~o~

Later as she lays in bed beside Draco that night, and Draco wraps his arms around her, she is shocked to feel how incredibly...guilty she feels. Not because of anything she did, purposefully or intended to do. But because of the ultimatum his father gave her...that scandalous, absolutely shocking ultimatum...that she had no intention of ever agreeing to.

Lucius must be mad if he thought for one second that she'd agree to it. Agree to have a second round with her rapist? To prove that he actually raped her?

The offer is laughably insane. Like being offered to be killed to prove you are alive.

She shudders to think Lucius even thought she'd be capable of agreeing to such a ludicrous offer. What was Lucius thinking? He usually acted so suave and manipulative, yet when his gaslighting hadn't worked, he moved onto to that ludicrous offer?

She'd sooner attack him with her wand again. In fact, she starts to mull over several avenues of possibility. Invite him to something with Draco and Narcissa, then slip Veritaserum into his drink or Imperius him to tell the truth in front of them.

...But then once Draco and Narcissa knew...what then? Her marriage would be deader than a doorknob, as completely over as a house after a level five earthquake.

And is it so hypocritical that she doesn't want to let go yet of her marriage, even for the truth?

Maybe this is why she feels guilty.

She'd rather keep cover and hide Lucius's lies of that night, or at least keep it between them, than actually let everything explode out into the public or for Draco to know and hate her for it.

Because she can't see how Draco could possibly forgive her, even if it was rape. It would shake Draco to the core of his foundations.

How could he sleep with her again knowing his father had slept with her? Or feel about her the same way knowing his father touched her?

If she knew anything about Draco it is that he was slow to forgive and his pride would not allow any onslaughts onto his family.

Draco's reaction if he discovered the truth weighs heavily on her mind...constantly.

She knows Draco would absolutely lose his mind if he came to know anything that passed.

But would Draco take his father's side or hers. Or neither. That is what she cant imagine among all the blunderbuss and mayhem.

So she has never felt so far away from Draco while being so simultaneously close. Like she's having an affair behind her husband's back and yet she never agreed to this. She never willingly strayed from Draco...or had sex with another man willingly.

...Or did she?

Did she actually know, or at the barest minimum suspect, it had been Lucius all along? Didn't she used to lust over Lucius in the beginning before she realized just how much of a bastard he was?

He's played me like a fiddle, she thinks and begins to sob silently into her pillow. He must've seen the look in my eye and knew he could take advantage of me, one way or another, covertly when she turned him down overtly.

She wishes she could strangle herself now for ever trusting or wanting Lucius for a second. She should've told Draco from the beginning to keep a ten mile parameter between her and his father if this relationship was going to work.

...Now look at their marriage.

"Why are you crying? You woke me up," Draco whispers and kisses at her shoulder; he wraps his body around her from behind, pressing into her soothingly as they lay side by side in bed. So perfectly close and so perfectly far away. At one time, nothing would've soothed her more than having Draco wrap his warmth around her.

...Now look what she's done to him...with his own father.

As warm as Draco is, his father is...she imagines...cold as ice. She shivers thinking if Lucius were laying behind her, whether she would feel chilled to the bone.

"What's wrong?" Draco pushes back her hair behind her ear and nuzzles against her.

Another wave of guilt, cold and hot, splashes over her and she realizes she's doing exactly what Lucius wants: hiding things from Draco and playing along by making her marriage like Lucius's and Narcissa's...filled with lies.

I can't hide from him. I can't hide the truth from him, she thinks over and over again. Yet the words fail to come out of her lips: Draco your father tricked me into sleeping with him. Draco your father is a bastard. Draco your wife actually enjoyed sleeping with your father. Draco a part of me actually knew it was him. Draco I loved it as your father inserted his cock into...

No. no. no. She blocks out the thoughts. The traitorous, horrible thoughts for that horrible bastard. That even now, after all he's done, she can't get out of her mind.

"I am trapped," she sobs.

