This is one of the first chapters I wrote for this fic, and as you can tell by the title, it is the namesake of For His Juliet. Originally it was my Chapter 7, but I kept adding in chapters in between to flesh things out and for plot purposes. I had originally intended for this fic to be about 20-25 chapters, but I can tell you for a fact that that's not happening anymore. But you all seem to be enjoying reading this just as much as I enjoy writing this and the response has been wonderful, so I hope you all won't mind that this fic will be longer than I originally estimated ;)

Also, in a response to a few comments I've been getting - Ron and Harry are wonderful friends. Hermione just views everything through a different lens because of her anxiety, and when she is narrating, and we're in her head, it's portrayed as being the truth, because to her, that is the truth. She truly does think that they care more about each other than they do about her, and that they secretly dislike her. These thoughts are generated by her untreated anxiety, as her insecurities of feeling as if she isn't enough is exasperated by minute actions that truly don't mean anything, but she overanalyses them, and her anxiety twists it into something that it isn't. She craves constant reassurance and constant positive feedback, something that Draco is giving her, so that's pulling her in as well, on top of the potion, and the constant closeness. If you have any questions, I'll try and answer them as best as I can in the comments.

Hermione's being tugged between two extremes, so she's going to be a little bit emotionally all over the place in this chapter. Also, another reminder that whatever Draco says to Hermione might not be entirely true, or key parts and facts might be missing, in order to achieve what he wants. To him, the truth is flexible.


The next day, Hermione stayed holed up in her room. She didn't want to go out - to see Draco. To face someone, anyone, who had seen her in her weakest moment. She had always been able to keep herself composed in front of others. She had never had to know that someone had seen her when she was a weak, pathetic, trembling mess. (Nothing's wrong with you.)

But Draco had been so nice about it. (Draco was always so nice to her.) He had helped her. He didn't look at her like… like there was something wrong with her. She had always thought - no, she had always known that anybody who caught her in the middle of an episode would think that she had gone mad - that they would send her to St. Mungos and she would be locked up there for the rest of her life. (But he didn't.) But Draco didn't seem to think that she was mad. He had told her that she wasn't a problem. He had promised her that there was nothing wrong with her. Nobody had ever told her that before. Nobody had ever assured her that she wasn't a problem or a nuisance, or nothing more than a second thought. Even if that was all she had ever felt like. (She wasn't like that to him.)

And Merlin, she had never realised just how much she craved to hear those words until Draco said them to her. (He cared. He actually liked her. Someone actually definitely liked her, without being frustrated or annoyed by her.) He had told her that he was sorry, even, for not being there sooner. Nobody had ever known about her episodes before, nobody had ever tried to help her. (If they had known, would they have helped her? Would they have cared like Draco did?) She had always kept it hidden from them, from everyone, but she had never told Draco about them before either, and yet he sprung to help her the moment he saw her. He didn't judge her or pity her, and it didn't feel as if he wanted to be somewhere else. (They would've judged her, pitied her. They would've wanted to be elsewhere.)

And when he had held her, he hadn't minded that her tear-stained face was buried in his shirt, the saltwater probably ruining whatever expensive material it was made out of. (He cared about her. He made her feel safe.) He had just held her closer, allowed her to cling onto him, the one thing that she had known was real. (He was real. He was safe.) He had felt so… so safe.

The next day, Hermione went to the library, after much deliberation. Would Draco still feel the same way as he had when she got to the library? Would he still care for her, tell her that there wasn't anything wrong with her? But Hermione told herself that she was a Gryffindor, and she was going to be brave. (Draco would still care.) Even still, as she walked down the halls towards the library, she was filled with worries that he wouldn't want to see her, that he would have stopped caring, that he would think she was mad.

When she arrived, Draco was already there, waiting on her. A smile broke out onto his face. (He still cared.) A rush of relief fell over Hermione like a blanket. He still cared.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked. (He cared.)

Hermione gave him a small nod. "Yes. And...thank you, again. What you did, well, it really helped."
"I can do the same thing for you should it happen again," Draco said.

"I wouldn't be bothering you?" Hermione asked, nervously.

"Oh, Hermione," Draco murmured, "I don't ever want you to ever have to go through that alone, ever again. I don't want you to think that you're a problem or a burden or that there's something wrong with you, Hermione, because I promise there isn't."

"That would be nice," she said quietly.

He smiled again at her. "So, are we back into history again today then? Did you like the Morgana book you were reading two days ago?" he asked.

