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Father in Law Issues:

Part 17

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"You're covered in mud," is the first thing Draco says as he watches her in shock as she shakily walks through their front door.

She ignores his obvious statement of her complete state of disarray. Draco must think she went through a tornado or something with her windswept, wet hair and disheveled clothes and tear stained eyes...but if only it were that simple. A tornado passing through her life would be infinitely simpler and easier to deal with than his damn father.

Draco follows after her as she ignores him and heads to the bathroom to change out of her clothes.

"What the hell is going on Hermione? Where have you been?"

Hermione throws him a scathing look over her shoulder as she takes off her wet and muddy clothes. Soon she is naked and running her hands under the water as she starts filling the bathtub. She pretends Draco isn't there as she gets ready to wash herself off. She knows better than to ignore Draco but the need to wash herself is manic. As if every drop of mud and dirt on her body is an emblematic of Lucius...that she urgently needs to scrub off before it drives her mad.

Draco doesn't miss her mania and stops her from getting into the tub by waving his wand at the taps and stopping the flow of water.

"Are you not going to answer me at all, or tell me what in god's name, you've been up to?" Draco demands, standing by the tub, as he watches her every move and refuses to leave the vicinity.

"I was out," she grits with her teeth clench, still refusing to meet his eyes. Because he might see the emotion there in her eyes and know something is up.

"Out involves getting covered in mud now?" Draco snaps. "Why the sod do you look like you had a wrestling match with a pig?"

"I got caught in the rain."

"It wasn't raining here," Draco chastises her in a way almost reminiscent of his snide father. "Where were you?"

Oh shit. She hadn't thought of that. She'd been in France where it had been raining in that particular region of Villeneuve. Meanwhile, London, usually rainy, had actually been completely dry today.

Hermione's jaw works to open and close a bit. She doesn't like lying to him like this. But then can she really say where she's been?

But then if she lies to Draco, she'll be stooping to Lucius's level of lies and deception. She doesn't want to stoop to Lucius's level yet.

She relinquishes her grip on the bathtub's knobs and finally looks up into Draco's eyes. He's frowning at her in a way that's all at once too caring and yet too concerned for her, as if he doesn't understand who she is anymore. Her red rimmed eyes, however, probably tell him enough to go by.

"I took a portkey," she says as vaguely as possible, hoping he won't ask more. Not at least until she sorts out her head better.

"You've been crying."

She shivers. "Something happened."

"What happened?" Draco demands and stares far too deep into her eyes for her comfort.

She breaks the eye contact and glowers down at her dirty hands again. The dirt and line of mud under her nails is bothering her far beyond what should be reasonable. She dips one hand into the water already in the bathtub, watching as the water turns muddy from her touch, and she pointedly ignores Draco again.

As she turns the tap to start the water filling the bath again, however, his hand clenches over hers and only a drop falls from the faucet.

"Well are you going to tell me?"

"I can't."

Draco steps in behind her and holds her both her hands to make him face her.

"Tell me," he pleads, as much with his voice as his eyes. Draco's blue-grey eyes, while somewhat identical to his father, actually have warmth in them. A living, breathing soul, even if flawed, Draco is all too human. it's written all over his face: his concern for her, his enduring faith and need to believe that they still can make everything right between them.

And it saddens her that they've come to this. That their marriage is so fraught they even one of them can hold secrets or animosity like this.

"Would you even believe me, if I told you?" she asks back cryptically. Unable to take Draco's puppy dog eyes any longer, her gaze lowers back down to her nails. There's dirt under her nails and somehow this is driving her mad, as mad as the memory of Lucius's wild ultimatum. She never before now felt such a violent hatred towards his father, or any single human being, like she would do anything to get back at Lucius...or even for a moment, hear the bastard speak the truth from his own lips and admit the wrong he had done her...And Draco too in a way. Lucius had wronged his son as much as he had wronged her.

But that is where the issue lay.

Draco presses his hands over her hands again, curling them up underneath his hands to form a fist.

"Of course I would believe you. I am your husband."

How badly she wishes she could wholeheartedly believe him whenever he said that.

"I know," she whispers sadly and allows Draco to kiss her on the cheek, then on the lips.

Then in defeated acquiescence she watches in a strange, almost surreal, fascination as Draco fills up the rest of the bathtub for her then undresses himself and pulls her in. The water fills in around them both as Draco grabs a wash cloth and scrubs at her skin for her, their legs intertwined, as she lays her head back against his familiar chest.