"Trapped in this marriage? What do you mean trapped." Draco shakes at her shoulders, his voice a harsh and broken whisper. His voice already so pained and he doesn't even know half the truth but he knows something bad is happening.

She furiously wipes at her eyes, recollecting herself. She has to stop this.

"I mean someone is...forcing me. Manipulating me." Forced me, she thinks. He already forced me once to have sex with him. Now he's writing articles with Skeeter to make me seem like an adulteress. Who knows what punch Lucius would pull next to undermine her and her marriage to Draco.

"Who?!" Draco asks and he grabs her and forces her to look at him in the eyes.

His eyes are already watering and full of betrayal.

The word 'who' lays there like an unreachable distance between them that can't be crossed. It's bigger than an ocean.

How badly she wants to tell him. Yet she can't hurt him...not yet. She can't let this marriage end. She can't let Lucius gloat knowing he got rid of the mudblood that dared to enter his illustrious family.

She breathes in sharply. No, Lucius I won't let you win.

"I can't tell you who!"

"Is it someone at work?" Draco demands.

"No. Yes, sort of."

"Is this about Ernie Mcmillan?" the question sounds more like a statement. Does Draco really believe that?

"No god damn it. That article was complete rubbish." God damn Skeeter.

"Then who is it."

"I can't say. They're sort of blackmailing me."

"Is it Rita?"

"No but yes, partially. She's involved in this." How she wants to murder that woman or just crush a random beetle and imagine it's her.

Draco lets go of her, to roll her around and stare her directly in the eye.

"Can you please," his voice is heavy almost with sarcasm, "not tell me this is about my father again? I told you he had nothing to do with the article."

Hermione flinches away from Draco. How Draco can be so wrong and yet right at the same time. Right person, his father, but wrong beliefs about said person. Draco has a completely different image of Lucius than what is the reality. Draco still thinks his father is next to saintly and just. He can't even begin to contemplate that his father is a bastard, can he?

If Draco can't even believe his father could get a bad tabloid written about her, how can he possibly believe his father would slept with her? She really is fucking trapped.

"Draco—"

"No, don't tell me. You think my father is in a conspiracy with the media to malign you? He's not even in the country."

"I know that! But that's not what I'm saying—"

"He's with my mother, Hermione. Let it go."

That is a lie. That is a fucking lie, like everything else about Lucius.

"He's —" a rapist. But her throat constricts.

"My father is..." Draco begins.

A liar, a manipulator, a philanderer, an adulterer, gas lighter, an unscrupulous bastard, she fills in mentally but can't bring herself to say it.

"...The person I'm closest to and love the most," Draco finishes and squeezes her hand. "Besides you, of course."

His sincere words make her lose her breath.

His grey eyes are so convinced as he stares into her brown eyes and pulls a stray hair out of her face.

How can she tell him. How CAN she tell him. Bloody fucking hell. Shatter his views of both people he claimed to love most in the world?

"I can't do this." She pulls away from him and gets out of the bed.

But Draco follows her as she dashes to their living room.

"Do what?"

She can't sleep beside her husband tonight, or maybe any other night. Not when he's so bleeding delusional about his father and she's covering for Lucius, willingly or not.

"I can't...Lie to you."

But the truth given all at once might shatter him.

She has to give him the truth piece meal, one bit at a time.

"What about? Where you were today?" Draco arches his brow accusingly. He really does think she's having an affair doesn't he? The damn article put a seed of doubt into his mind that he can't let go.

"Draco your father isn't with your mother."

Draco narrows his eyes. "How would you know?"

"I saw him today."

"So that's where you were? In bloody France?"

"Yes, but your mother wasn't there."

"Why were you in France?" Draco asks, his voice more than a note of suspicion now.

"Please, it's not me you should be suspicious of, but your father. He was at Villeneuve."

"I don't know but I'm sure he had his reasons."

"Draco can't you see your father is lying to you?"

Draco's expression grew unimaginably angry. "What are you trying to get at? What is it you have against my father. Are you trying to imply he's cheating on my mother?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, you're implying it though," Draco says aghast, his face getting pale. "And I don't see why it's any business of yours to say such horrible things about him."

