AN: This is it, the end. No epilogue to come. Thanks for reading.
Draco Malfoy carried an unconscious Hermione Granger up the grand staircase of his ancestral home to his mother's bedchamber. Narcissa and Professor Snape ran ahead to assemble the potions needed to counter the curse Hermione had been attacked with in the Thought Room of the Department of Mysteries. Ronald Malfoy did his best to keep up with them, cradling his wounded arm.
"Mum," Ronald called softly, as if wary of waking Hermione. "Mum, there's another wounded person coming. She should arrive any moment."
They stormed through the bedroom door, Narcissa rushing to the medicine chest stashed beneath her vanity. She flung it open, handing vial after vial to Snape. She glanced up as Draco brought Hermione into the room. "Not on the bed. Take her to the chaise. She'll need to be propped up to swallow all of these."
"Mum," Ronald tried again. "It's Molly. She's been hurt by some kind of cutting spell."
"How badly?" was all Narcissa asked, drawing a potion up into a syringe.
Ronald swallowed. "Big pool of blood. Couldn't stand or speak much. Dad was closest when she fell. I reckon it will be him that brings her."
"It had better be him. No one else can get in here," she said, still showing no emotion but stoic concern for Hermione, the patient at hand. Narcissa paused for hardly a moment to look at Ronald himself. "Go to the bath and run some cool water over that arm."
He obeyed, watching over his shoulder for Molly and Lucius to arrive. It was taking too long, as if something new, something even worse had gone wrong.
Narcissa nudged Draco aside as she took Hermione's arm and injected the first of the array of ten potions, this one coming through a vein at the inside of her elbow. "She can't swallow anything in her sleep. It's too dangerous. She needs to revive, though she will be in pain."
As the potion hit her bloodstream, Hermione drew in a deep breath. "Harry!"
Ronald came trotting out of the bathroom at the sound of her voice, his arm wrapped in a clean white towel. "He's with the Order. They came for us. It's - it's alright, Hermione," Ronald said, though he was near tears again, not truly able to promise her anything was alright, not when Molly was fading away somewhere, and the battle between the Order and the Death Eaters had been far from decided when they got away.
Hermione was too lost in the fog of the curse to notice his hesitation. She did recognize his voice, and managed to moan back at it, "Go, Ronald. Get out."
Draco took her thrashing head in his hands, hushing her. "You are out. Ronald brought you home. You're with us, Granger. I know it hurts, but you're safe."
Snape tapped Draco's arm with an uncorked vial.
"Here, drink this," Draco said, raising the potion to Hermione's lips as she whimpered in pain. "You've been cursed and you need this to get better."
She didn't seem to understand until the clear, thin liquid, like water, was washing into her mouth. She gulped it down, as if desperately thirsty.
"Good girl," Narcissa cooed. "Eight more potions to go. The next comes with wandwork and a poultice over the point of impact."
Narcissa's hands were on the hem of Hermione's shirt when the room shook with the crack of an apparation. Standing on the rug after apparating from the fireplace downstairs was Lucius, covered in blood from the bright red fingerprints on his cheek and jaw to the rusty stains on his shoes. In his arms was Molly Weasley, still and cold.
Snape rushed to take her from Lucius, pivoting to lay her on the bed, tearing her robe open to see the gash torn in her flesh from one of her shoulders to the other. "Cissa, come quickly," he called.
Her hands fell away from Hermione. "I'll be back, Draco. While I'm gone, take the next potion, saturate a dressing with it, expose the impact site, and call me when she's ready."
Snape's wand was drawn and he was muttering a songlike incantation to stop the bleeding and close Molly's wound. Narcissa assessed Molly's vital signs as he did - her pulse, blood pressure - calculating which blood replenishing potions to give, and how much, and whether any amount would ever be enough.
Draco stood over Hermione where she slumped on the chaise. Her colour was slightly better, but she had drifted back into her pained, suffering sleep. He soaked a bandage with the third potion, as he'd been told, and set it aside. It was time for step two.
"Expose the impact site," he muttered to himself. "Expose - expose the - "
"Open her shirt so the poultice can go directly onto her skin," Narcissa clarified from across the room.
"Wha - I can't - we've never - I - "
"This is war, Draco. Act like a grownup," Narcissa said. "Or ask Ronald to take care of her for you."
He certainly was not about to do that.