Hermione flushed, thinking back to the reason she had stormed the library in the first place. Not being sure if she had wanted to talk to Draco about the book or not. "I did. I - I thought it was truly insightful. I never thought that Morgana had been seen as somewhat of a heroine."

"Ah, yes. I've always found it very interesting to read different biographies on Morgana, written in different times. She was actually quite revered up until the late 1700s, when a group of witches used her as a symbol to try and get equal rights in the wizarding world. The group of witches were demonised by the Ministry, and in turn, so was Morgana, along with the magic that Morgana used. It was classified as 'Dark Magic', and made illegal by the Ministry. At first, it was only on rituals, which they found to be 'Dark', because some of the ingredients used were taboo. But the rituals were usually pre-emptive for diseases, and performed on children, so that they wouldn't get the disease in their lifetime."

"Like a vaccine?" Hermione asked. She realised Malfoy probably didn't know what a vaccine was. "Oh - a vaccine is like a -"

"It's alright, I know what a vaccine is," Draco said. Hermione furrowed her brow, confused. "My Mother and my Godfather have always been interested in science, Muggle or otherwise, and so I grew up learning all about it. I've always thought science was fascinating. But yes, the first rituals that got banned could be compared to a muggle vaccine. The most notable ritual that was banned was one that prevented a child from ever getting Dragon-Pox."

Hermione's eyes widened. "I never knew that there was something like a vaccine for Dragon Pox! That makes absolutely no sense - Dragon Pox is the second leading cause of death in wizards and witches over the age of 100, right after old age, because the cure doesn't work on them."

"Exactly," Draco nodded, "But it was 'dark' because Morgana had created it. Over time, more and more of her spells, and spells that she used were classified as dark. There was a sudden sharp increase in the 1948 of the banning of a large number of spells, and rituals were banned altogether. It was one of the first things that Dumbledore pushed for as the head of Wizengameot. He managed to convince the population that any kind of magic that he personally disliked was 'dark', and that anything 'dark' was inherently evil. Ever since the 1700s, when magic began to start being banned, progress and growth within the wizarding world slowed, and by the early 1900s progress barely even crawled forwards. By 1948, there wasn't even that much progress left to stifle."

Hermione's eyes widened. "Can you tell me anything more about that?"

Draco smirked at her expression. "Certainly."

The moment she returned to her room that night, Hermione was suddenly wracked with waves of guilt. Malfoy was a Death Eater. Malfoy wasn't someone to feel safe around or to discuss things with. How had she been able to take comfort in him? What was wrong with her? (Nothing was wrong with her.)

The next day, Hermione intended to ignore Draco, but when she got to the library and saw him, her resolve fell.

"Do you know if there are any Muggle books in the library?" she asked, before scowling at herself. Hadn't she decided to not talk to him? Well, what was done was done. At the very least, today, she wouldn't talk to him any more. And if she did, she wouldn't be nice - because Malfoy was a Death Eater. And what would that say about her, if she went out of her way to talk to him? (It wouldn't say anything bad. She should talk to him.)

"Of course there are," Draco grinned. "Why wouldn't there be any?"

He led her through the winding maze that was the library, and they ended up at a section filled with shelves stacked to the brim with books. Hermione rushed over to the shelves, looking at each in every book in the section, with awe. Merlin, she felt like she was back inside her favorite library in London, back where she had lived. Priceless books lined each of the shelves - rare books, first editions, original copies, all absolutely perfectly preserved. Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Dracula, War and Peace, Don Quixote. Manuscripts of Edgar Allen Poe, first copies of Charles Dickens. Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy. There were even positively ancient copies of The Odyssey, the Christian Bible, the Jewish Torah and the Muslim Quran. But, what drew Hermione in the most, was a shelf full of original actor's scripts of Shakespeare's entire body of work.

"Have you ever read any of these?" she asked, turning to Draco. (You can talk to him about these.)

"No, are they any good?" (Read them with him!)

"Are they any good?" Hermione gasped, "They're some of the best works of literature of all time! You can't tell me you don't know any of them? Not even Shakespeare? Jane Austen? Charles Dickens?"

"My father probably would," Draco shrugged, "He's rather a fan of Muggle Literature. I've never really read any of it."

"Lucius Malfoy loves Muggle Literature?" Hermione shook her head. (Read them with him.) "Whatever. You are so uncultured. Come on, we're going to introduce you to Shakespeare."

She carefully pulled the script of Hamlet off of the shelf, and looked at it with reverence. On the front page, Richard Burbage's name was scrawled at the top, with a flourishing signature. "These are authentic?" Hermione asked, in disbelief.

