing she had been expecting him to say.
"We should go now. Before I change my mind about doing the right thing," he admitted as he started to walk towards the fire place.
Hermione didn't quite know what she was doing as she followed him. All she knew was that she still had no clue what was going on or what he was talking about. But if going to Harry would explain this sudden weirdness, then she would go along with it to obtain answers. Hermione stepped into the fire with him and they made their way to the Ministry through the floo network.
/
Draco had no idea where Potter's office was located and had to follow Hermione through to her department. They received odd looks as they made their way there. Draco could understand why. They weren't the most obvious people that would be expected to be walking together anywhere, but he didn't have the time or the mind-set to pay attention to their odd stares and whisperings.
"His door is in the middle of the hall here," instructed Hermione.
"The door on the left?" Draco clarified.
Hermione nodded.
"Great." Draco suddenly walked ahead of her, nearly pushed her out the way as he walked inside of his office alone and uninvited. He wanted to make sure Hermione couldn't interfere with what he was about to do. She didn't know it, but he was protecting her.
In shock, Hermione tried to pull at the doorknob only to find that he had locked it. She frantically pulled out her wand. "Draco? What are you doing? Open this door!"
Harry shot up from his desk, alarmed at the sudden intrusion and whipped his wand out into a defensive position.
"What in the blazing fires of hell are you doing here Malfoy?" Harry looked lethal and very tempted to 'shoot first and ask questions later'.
Draco finished binding the door shut with magic and then cautiously set his wand down on Harry's desk before he slowly lifted up his hands in surrender.
"I came here to talk Potter." Draco made sure to speak slowly and clear. Potter was on edge and he didn't want to make any more sudden motions.
Harry lifted his wand a little higher in suspicion. "Talk? Why on earth would you need to talk to me?"
It didn't matter that Draco's wand was lying vulnerable on the desk in front of him, Harry still didn't trust Draco any further than he could throw him.
"Draco, I swear to Merlin. I'm going to kill you when you get out of there! Open this door right now! Harry, what's going on?!" Hermione shouted from the other side of the door.
'She doesn't know how right she is.' Draco thought to himself.
"What is going on here, Malfoy?"
"Look, I'm trying to do the right thing here." Draco raised his hands higher to reassert his surrender.
"You?" Harry scoffed. "Look, I know about how Hermione rushed your program for you so that she could be done with you. So I know you're not this redeemed angel that you've been painted out to be."
"I never said that I was, and you're right. What is true, whether you'll want to believe it or not, is that I care deeply about Hermione."
Harry tightened his grip on his wand. "What did you just say?"
"I'm here because she deserves to know what happened. I don't want to hurt her any more than I have to."
Harry shot off a warning hex to the floor by Draco's feet, causing him to jump back.
The spark was bright enough to be seen in the hallway, putting Hermione at a higher state of alarm. She frantically wiggled at the handle trying to open it. "Harry?! Draco?! What's going on in there!?"
They could hear Hermione's failing efforts to charm open the door, but remained focused on their verbal standoff.
"Hurt her? You have five seconds to start speaking clearly Draco before I blast you through the wall."
Draco could see Potter's hex flirting at the tip of his tongue and knew he had less than a second to get out his reason for barging into his office.
"Blaise and I killed Hermione's parents!" Draco blurted out before Harry managed to shoot at him again.
It took a moment before it registered to Harry what he had just said.
"Is this room sound guarded?" Draco pleaded. He prayed that Hermione hadn't heard him from the other side of the door.
Harry nodded with a confused expression on his face. "We can hear her, but she can't hear us. Now, come again? What do you mean? Hermione hasn't even seen her parents in years." He kept his wand focused on Draco.
"I know, and I didn't even know they were her parents until today."
It went against Harry's better judgment to listen to the tale Draco was presenting him, but he couldn't ignore something like this. Trickery or not, as a ministry worker he was required to take talk of murder seriously. "You have five minutes to explain what you're talking about before I stop playing nice."
"Fair enough. Can I sit?"
"Don't even think about moving from where you are," warned Harry.
"Right…well, I guess I should just start from the beginning. This was a few years ago on the anniversary. You remember when you and Hermione arrested us?"
Harry nodded but remained silent, his wand twitching between his fingers.
"That was kind of a…tradition for me and Blaise. We would torment muggles each anniversary and one year it got…it got out of hand to say the least. Blaise and I broke into a house, I didn't know whose house it was because Blaise was the one who took me there. I was just following him and-"
"You expect me to believe that?" Harry interrupted with an incredulous look of annoyance on his face.
"It's the truth! Look, they're going to get this all out of me in court anyway, what point do I have to lie?"
"Who says you'll make it court? I have half a mind to kill you here."