The shaking in Draco's hands was almost imperceptible as he undid the buttons of Hermione's school shirt and spread it open to either side of her. She wore a tight white vest underneath and, as carefully as he could, Draco inched it upward, baring her stomach and ribs. In contrast to the pallid white of his hands, the colour of the skin of her torso went from a golden creaminess to red to a vicious purple, the mark of the curse that still tore away at her from the inside. The mark was about the size of his hand, the upper edge of it covered by the lower curve of her bra.
Even a latent teenaged F-boy brain is a formidable thing, and in spite of the circumstances, it made sure to make note of the colour of its favourite girl's bra: black. Simple, classic, sensible in its way, just everyday clothing to her, but also dangerous, provocative, not lacy but maybe silky…
"Right, well done," his mother said, appearing at his elbow again, her wand drawn. Draco jumped away as she worked over Hermione's bruise-like purple wound, but she beckoned him back. "Now, hold this still while I stick it in place," she said, handing him the poultice to press to Hermione's side. But he was too embarrassed to have his mother seeing him looking at Hermione this way, and he made a poor job of it.
"Honestly, watch what you're doing, Draco," she scolded him. "My darling little gentleman, you are quite taken with her, aren't you?"
He was still blushing as his mother did him the mercy of smoothing Hermione's vest back into place herself.
She might have said more to Draco about this girl but Molly was stirring, her voice a tiny moan in her throat. Lucius bounded forward to take Molly's hand. "Hang on, Molly. They're seeing to you. They're - Cissa, please!" he called.
She was giving Draco parting instructions, waving at the vials Snape had already set out. "Now have her drink the rest of those, and in precisely that order."
She unearthed two more bottles from her apparently endlessly extended medical chest and sped to bring them to Molly.
Over the course of their childhoods, Narcissa's sons had seen her treat their own injuries and ailments, but they'd never seen her like this - as someone Snape and their father called out to for rescue, as a skilled healer saving other people's lives.
At least, Ronald hoped she was saving someone's life, bent over the bed, coaxing potions into his other mother. She had taken Lucius's place at Molly's bedside, speaking the most tender words that had ever passed between the two women. "Molly dear, you are so phenomenally strong. Open up and fight your way back to our family. Please..."
Lucius left them to it, receding to stand next to Ronald.
"What happened after we left the Ministry, Dad?" Ronald asked him. "I thought you were right behind us, but then it took so long for you to get here. She would have lost buckets of blood in that time. How could you wait like that?"
Lucius nodded. "I'm sorry, Ronald. There were new arrivals at the Ministry, after you left. Dumbledore appeared - "
"Brilliant!" Ronald interrupted, beaming to finally have a shred of good news. "So Harry's safe then."
Lucius nodded again. "Yes, Potter was in robust health when last I saw him. But minutes after Dumbledore arrived, the Dark Lord came as well. The battle between them was - most destructive. We were in the hall, about to escape through the Floos when the pair of them and Potter and Bella came crashing through to have it out. Great tidal waves of awesome magic that had the Floos flickering in and out of service. Devastation - the Ministry can't deny the Dark Lord's return any longer. That's for certain. He was driven off for now, but he will return, more ravenous for revenge than ever. He always returns."
Ronald was wide-eyed, shocked, not sure what to think except to ask, "And Harry was there for all of that too?"
Lucius was not looking at Ronald but at the mothers of his children, fighting for life across the room. Molly had ominously fallen silent, even as Narcissa continued to call out to her.
"Potter was no mere witness," he went on. "I don't understand what happened, but he seemed to be the crux of much of the magic. His emotions, his powers were - heightened."
Ronald frowned. "Was that down to us? To Molly and Hermione and me getting injured?"
Lucius cleared his throat. "That and more. All of the Death Eaters but Bellatrix were captured by the headmaster with no casualties. The Order, on the other hand, was not so lucky."
Ronald blinked, his face blanching. "Someone got hurt worse than Molly? Someone else went and - died?"
Draco whirled around from where he was feeding the seventh potion to a groggy Hermione. "Hush. Does she really need to hear this right now?"
Lucius dropped a hand on Ronald's shoulder. "How close was she to Sirius Black?"
There was no time for Ronald to mourn for Harry's lost godfather, nor for Harry's loss of his godfather. His mother was calling him, her voice edged with something frantic for the first time in this medical ordeal.