Draco nodded his head. "Of course they are. Why would we get anything less than?" He peered over her shoulder, at the script. "Who is Richard Burbage?"
"He was the original lead actor for some of Shakespeare's most famous plays," Hermione explained. "Shakespeare even wrote some shows for Burbage to play the lead." She led Draco over to a couch, and sat down. "Anyways, Shakespeare's work is written in some of the earliest modern English. He was the first to write down seventeen hundred new words, and invented over four hundred of them himself. At the time, Muggle Scholars believe that there were only fifty to sixty thousand in the English language, and Shakespeare used over thirty thousand in his writings. They think that Shakespeare knew most of, if not all of them."

Draco looked at her, bemused. "So what words did this Shakespeare invent?"

"I couldn't sit here and list all of them off the top of my head, but some words that I do know he invented are cheap, restraint, exposure, countless, informal, farmhouse, moonbeam, leaky-," her eyes fell on his exposed Dark Mark, and she cut herself off. She was softening to him too much. She had to remember who he was. Even if he made her feel safe, he was still a Death Eater. He was still a horrible person. (But with the way that he was looking at her, she wanted to forget. It was so easy to forget. Why didn't she just forget?) "I'm rambling," she said sharply. "You don't care about any of that."

"I do," Draco said, almost tenderly. "I care about everything you have to talk about."

Hermione pointedly ignored him. (He cared.) "Anyways, like I said, four hundred words," she continued, the bite in her tone a little less sharp than before. "The point is, he was one of the greatest contributors to the English language." She looked at Draco. "It's a play, so it's supposed to be read aloud, and I'm not reading it all by myself. I'll read for the women if you read for the men."

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

Hours later, when the script was closed, Hermione turned to Draco and asked, "So? What did you think?"

Draco relished her question, her desire for him to enjoy something she had shown him. She was talking to him, asking him questions, starting a conversation with him of her own choice. Obviously, she was still struggling to reconcile the fact that he was a Death Eater with her feelings for him. With how safe he knew that he made her feel, how much he knew she wanted to talk to him. "I really liked it," he answered.

Hermione's face lit up at his answer, before she immediately schooled her features. Even still, to Draco, it was a small victory. There she was, smiling for him. Smiling for only him.

"What did you think about the Ghost?" she asked, "Did you think it was a demon, or actually the deceased spirit of Hamlet's father?"

Oh his poor darling. She had never had an intelligent discussion about literature with someone before, something that she so clearly was starved for. It was terribly unfortunate that she had been stuck with the idiots in Gryffindor, especially so with Pothead, Weasel, and Weaselette. Weaselette, who Draco was quite certain had never cracked open a book in the past year, Pothead, who wouldn't be caught dead in a library, and the Weasel, who probably couldn't even read.

"His Father's spirit," Draco answered, raising an eyebrow. "Why? Do you think the ghost was a demon?"

Hermione shrugged, "No, but I think it's worth thinking about. I mean, Hamlet thought that it was a demon at one point, and the ghost encouraged Hamlet to get revenge, which led to the Kingdom of Denmark being completely taken over by the end of the story. Wouldn't that be something a devil would do?"

"But revenge is justified in such cases as this, isn't it?" Draco asked, "Besides, Hamlet was never the smartest, so I'd take his thoughts on the ghost with a grain of salt."

"Not the smartest?" Hermione echoed, affronted, "How so?"

"Well, he clearly had no sense of self-preservation, and was completely unable to get 'revenge' without killing everyone, and himself, in the process. That's not the ghost's fault that Hamlet led to the downfall of his own kingdom." Draco explained.

"Well isn't the whole point of the story to warn against revenge?" Hermione asked pointedly.

"You're such a Gryffindor," Draco said, his tone teasing. Hermione rolled her eyes. "Revenge isn't the problem, he just went about it stupidly."

"Alright then, Draco Malfoy," Hermione challenged, "Explain what you would do, if you were Hamlet."

"The problem is that Hamlet took far too much time to act," Draco stated. "Once he learned of Claudius's murder of his father, by the ghost, he should've asked the ghost a question that only his father would know the answer to. Once he ascertained that the Ghost was indeed the spirit of his father, he should have murdered Polonius in his sleep, and planted two letters in Polonius's office. One would be a letter sent from a palace guard, who would claim to have overseen Claudius murdering King Hamlet. The second letter would be addressed to Laertes, in which Polonius would write that he had learned of Claudius's treachery, and that he, Polonius, was going to seek justice. These letters would pin the death of Polonius solely on Claudius. Hamlet could pretend to stumble upon the letters that he had forged, and release them to the public. Then, he could kill Claudius, claiming that it was to be avenging Polonius, as he was the father of Hamlet's beloved Ophelia. With Claudius dead, Hamlet's father would be avenged, and Hamlet would be able to ascend to the throne and marry Ophelia. While Ophelia would lose her father, Polonius would be a necessary death, and his position could be filled by Laertes, who would be loyal to Hamlet, as Hamlet had been the one to avenge Polonius. And furthermore, since Hamlet had avenged Polonius in the name of Ophelia, Laertes would finally approve of their union, and realise that Hamlet's interest in Ophelia was not passing, as he had claimed in Act I."

