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Father in Law Issues:
Part 19
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She falls to her knees by their fireplace as she arrives at Harry's quiet suburban house in Godric's Hollow. There is dust on her knees yet as she stands up she immediately feels safer knowing she is in friendly territory. Brushing off the soot and ashes from herself, she purses her lips and looks around their living room. So different from Malfoy Manor, or even her own flat. Their is a certain coziness, and sweetness, that her decor at home lacks.
Pictures of the Weasleys and of Ginny and Harry's wedding line the walls. She illuminates the walls with the bluish faint light from her wand. She knows better than to turn on the lights and wake them.
She stares down the hallway where their bedroom is.
"Harry?" she asks quietly. She doesn't want to wake them if they're sleep. The door is closed and Merlin knows it's 2am by now, they probably are. No one answers.
She finds her way back to the living room and decides perhaps she'd better sleep on the couch until she can talk to Harry in the morning.
She certainly can't go back. To Draco or the whole Malfoy dynasty fiasco. Seriously what had she been thinking getting involved in a twisted pureblood supremacist family like the Malfoys? Everything had been simpler when she was with Ron; the Weasley's were genuinely good people, she never had to worry with them. Or be having the same issues, if she were still with Ron.
But the Malfoys?
Even if Draco had sincerely changed and reformed since the end of the war, his family obviously had not. And she realizes, though it was never a choice falling in love with Draco, she should've been more precautious about accepting his proposal.
Because yes falling in love with Draco, and him with her, had been a complete accident. The buoyancy of their love and the optimism of the postwar era had propelled her to trust implicitly that a union of a muggleborn and scion of a pureblood dynasty...could work. That times had changed and these purebloods could accept her, if merely on a surface level.
But she had underestimated just how underhanded or all-controlling a father-in-law Lucius Malfoy could be.
She wonders now if Lucius ever had any sincere attraction to her, or whether that is a ruse too, to seduce her and discharge her from the family in the most underhanded manner? She wouldn't put it past Lucius. Though it is singularly distressing to consider Lucius would sleep with her, using polyjuice, simply to remove her from his family. Sort of a sacrifice on his part: manipulate and seduce the mudblood to save his own family line before Draco had children with her.
The thought makes her shudder. The extent to which Lucius Malfoy will go to manipulate her...
"Hermione?" Harry's voice makes her jump.
She hadn't even noticed him creeping up behind her til he stands there by the fireplace. He's wearing pajama pants and holding a glass of water as if he's just gotten up to have a drink.
"Harry! I thought you were asleep."
Harry laughs quietly. "No can't sleep ever since the war, remember the tent? How we used to stay up playing cards? Ron hated it."
"Yes, I remember." She sighs at the familiar memory, though it is long ago. The Horcruxe hunt when they'd all stayed together in a tent had been the closest Harry and herself had ever been. Especially when Ron ran out on them, albeit temporarily. Those months in the tent had forged their friendship deeper.
"Yeah Ginny is sleeping so don't make too much noise." Harry points his wand at the door to the living room to click it shut, locking them both in the room together. "What's going on? Are you alright?" he grabs her hand, as if examining it for wounds, then reassured he let's go of her hand.
"I'm fine physically Harry, it's just..."
"What?"
Her friend's face is half lit in the dark as he stares down at her, his glasses off since Ginny made him take a vision restoring spell. He hasn't used his glasses in years, still sometimes she misses the way Harry looked more familiar with his old frames on. Truthfully, she never got used to seeing the better looking version of Harry that never wore glasses and had those green eyes that stare at her.
"Should I turn on the lights?" she asks, switching the topic.
Harry shakes his head and he slides down onto the sofa with her, sitting only a foot apart. "No, if I see lights now, I won't be able to go back to sleep at all. What happened? Tell me," he demands with deep concern.
Hermione takes a deep breath and wonders where on earth to begin? Harry would never judge her in a million years, Harry has always been by her side...yet she wonders if it's a good idea yet, until she has all the evidence.
She stares at Harry in the dark, wondering just how much she should tell him.
"It's an issue we've been having...Draco and I have been fighting. Again."
"Merlin. Sorry," Harry says but there's a strange intonation to his voice, like he's partly relieved their marriage is failing.
Hermione does a double take, wondering why Harry would be relieved she's fighting with Draco? But then she shakes the feeling off. Harry has always been slightly off in gauging emotional reactions since he died in the war, then came back to life in time to kill Voldemort. He's never been quite the same Harry since. Trauma of having seen death and the other side, Hermione assumes, must've detached him from this plane. Though she loves and cares for Harry just as much as if he hadn't changed from the innocent boy she grew up with, she knows there's something disconnected about him now. Though Merlin knows, she's become disconnected and unhinged too, so she's one to judge her poor friend...