"Ronald, lie down beside Molly," Narcissa said. "She's lost so much blood, too much to restore with replenishing potions alone. If I can't transfuse some from you, we're going to lose her."
Reeling with all the pain and death, Ronald stood frozen next to Hermione's chaise. "Lose Molly? First Sirius and now Molly?"
At that moment, Hermione was close enough to consciousness to hear him, but not close enough to control her response to Ronald's words. She began to sob, loud and wild. "No, no, no, don't lose, don't lose."
Snape had grasped Ronald by the wrist and was leading him forcibly to the bed where Narcissa would cast the transfusion spell - a difficult, rather gory thing. "Draco, take Granger out of here," Snape hissed at him. "Take the rest of the potions to give her and get her settled somewhere else."
Draco's bedroom was dark as the door swung open before him. He stepped inside, and the house turned up the lights in the sconces along the walls. All at once, Hermione, who had been little more than dead weight as he carried her along the corridor, tossed her arm over his shoulder.
"Malfoy?"
"Yes, Granger. It's me."
"Where are we?" she asked, her eyes still closed. "I like it. It smells like you."
She was talking, not raving, not sobbing. After the hellish hour they'd just spent in his parents' field hospital of a bedroom, Hermione finally sounded like herself, and he was so relieved he laughed.
"This is my bedroom," he said. "But don't get any ideas, Granger. You're here to drink some potions and get some sleep."
He leaned over his bed to set her down, her arms gaining more strength, clinging to his neck as he tried to rise to standing. "Don't leave me here," she said. "I would deserve it, but please don't go."
He smirked. "You remember sticking my feet to the ground and flying away with my brother while I begged you to stay?"
She caught his hand, as if he needed to be restrained. "You were right. It was a trap. I'm sorry."
He sat on the bed next to her, pushing her hair behind her ear. Her eyes weren't wide open but they were focused on him. "You're safe now," he said. "You're acting like yourself again. That's all I need from you. It's alright."
"But it's not. Sirius - Mrs. Weasley - Harry - "
He hushed her. "I know. Don't think about it anymore tonight. There's nothing more that can be done for any of them right now. You do, however, have more you need to do for yourself." There was a clinking of glass as he set the final vials on the table at her side. "Here, you've taken potions one through eight. You've still got nine and ten to go."
Hermione tried to sit up on her own but in the end, Draco had to prop her up to drink. "Your mother is a powerful potioneer," she told him, grimacing between doses nine and ten.
Draco nodded. "Yes. She was Snape's potions lab partner all through school."
"He owes her then."
He snorted. "Not anymore."
With his help, Hermione settled onto her back in his bed once the potions were finished. He pulled the impossibly puffy covers to her chin, kissed her cheek, and moved to stand.
"Malfoy," she said, her hand falling to the empty space where she wanted him to lie beside her. "I didn't leave with Harry today out of any feeling that he means more to me than you do. He doesn't. Don't think that. I chose you when I went with him. I don't put much stock in prophecy, but I do believe that Harry has to survive for Voldemort to die. And Voldemort has to die so your family can live. I can't choose you without choosing Harry too."
He let out his breath, hanging his head.
She patted the mattress again. "So don't you leave me now. I need you. Be close to me. Don't be mad."
"I'm not mad," he said. "It's just - "
"Then I don't want to hear it," she said, her bossiness returning as the final potion kicked in. "Now come here. Comfort me."
Draco pulled back the blanket and slid into the bed. It was already warm with her body, her heat like a shield reminding him to go slow, be gentle, not selfish. "Am I hurting you?" he asked as he let himself rest beside her.
She winced. "I'm hurt, but it's not you. And it's hard to get comfortable with this soggy thing stuck to my side. What is it, anyway?" Her hand worked beneath the covers, feeling at the poultice.
He gave a nervous cough. "That's potion number three being released slowly through your skin directly onto the cursed area."
"Oh," she said. "The cursed area. You helped to treat - the cursed area?"
He cleared his throat. "Yeah."
"Draco Malfoy, did you take my shirt off of me?"
"Not all the way."
"What did you see?"
"Nothing that couldn't be helped," he mumbled.
"Oh really? What colour is my bra today?"
He made a strangled sound, meaning to fib and say he hadn't seen it, but then second-guessing himself, planning to laugh it off by answering with any colour but black. Only he was suddenly unable to remember what any of the other colours were called.