Hermione scowled, "God, you're such a Slytherin. Anyways, these are supposed to be sad, and their plans are supposed to fail. Hamlet's has to die, and Ophelia's has to go mad. It is a tragedy, afterall."

The next day, Hermione perched herself on the couch, a script for Othello in hand. "Let's see you try and fix this one, Draco," she said.

When they were through with Othello, tears were streaming down Hermione's face. Draco offered her his handkerchief and she stubbornly shook her head, swiping away her tears with her hands. "Othello always makes me cry," she said defiantly, "It's just so sad."

Draco smirked wryly, "Well, this is a tragedy."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Prat," she sniffed. "Well, how are you going to solve this one, Draco?"

Draco grinned and simply said, "Othello should've just asked his wife what was going on. He was far too trustful of Iago, for no reason. I'd even say he deserved his own downfall for being so stupid."

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

After Othello, Hermione and Draco proceeded to work their way through each of his plays, in no particular order. Throughout reading each, they discussed the plays, the characters and the love stories, and Draco, to Hermione's chagrin, continued to 'solve' each of the plays. But, Hermione had to admit that it was nice to discuss books and plays with someone, on an intellectual level. To be able to talk about how revolutionary the stage that was used was during that time. Or to talk about the historical events behind the stories. For someone who didn't read Muggle fiction, Draco Malfoy knew quite a lot of Muggle history. Verbal spars began to soften and over time, became something akin to banter. When he teasingly called her sappy for crying again during Macbeth, it felt less like an insult, and more like a term of endearment. And Hermione felt herself truly warming to the Slytherin, even though she tried to fight it. (Don't fight it. Give up. Give in. Give in to him.)

But, most strangely of all, something truly incredible started to happen. Somewhere in the middle of Macbeth, Hermione had started sitting just a bit closer to Draco. (Closer, closer, closer.) During The Tempest, it was close enough that their shoulders brushed and their legs touched. (Closer, closer, closer.) Two acts into Henry IV, Hermione had begun resting her head on Draco's shoulder, so that she could read while he spoke. (Closer, closer, closer.) And finally, halfway through Antony and Cleopatra, Draco had looped his arm around Hermione, drawing her in so that she was resting directly against his chest. (Closer, closer, closer.) It felt just as safe as it had on the day of her episode. He felt just as safe.

Weeks into their study of Shakespeare, just after finishing Anthony and Cleopatra, while the sun was just starting to set, Hermione had offered Draco a smile. "Come on, we're going to read his most famous play of all time. I've been waiting to show you this since King Lear. It's called Romeo and Juliet."

Hours later, when Hermione was lying on Draco's chest, his voice gently lulling closer and closer to sleep, as he read the final words of the play. "A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd. For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

"So?" Hermione asked, yawning, as he closed the book, laying it to rest on the table.

"They had terrible families. Families are supposed to support each other's interests, to help you achieve whatever you're after," Draco said resolutely. "Romeo's parents should've helped him marry Juliet. They should've done whatever it took to allow the two the two of them to be together."

"Mmm," Hermione said drowsily, "But what about the feud? What about what the Capulets wanted?"

"They were destined to be in love though, weren't they? So what did it matter what the Capulets thought? They wouldn't have ever allowed Juliet to marry Romeo, or to love him back. At least never on Romeo's terms. They were hurting Juliet by not letting her be with Romeo. Was Romeo supposed to just let that go?" Draco finished his thoughts a bit bitterly, although Hermione was far too tired to really notice.

"If you were Romeo, would your parents help you get your Juliet?" Hermione sleepily mumbled. (Are you his Juliet?) "Would your Montagues build a world just for you and your Juliet to live in?"

As Hermione slipped into sleep, Draco whispered into her hair, "They already have." Hermione's breathing slowed as she relaxed further and further into him, before falling asleep.


Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to post this Monday like I normally am. With that being said, the next chapter should be up by next Friday the 19th at the very latest, and then I'll continue on with my normal posting schedule for this fic.