"Oh Draco, for fucks's sake." She thinks back to what Narcissa said of being careful wtih Draco and her son not being able to see the reality of those he loved. The idealization and pedelesization Draco put on those he loved.

"You don't understand my father. We had a talk. He's trying to bring the family together. That's why he left the country. He was giving your space and he is with my mother. If my mother left, that is on her, not my father."

"So why do you think she left if he's at Villeneuve?"

"I can't imagine why Hermione. Are you going to imply my mother's cheating now?"

Hermione considers whether she should actually tell him that. Perhaps it might help Draco better see his parents if he knew for a fact at least one part of their marriage he thought real...proved to be fake. Although Narcissa didn't seem to want her open marriage to be made known to her son, so that might be breaching Narcissa's trust, even if she didn't give a damn about Lucius's attempts to silence her. Hermione didn't feel quite ready to throw Narcissa under the bus to get at Lucius.

Hermione bites her lips. She can't for Narcissa's sake. The poor women must already have suffered being married to a sociopath like Lucius.

"I don't know." Oh god damn it. More lying for Lucius's sake. Did Lucius always and forever get others to do his dirty work for him? Or did he leave everyone around him with no other choice?

"This is complete and utter bollocks, everything you've said about my parents is so...so ridiculous." Draco swears under his breath before staring at her like he doesn't even know her anymore. "Hermione you really are going mental."

"I beg your pardon?" Her stomach twists.

"My father told me your situation. I didn't want to believe it."

"What situation?" Her heart flip flops sickly against her ribs.

"He told me you're so upset about the article, you would do anything to project what the article accused you off onto others. You're doing to my father what Skeeter did to you, telling far-fetched tales."

"Oh god, you're fucking clueless if you think that's my issue with your bloody father!"

She finally shoves Draco away from her and stampedes from the room, grabbing her coat and throwing it over her nightgown before snapping up her wand .

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to Harry's," she hisses and grabs a handful of Floo powder. "I can't take this anymore."

"To Harry's?" Draco asks darkly, and she does not miss the tone of insinuation in his voice.

His hand reaches out to grab her by the wrist, preventing her from throwing the Floo powder into their fireplace.

"Let go of me Draco," she warns as she lifts her wand to point at him.

Draco is unfettered. There is something wild, almost jealousy, in his darkening eyes.

"You're going to go to Harry's at this hour? In the middle of the night when him and his wife are sleeping?"

"Harry's my oldest friend, he'll understand," she says in a dead panned tone. "Now let go of me."

Draco releases her in disgust. "I didn't want to believe it."

"Believe what?"

"Believe what the article says! But something doesn't sit right with the way you've been behaving lately. You're hiding something. It's about Harry isn't it?"

He could not have said a worse thing to her. She shakily walks through the Floo powder, ignoring Draco and not even dignifying his insulting claim with an answer. Harry is her friend, her only friend apparently since Ron stopped talking to her years ago and her husband didn't even believe her anymore or act like her friend. She used to think of her husband as her best friend...how wrong her beliefs are proving to be.

"Godric's Hollow," she whispers with tears stinging at her eyes.

Her last image is of Draco's grey eyes full of emotion and hurt as if she is the one betraying his trust.

No, Draco, you've betrayed my trust by not believing me, by believing Rita Skeeter's lies and your father's lies over my attempts to tell you the truth.

Because you wouldn't listen, would you? You wouldn't listen to the truth or believe me in a million years unless you actually saw your father on top of me with your own eyes, Draco.

She falls to her knees by their fireplace as she arrives at Harry's quiet suburban house.

"Harry?"

.

.

~o~

a/n: Next chapter harry and then another lucius scene. Isn't that so convenient that the article saying she was cheating on draco with harry and ernie, such perfect timing? wow now draco really thinks she is cheating and with those two, instead of seeing the lying traitorous father in his own family

what do you think hermione should do?