"That's it," she said. She rolled stiffly onto her good side, but her fingers were nimble, working at the buttons of his shirt.
"Granger, what - "
"Fair is fair, Malfoy. You've seen me."
"This is hardly the time - "
"No, this is the perfect time," she grinned at him tugging the tails of his shirt out of his waistband. "I'm not ready for all of you yet. But I need as much as I can bear tonight. And my injury and the fact that you wouldn't take advantage of me under the influence of - what is it - ten potions, all of that guarantees this won't get out of hand."
He sighed and tipped his head against hers. "Won't it?"
"No, it won't," she said, undoing his cufflinks and tossing them behind him. "Please, Malfoy. Let me sleep with my face against your skin. It heals me. You are potion eleven. Please."
He muttered something she couldn't quite hear - something about his potion - before groaning, "You are killing me, Granger."
She had stopped just short of pushing his shirt down over his shoulders, toward his wrists. She waited, her eyes on his, pleading for permission.
"Fine, go ahead," he said.
She caressed his cheek, drawing his face down to kiss her even though she knew her mouth must taste of potions. It didn't deter him. His kiss was warm and eager and he prolonged and deepened it as she pulled him free of his shirt and dropped it out of the bed.
His breath was ragged and rough as she broke the kiss to explore his chest, arms, and shoulders with her face and fingers. The smell of him was stronger, sharper without the barriers of fabric. The texture of his skin changed as she ranged over it from smooth to rough, tender to firm. She dragged her cheek over him, the sweet involuntary hum of hers sounding between them.
"Just so you know," he said, "this is nothing like the way I handled your torso to help my mother put that poultice on."
She laughed, her breath against his sternum. His bare skin was electrified, all of him ready for all of her, his hands twitching to do more than just lay against her jaw and the nape of her neck. But she was settling in, easing into a position she could be still and sleep in. She spoke, "Thank you for being here today to put me back together."
He palmed the back of her head, bowing his face into her hair, blowing out his lust and reaching for what was beyond it. He wanted to tell her. He had to. "You don't have to believe me," he began, "and you don't have to remind me that I'm sixteen, and you certainly don't have to say it back, but I love you."
She nestled closer, and he felt her lips curve into a smile against his skin before she told him, "I believe you."
Hermione awakened in the morning in Draco Malfoy's bed, his sleeping body warm against her good side, sunlight streaming through a high arched window, and Ronald leaning over them, his arm wrapped from fingers to shoulder in a thick bandage.
"Feeling better then, Hermione?" he crowed.
Draco startled awake, swearing. "Shut it, Ronald." He slid his arm from beneath Hermione's head and sat up, the blanket falling far enough from Ronald to see he was still dressed in yesterday's trousers.
"Only half-naked under there? Well, that's for the best." Ronald managed to say this before a pillow flew hard at his head. In spite of his injury, he stopped it like a fine quidditch keeper.
Draco didn't see the save. He was rummaging through the room for a T-shirt, settling on something from a European quidditch club Hermione didn't know.
"How's Mrs. Weasley?" she asked, though based on Ronald's mood, she hardly needed to.
"Weak, but snatched from death's door, thanks to pints and pints of my blood," Ronald answered.
Draco looked his brother over. "Heroic of you. And you don't look much worse for wear for it."
Ronald shrugged. "It wasn't too bad. But there's no rest for us heroes, right Hermione? Dumbledore wants us back at Hogwarts, quick as we can. Seems Harry's not coping well on his own."
Hermione frowned. "Poor Harry. Of course he's not. I'll get up - "
"Not yet," Ronald said. "The Order is coming here for a memorial service for Sirius this evening. Harry's coming too. There's no body to care for, not even a wand or a favourite jacket to bury. So we may as well press on, I suppose." His sunny mood was fading, making his arm hurt, forcing him to sit in the chair at Draco's desk.
Hermione was struggling to sit up in bed, Draco rushing to arrange the pillows behind her. "I've been thinking," she said. "We've all paid a terrible price for it, but even so, Harry did the right thing in the end by going to the Ministry yesterday. Whether he meant to or not, he ended up exposing Voldemort. Sirius's sacrifice will benefit the entire country. Things will change now. They've got to."
"They're sure to change for us, at any rate," Draco said. "The Dark Lord knows the Malfoys are his enemies now. I flung his bloody snake into the yard by its tail last night. There's no coming back from that."