"I don't want to lose you," he says into her wet hair as they lay together in the bath, after he has washed her hair. "I know I did you wrong, but I don't want you...wherever you were today...thinking that two wrongs make a right."

"Do you think I'm cheating?" she asks in a hushed tone.

"No," Draco replies almost apologetic. "I didn't say that...but I know something is going on, you're considering something, or perhaps someone. I don't want us to lose what we have, do you?"

She nods and closes her eyes as she rests against Draco's chest.

He can't see her when they're both facing ahead in the same direction, but a tear falls down her cheek.

How can she burst his bubble by telling Draco that they are already losing what they had? That their marriage has been crumbling for ages now and by one source: his own father.

Yet their marriage used to be beautiful once, just moments like these where they shared a bath or Draco showed a caring that was beyond anything she could've asked for her in a husband.

More tears fall down her eyes and this time Draco hears her crying and doesn't try to stop her or ask her more questions. He simply holds her tightly against his chest as she breaks down completely

She is mourning, the love they used to have...the love that Lucius made sure to destroy by crushing it under foot. And violating her marriage in the most twisted way possible...by tricking her into infidelity. Rape really. Though the worse part is she is not agonized by that night. She'd rather not think of that night at all, really, because it had..been..something sensual and pleasurable. And that is the crux of her dilemma.

So...Maybe there is no chance of recovery.

But if she lets the growing distance and issues between Draco and herself completely tear them apart...wouldn't that be letting Lucius win?

Wouldn't Lucius positively gloat to hear of his son's divorce from the mudblood he never wanted in the family in the first place? She could imagine the glee in Lucius's smirk.

Hermione can't let him win so easily.

She has to try.

She has to try to rebuild the shatters of her marriage and the deep connection she once felt for only Draco. The connection they felt before they both broke each others trust: Draco by hitting her, and her by sleeping or lusting after another man. Though both actions were directly motivated or caused by a single force: his father.

~o~

"I want to tell you more," she says shakily, hours later, after they had a peaceful dinner and the memory of their heated argument earlier in the bathtub is just that...only a memory.

There is no strife here. No anger. No violence. It's almost like an evening they used to have all the time

...Except on the inside she knows Lucius has gutted her. She's still a fish flopping around with everything missing on the inside though she appears the same on the outside...she can't breathe the air. She can't even feel her heart anymore...does she have a heart? Is her mind still working the same?

Or has she shut off her own mind so she doesn't have to think of that night or Lucius? Because surely such thoughts would break her down if she kept thinking of them.

Draco wraps his arms around her from behind her. "Tell me. You can trust me."

His willingness to cooperate with her, and talk maturely of their issues, is almost hard to believe.

Where is the more immature, volatile Draco who lashed out at her when she insulted his father? Who slapped her cruelly when she dared to step a foot out of line in the Malfoy order.

She closes her eyes as Draco's hands encircle her waist. "I don't know," she breathes out heavily as Draco places a kiss on her neck.

She shuts her eyes more firmly as Draco tries to convince her with his lips that she can trust him. He kisses her deeply and more roughly as he makes his way to her lips and then parts them with his tongue.

As his tongue plunges into her mouth, she keeps her eyes firmly shut. Even as Draco leads her to bed and spreads her legs open, she doesn't look at him. She's barely present mentally, even as he pushes her back on the bed and inserts himself roughly, she detaches herself from the situation, numbs and distances herself by blinding herself. Perhaps Draco hasn't noticed because their bedroom is dark and only half-lit.

But if he looked at her closely as he penetrated her, he would've understood one thing: she didn't close her eyes out of pleasure, she closed them to try to shut out that feeling of intense emptiness.

The emptiness of realizing she isn't that responsive to Draco anymore.

The emptiness of knowing she isn't in love with her husband anymore.

The emptiness of knowing her marriage is now a lie in the making.

The realization that nothing Draco did to her body or said could make her respond on the same level she did that night...with him.

Of all the lies Lucius spoke, there is that one truth. And it haunts her as cruelly as the memory of his touch.

As Draco comes in her, she is flooded with the memory of a different man coming in her, her hair wrapped around his hand like a coil as he filled her with his seed.

When she opens her eyes again, she cries hysterically in humiliation.

~O~