The wind moves about them with a restlessness that exactly mirrors the feeling in Hermione's stomach.
Nerves on edge, from the moment they Apparated to the beach outside of Severus' wards.
"Where are we?" she asks quietly, moving, following the backside of Draco who, in turn, follows his Godfather.
She tries to keep pace with them, but their steps are long, eerily silent against the waves moving about the cliffs.
"Are we close to the other house?" Hermione asks, pulling herself up onto one of the large boulders in order to reach a steep path that leads upwards into the night.
Draco turns, his face tight in the little of light of stars above their heads. Though Hermione does not need the light to know that he is struggling against the anger, against the fury, against so many different emotions that it is hard for her to pick them out and label them.
"We are close' the two houses were never but a couple day journey by motor."
Hermione takes the hand that Draco holds out for her to climb up a particularly steep part of the slope, her trainers slipping along the wet stone.
"You know how to drive?" The question asked even before she can recall how the words sound.
A tense nod from the man in front of her shows that he is not paying much attention as it is and he is not paying enough attention to be upset by her words or the tone she says them in.
He drops her hand and she continues without assistance, a part of her wanting to snap at him, wanting him to react out whatever is going on behind the mask he has on, the cloak of the Malfoy prince he has put about his shoulders. However, knowing, at the same time, instinctively perhaps, that it is, for the preservation of so many different things, that those precautions are in place.
A part of her is proud of the man walking in front of her.
Even if another part of her scared of what is to come. And what it could mean.
Hermione feels the wards as soon as she comes over the top of the cliff. Barely able to stand and not turn away, the feeling of sickness, of a torrid headache, ripping through her body. She watches, eyes watering as the tall dark man in front of them waves his hand, a twitch of wrist, hand, his ebony wand barely apparent in the darkness of the night.
When the wards fall Hermione feels instantly better, normalcy pouring through every part of her body, going limp for a moment at the relief of having such pain taken away.
"Come on," a tense voice, pulling her from her relief, making her look up. She wants to catch his eye, she wants to catch his hand, hold it to her, tell him- well, tell him anything that would allow him to find comfort.
Hermione knows, in a way, the concern she feels for him, the focus she is placing on him, is in order to keep her own mind from going off on what it means that she is here. To keep herself in absolute check against the fear and the fury that is slowly gathering in her belly as they walk closer to the house that she now can just make out in the distance.
A run down home, slowly giving in to the restless winds from the sea.
A small smile, bitter, tinged with something dark, shadowed, all together unlike the woman, but like her just the same. It graces her face for a moment, a sliding about her lips, the tightening of her magic.
When no one is asking, or looking, Hermione wishes for Lucius' death, the kiss of a dementor and all that entails, though, on principle, she should find it wrong. However, walking towards the run down home with the knowledge that absolutely no magic is allowed makes her smile that smile.
Its brilliant in the justification of it.
Though the feeling slowly moves away as they come to the house steps.
Hermione does not watch Severus take down the rest of the wards, she, instead watches Draco, tracing the contours of his face, his shoulders, the relaxed nature of his hands at his side. All relaxed, all deceptive.
Reminding her of the one time, the one and only time she had seen him at a Death Eater meeting. A near miss, one of the few times that she went with Harry and Ron to gather information on a Horcrux. They'd Apparated into a clearing, near a forest, somewhere Ron and Harry had been several times before. The cave they were interested in was a little ways away and without thought to stealth, though, so many months into the war, stealth had almost come second nature, they'd moved through the trees towards the cave.
Harry had stopped them with a raised hand, and she can remember, even now, the feel of panic gathering in her chest as she watched Harry drop to the ground in a swift movement. She'd followed only when Ron had grabbed her hand and dragged her down.
She'd looked for him, though at the time she had not thought that's what she did. But she had, crawling on her belly to peer through the brush at the gathering of dark cloaked men, their faces not hidden by masks, not on that night at least.
She'd looked for the shock of white hair against the darkness and she saw him almost immediately, slightly behind the tall dark form of his mentor.
Studying him, from where she lay, trying to calm her breath even as the blood had pounded in her ears. He'd looked calm, an easy stance, slightly slouched, slightly arrogant, even standing in front of the man who had made him kill his mother, who had led him into certain death again and again. Who he had seen torture, rape, maim, and kill, he stood. Easy. Malfoy prince. Slytherin hair.
Perfectly groomed. With a face of deceptive calmness.
It had shocked her, at the time, looking back, she can remember the almost feel of betrayal moving through her system even as Harry had hissed for them to move, retreat, back away from what was taking place.
A betrayal, to see how easy he was in the midst of those who did such things. The knowledge, that he too did those things, albeit for the Order, to bring important information, but still, he did… things.
But another feeling, as the three of them had made their way through the forest. A feeling of panic, not for their discover, not because they were running away from a very bad situation, or the making of one, no panic for Draco. Knowledge, that if, for some reason, the control in which he held himself would break that he would die.
And not easily.
That night, when he came back from the meeting in peace she had hugged him. Not in front of anyone, no, when he excused himself from the kitchen to clean up, she'd followed him. He'd turned, not saying a word, those gray eyes looking on her with an expression she couldn't read. An expression that had nothing to do with her, but with what had taken place. The same expression he had every time he came back.
Barely there. Still in control.
Hermione had seen it and before she knew anything she'd wrapped her arms around him, thinking, perhaps he would shove her away, perhaps he would yell at her, call her names.
Tensing for him to do such a thing.