"So stop calling him the Dark Lord, as if you respect him," Ronald said.
"That's what Snape calls him."
"Yeah, and he's a two-faced suck up, isn't he?"
"He's in a complicated and difficult position, and I won't have you talking about him that way."
"Snape? You won't have me talking about Snape that way? What is the matter with you?"
"Knock it off," Hermione shouted over them. The boys turned to find her picking at the edge of her poultice. "Look at this, Malfoy. It's half off. It must be finished its treatment."
"Don't tug at it like that, you'll hurt yourself," he said, bending close, pushing her shirt out of the way. "Peel it off gently."
"Right," Ronald said, backing away at the sight of Draco's hands in Hermione's shirt. "I'll leave you to it."
At sunset on a mid-June evening, almost exactly at the solstice, Sirius Black's surviving friends and family (with the exception of his cousin Bellatrix Lestrange), arrived for his memorial at Malfoy Manor.
Dumbledore had wanted the children to return to school and proceed as normally as they could, muscling past Harry's grief and moving on seamlessly. But Narcissa Malfoy was not as deferential to Dumbledore as the members of his Order, and she wouldn't hear of it. She demanded a seam, as neat a seam as they could make. And she informed the newly reinstated headmaster that Ronald, Draco, and Hermione would not return to school until Harry was given a moment away to mourn.
The service was quiet, small. Remembering the friendship between Padfoot the dog and Crookshanks, Hagrid made sure to bring the beast along with him. Crookshanks wouldn't sit with Hermione, but minced gracefully over the mourners as they sat in a grand old garden under the orange sky. When Remus Lupin returned to his seat after sharing a eulogy, and couldn't stop shaking silently in Nymphadora Tonks's arms, Crookshanks rubbed against his shins, mewing his condolences.
Since Molly's bloody robes turned out to be unsalvageable, she appeared at the funeral wearing black dress robes Narcissa had found in her own closet and altered to fit. They were well-made but not ostentatious - nothing to make Arthur uncomfortable. Still weak and delicate, Molly had walked to the garden for the service supported by Arthur on one side and Ronald on the other.
"So you saved her," Arthur said when the service ended, shaking Lucius's hand for the first time in their long, long acquaintance.
"Narcissa saved her," he said. "Narcissa and a blood donation from Ronald."
"Ah, then they've done us both a great service, haven't they," Arthur said.
Lucius's nod was more of a bow. "Yes, they have."
The Weasley twins came as guests to the service as well. It was the pair of them that let the gathering shift away from its formal sombreness and toward something people could smile at.
They stood in the manor's grand entrance, at the foot of the staircase nodding and cracking their knuckles. "So this is Ronnie's little cottage, is it?" George said.
Fred nodded eagerly. "Yeah, so many possibilities here. Endless, really."
"Now wait," Ronald said, pointing his finger at them. "Don't you try to pull a prank on me in this house. It's ancient and enchanted and it foils anyone who means me harm."
Their eyebrows raised in unison.
"Does it?" George said.
"That sounds like a claim that needs testing," Fred agreed.
"How does a house - "
"Even an enchanted one - "
"Understand what a wizard might mean by 'harm'?"
"I wonder…"
Molly dropped a hand on the piano keys, still sitting where Arthur had left her to rest after walking back from the garden. Her voice was just as loud as the instrument. "Don't you DARE make trouble as guests in someone else's house! It is not as if I never told you how to behave - "
The twins were cheering. "Hey, Mum is back to her old self already!"
Along the corridor, Lucius paused where he stood in the dining room doorway about to invite everyone in for tea. There was loud Weasley laughter ringing through his house - the voices of Ronald's brothers, and their mother, a girl he had fancied in school, who would always have a bit of his heart, and who lived today thanks to Narcissa Black Malfoy, the best, most loveable woman Lucius had ever known.
Snape joined him where he stood in the doorway. He scowled toward the sound of the laughter. "What have you brought upon yourself, Lucius?" Snape mused.
He smirked in reply. "I'm not sure. But I do believe I will be needing more of it and more often."
Ginny Weasley had come along too. Instead of hollering up the hall with her mother and older brothers, she had lingered in the garden with Harry in the near darkness.
"You should have let me come to the Ministry with you," she was telling him. "We came racing to the forest, searching for you, all of us completely prepared to go along."