"I didn't have to come here Potter. I could have kept my dirty secret to myself for the rest of my life, like I had intended to. But I'm here, confessing this to you because I love Hermione and I want her to know the truth. I'm sacrificing myself here to do the right thing by her."
Harry just pursed his lips, kept his wand at the ready and waited for Draco to continue. He heard Draco admit that he loved Hermione, but there was no way he was going to address it.
"Blaise was explaining to me how his parents died," continued Draco. "There were two muggles in the house, I didn't know that they were Hermione's parent. I had no way of knowing that."
"Not that it would have stopped you at the time, if you had known, I'm sure."
Draco wouldn't say whether that would have affected anything or not. He was a different man then. "So, he put them under the Imperious curse." Draco saw Harry's wrist twitch at the mention of the curse and for a moment Draco thought he was going to attack him after all. "He made them act out the entire scenario…including their deaths. …" Draco's voice dwindling towards the end as he recalled their blank and lifeless expressions. "When he got to that part, he perfumed the killing curse on them both…."
"Then what?"
"Then we left. We haven't spoken about it since."
"How did you find out they were Hermione's parents?"
"She took me with her to see if we could reverse their memory charm and I recognized the house."
"Does she know?"
Draco shook his head. "I didn't have the guts to tell her. That's what I came to you."
"Right, so I can be the one to burden her with your sins? Thanks Malfoy, selfish as ever I see."
Draco didn't say anything,
Harry shook his head in disbelief as he took in his current situation. He almost started to relax his wand as he thought about what he was going to do next.
"I don't understand Malfoy. Why even do that? It's pretty hard to believe that out of all the people in the world, you just happened to kill Hermione's parents."
"I just thought they were worthless muggles at the time. I didn't know that they mattered."
Harry slammed his hands down on the desk and yelled. "They always mattered! Not just because they were her parents, but because they were people you soulless freak!"
Harry was shaking as he took a deep breath to regain his focus. "I don't believe you. I think you knew and you're getting some kind of perverted pleasure out of Hermione trying to help you."
"You don't have to believe me!" Draco raised his voice. "Frankly, it doesn't matter what you think Potter! Either way, they're dead. Either way, I had something to do with it. I didn't stop Blaise from killing them because at the time I didn't care. Now that I know who they are, and now that I know that I love Hermione I can't just sit by and ignore what I've done. I don't deserve to even be in the same room as her knowing what I've done."
"So the only reason they matter to you is because of her? How many other people have you killed? What about them? You have a pretty convenient conscious if you can pick and choose your guilt. Or maybe, you don't really have a sense of guilt about any of the crimes you've committed. Everything you do it just a desperate act to cover up the reality of your soulless indifference to anyone in this world who isn't you."
"I came here to confess my crime, and now I've done so. I'm not talking to you about anything else Potter. You can do what you want with me, all I ask is that you'll be sensitive about this. Think of Hermione."
"She is the last person you should be concerned with. I'm not going to let you have anything to do with her," swore Harry.
"I know that you hate me. I don't care for you either, but she loves me just like I love her. She doesn't know any of this. When she finds out that I was an accomplice in her parent's death…I don't know what it's going to do to her. I just want to…" Draco was getting frustrated with himself. He couldn't come up with the right words. What did he want? It was too late to protect her. There was no possible way to make this painless for her. He couldn't hide the truth from her. Everything about his truth was harmful to her. "I've already hurt her enough. I just ask that you'll be understanding of our situation and her feelings."
"You don't need to ask me that Malfoy. I'm her friend. I actually care about her." Harry came round his desk and approached Draco. Without requesting it, he pulled his hands back using his wand and bound them with restraints. Draco didn't struggle as Harry tied a yellow band around the cuffs, seemingly to reinforce the restraints.
When Harry was satisfied that Draco was bound and unable to go anywhere without his consent, he stood in front of him and faced him square-on. "I know you think that you love her, but you're confused. You don't know what love is. You're not capable of it."
Draco opened his mouth to protest and found that nothing came out.
Harry shook his head, "Don't even try. That band makes sure you stay silent and compliant. I don't want you saying another words to her when I bring you out there. She doesn't deserve to be hurt by you anymore than she already has."
On the other side of the door, Hermione was sitting on the floor, impatiently slumped against the wall, completely unaware that her world was about to fall apart.
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A/N: Hello all! I realize it's been a little while since my update and I apologize. On top of it being the end of term, and having to deal with the stress of finals- a friend from my childhood, and member of my family's church went missing last week along with four other people. He was flying with his fiance and her family when their plane went down in Idaho. If you have a faith, we could always use more prayers. They are still searching for them and/or the crash site. We're praying/hoping for a miracle, but at the very least we're all looking for closure, peace for the families, and safety for all those involved in the search/rescue efforts
Thanks - Jazzy