"What happened? Did Draco do, or say, something?" Harry's voice has a raw edge to it, as if greatly angered, and could easily be provoked to do vigilante justice on her behalf.
"No...he hasn't. I mean, he's said a whole lot of stupid things, but Draco hasn't really done anything..."
"Except be a tosser," Harry finishes for her.
Hermione grits her teeth together. How she wishes—even just a month ago—she could correct Harry by telling him he's wrong about Draco. Except she isn't sure about Draco anymore. Or any of the Malfoys. And she can't correct him or comment on his assessment with any conviction. So she doesn't correct Harry and this is like admitting defeat in itself.
Her eyes well up and she tries to sniff back the avalanche of restless feelings trying to over swamp her. She's relieved they are in the dark now otherwise he'd see how completely broken her eyes are.
"He hit you didn't he?" Harry asks suddenly, sitting closer to her on the couch.
The question catches her off guard. And she sniffs again.
It takes her a long time to find her voice again. "How did you know? I didn't tell anyone."
"It's obvious. I can see it and hear it in your voice...how he's hurt you. Gods Hermione."
She nods numbly and the tears she held back, begin to fall freely down her cheek. Harry catches a few of her tears with his thumb before drawing his hand back from her face.
She wipes at her face, not wanting Harry to feel sorry for her. She hates how weak and embarrassed she feels admitting this to Harry. "He slapped me once, Harry, weeks ago. It's not even what we were fighting about tonight. You don't have to worry..."
"Merlin, I knew you shouldn't have married him." Harry grimaces, his tone vicious. "I should've stopped you!"
"Harry it isn't Draco, not really, who's causing me problems."
"NO! It is Draco," Harry lashes out of nowhere, his voice now louder than a whisper. What happened to not trying to wake Ginny? Hermione wonders. Why was Harry getting so mad at Draco? Yes, she admitted Draco hit her, but then her face and body were fine, and she just told him it had only ever been a slap weeks ago, hardly a beat up. She'd done more to Draco punching him in the face in third year.
"Harry can you calm down, that isn't all there is to it. There's so, so much more."
"He hit you. He's an evil snake!" Harry says adamantly, an almost unhinged look of fury in his green eyes. "Why didn't you tell me or come here sooner? You can't go back to him, Hermione, not after what he's done."
If only she could tell Harry what she's done, yet when he's this angry, there's no sense in talking reason to him. His anger towards Draco has reached an unhealthy level out of blue, so much she worries Harry might try to go back to their home and attack Draco now. Harry has access to their wards, after all, since he created them for them, practically their secret keeper.
She inches back on the couch. "Harry please. When I say Draco isn't to blame, I really mean that, I'm not trying to find excuses for him. You have to understand—"
"Yes you are making excuses for him and I understand perfectly!" Harry snarls. "Just like you did after the war, when you said he changed, because him and his bloody family made a few donations to charitable causes and Narcissa was decent. But that doesn't make him or his father decent. He bloody hit you, doesn't that show his true colours? Can't you see that?"
His words hit her like a ton of bricks, partly because the grains of truth in what Harry's saying.
It clicks in her mind too then what Harry's said about wanting to stop her wedding years ago...something about all his behaviour irks her and rubs her the wrong way.
Shouldn't Harry be supporting her now, not attacking her marriage?
It brings tears to her eyes that she can't even find comfort in her best friend. So everyone has been rooting for her marriage to fail all along have they? Not just on the Malfoy side, but Harry too.
"So you really never accepted or liked Draco did you? And I thought Draco was being paranoid but he was absolutely right! You never gave him a chance for a second!"
"No you never gave us a chance for a second!"
"Us?" Hermione stammers. "Us Harry?"
"Yes."
Fucking Merlin. Could her life get anymore unhinged and insane. Is Harry seriously going to pull the same conversation they once had in the tent more than eight years ago? Now? Now when she's crying and in need of his support, not his condemnation or accusations. She told him that night years ago she only thought of him as a friend. He understood didn't he? Harry had understood and acted like a sport back then. Why is he acting like he no longer understands her boundaries?
She closes her eyes to try to regain her breath.
But Harry sees this as an invitation and his lips crash down onto hers, at the same time as his hands clamp down on her arms as he leans towards her on the sofa, trying to deepen the kiss, darting his tongue to try to part her lips.
It shakes her to her core and she wants to shriek.
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a/n: Uh oh. Cliffhanger. Now this throws in a monkey wrench of doubt. Was it really lucius that night or might it have been harry? Who is actually lying and what actually happened?
thanks for reading