Harry sighed. "I know. And thank you. But it was for the best you didn't. Nothing was what I expected once we got there. I'd say I'm sorry I left you, but I'm not."
She punched him lightly on the arm as they strolled over the pavement. "Next time, Potter," she said. "You'd better bring me next time. I mean - because - well, how am I to start my epic romance with you if you keep leaving me behind?"
His feet scuffed beneath him. "Your - start your - what?"
She laughed at him. "Try to act surprised when I turn to you one day and snog the life out of you with everyone we know watching," she said. "But for now, don't forget to come find me whenever you're blue." She was getting tall, and she didn't need to boost herself very high on her tiptoes to kiss Harry, very lightly and sweetly, on the cheek.
Harry stood in the twilight of the manor gardens half-smiling, half-stunned, blinking furiously behind his lenses. "Th-thanks - for that."
She was walking backwards, away from him. "Excuse now, will you Harry?" she said. "I have a feeling Ronald may be in need of a chaperone."
There were many times when Ginny would have been right about that. Now was not one of them. At that moment, Ronald was trying to make a proper introduction between Pansy and Narcissa. But his mother wouldn't hold still for it, flitting around the kitchen, supervising refreshments as if that's what war heroes like to do best.
"Ah, yes," Narcissa was saying to them over her shoulder. "So this is the girl Bella meant when she spoke of 'the one hiding in the toilets.'"
Ronald's face flushed scarlet. "Mum, no. Bellatrix is - don't listen to her. Pansy is the best girl ever. Not - not - toilets - "
"It's alright, Ron," Pansy said. "Go ahead and tell your family that story. It's an excellent study of our gift for complex planning and teamwork, our ability to connect with each other no matter what our circumstances. I think love and toilets make a beautiful contrast, don't you agree?"
His gaze flicked between the two of them - two women raised in pure-blood wizard society, now excluding themselves from it; two women who, in spite of their strict training in etiquette, say whatever they think; two women fiercely loyal, firmly connected to men they loved.
While he marveled at them, their conversation moved on from toilets to the utter loveliness of the canapes that were about to be sent out. Ronald stood blinking at his mother and his girlfriend, his girlfriend and his mother, each of them very much like the other, actually.
"Stars help me," he muttered. In fact though, he wasn't feeling scared, but blessed. He draped his good arm around Pansy's waist and sunk his chin into her shoulder, watching adoringly as she rearranged the formation of a tray of deviled eggs. As she finished, she turned her head to kiss his face, and Narcissa turned away to smile.
Hermione did not leave with the rest of the guests at the end of the night. She had another week of potions to take and Narcissa thought she ought to supervise it herself. No one asked where she had slept the first night she stayed at the manor, but Narcissa did make a point of showing her personally to a guest room on the second night.
Before they went to bed, Draco and Hermione sat in an oversized armchair in the library, Crookshanks dozing along the top of it. Still recovering from her injury, Hermione was too tired to sit up or read. Instead, she lay with her head on Draco's thigh as he read aloud from a book of old wizard fairy tales. The manor's version of the book was old enough that the stories' endings were not always happy, not always what we would have wanted.
"What happens next, Malfoy?" she asked when he closed the book.
"Well, Dumbledore reinforces the protective wards on our house, Dad sees about getting surgery to take the mark off his arm. It sounds as if Potter is going to be missing some school to research a theory Dumbledore's got about the Dark Lord and some missing old knick-knacks…"
"And what about us?" she asked. "We go back to school and hold hands in the corridors and snog during prefect duties and - what? Just wait?"
"Wait?" he said. "Wait for what?"
"For - for something to happen, to go wrong, to pull me onto the back of a thestral again."
"Granger, that's not waiting," Draco said, setting the book aside and pulling her closer. "That's living. That's a life. A normal life, like most people get, like you're going to have to get used to, so you can enjoy the days when the Dark Lord is gone for good. And he will be gone. I don't know how long my father can stay pent up here at home. He'd better be gone someday."
She laughed, smoothing his shirt against his chest. "He will be gone? Can that truly happen?"
"Yes, it can." And though he didn't know how, he added, "Believe me."
Hermione rose to her knees, her face level with his, her arms around his neck. "I do believe you." It was the second time since she'd come to Malfoy Manor that she'd said it. And both times, it was her way of telling him that she loved him too.