But he hadn't, standing still for a moment, before one arm came up slowly and curled about her shoulders, pulling her into his body.
For just a moment.
But long enough.
Hermione remembers this, all of it, in the instant before Severus opens the door to the house, in the instant that she looks on Draco and sees that look, barely there, but apparent.
Tired. Resolved.
For an instant in those gray eyes, before blinking out to the calm facade of someone that apparently feels nothing at all.
She reaches for his hand, reaching before she realizes it, to give the hand a squeeze, to ensure him she is right there, and will be.
But he moves before she can grasp those long fingers. Moving, to open the door instead of Severus.
The feel of his magic is the only indication of his anguish, thick, sluggish, a dark shadow of movements tightly controlled but all the more rebellious because of it. Hermione desperately hopes he can keep this control. Keep this dark magic in check.
She walks in after Severus, who walks in after Draco.
Hermione barely perceives the threadbare nature of the walls, barely realizes that the wood floors are slightly sloped and that the entire house creaks rather ominously under the onslaught of the wind off the coast.
She doesn't notice, her entire focus on Draco who stands in a doorway.
Hermione makes her way silently to his side, peering inwards, just slightly, just enough, looking into what appears to have been once a library, books scattered here and there, a fire in the grate, a desk that had seen much better days, two sagging worn chairs.
And Lucius Malfoy.
Her breath catches to see the man who killed her parents.
"What is the meaning of this Severus?" A harsh voice, made harsher by the years of disuse, though the command is still there, the arrogance is still there.
A pause. Pregnant, malevolent, horrid in its implications as the two Malfoys look upon one another for the first time in ten years.
One living.
One barely so.
"I thought you would be more pleased to see me, father." Draco says, and his tones are silk, darkness, rich and smooth through the room, a tone that would rival his mentor standing at his back.
Lucius looks on Draco for a moment, his eyes clearly unable to hide the emotions there, the panic, the embarrassment, but also, the pain. So very, very much pain.
Hermione's breath catches to see it.
Lucius looks away from his son and pierces Severus with a look, distasteful, spiteful, and in a very real way, pouting.
"What is the meaning of this, Severus? I was of the understanding, the clear understanding, that no one but you and that foolish Potter boy were to know of my existence."
Hermione can't see Severus' face but when he speaks she can clearly hear a note of cruel amusement.
"It appears, old friend, that times are changing."
A silence, as the older Malfoy looks on Severus, before finally turning his gaze once more to Draco.
"What do you want?"
Blunt. Too the point. Not at all the elegant and cultured man of the past.
For a moment Hermione is given the distinct impression that Draco is gathering his magic for a retaliation, for revenge, can feel it pulling on her own magic, the pulse of it in her head, even as she tries to control her reaction to his magic. Fear swells in what the man in front of her is preparing to do.
Before it bleeds out, the magic falling away, the tension moving on, and once more she feels the tiredness, the complete hopelessness that has shadowed Draco's step since they Apparated.
"I need a book." He answers. Truthfully.
Lucius studying his son, his face expressionless even as the light plays on the harsh lines and plains of his face, highlighting the lank hair about his chin, falling to his shoulders. Giving stark confirmation of the thinness and decay of what was once one of the more powerful wizards in the world.
It gives Hermione a strange warm feeling of satisfaction.
And then a stab of guilt knowing that Draco can feel her reaction just as well as if it was said out loud.
Though she does not get an answering emotion from him and he still has not looked away from his father.
Face still carefully blank.
"What book?" Lucius finally asks.
A moment, where Hermione knows Draco is wondering how best to answer the question, how best to approach the situation.
He goes for blunt. "One of my mother's."
It is not Hermione's imagination when the all ready pale man grows slightly paler, noticing that the long skeletal hands that grasp the chair arms tighten causing the knuckles to stand out in contrast.
"There are no books of your mother's here. There is nothing of your mother's here." The tone is normal, however, or as normal as can be for a man who has not had company in ten years but for a tall, dark and thoroughly forbidding wizard.
That same dark and forbidding wizard stands just inside the library, easy in his stance though she can read, even from where she stands in the shadows, the slight tension in his shoulders.
She understands, realizing just then that at some point she had gone for her wand and it now is grasped in her own white knuckled clutch.
The tension she feels off the young wizard is trying on her magic, and with Lucius' words she feels the pain as if it were here own. A slicing pain, through her mind, down her spine, brilliant in its heat. She forces the moan down her throat by placing her wandless hand, curled into a fist, against her mouth and closing her eyes.
She knows the pain comes from Draco, though he did not flinch at the words and still stands lazy in the doorway.
Hermione has never fully understood the man's control and she is now amazed by it.
In awe of it.
Even as she tries to control her overwhelming desire to hex Lucius herself.
Draco does not respond to his father's words and Hermione remembers him telling her once that silence is sometime the greatest of weapons.
It takes a surprisingly small amount of time for Lucius to break, one of those skeletal hands, rising up in tremors to push back hair from his face. At one point the gesture would have been regal, haughty. Right then it is desperate and pathetic.
"There is at trunk." Lucius starts, placing his hand once more on the arm of the chair. "Upstairs in the front bedroom. It is all that is left of your mother here."
The words are quiet, barely spoken.
Draco stares at his father. Stares hard, anger in check, hatred in check.
But just barely.
He nods once and turns on his heels, moving towards the stairway and up before Hermione even realizes he does so.
She follows him, taking the stairs two at a time in order to catch up with him, leaving Severus to Lucius, and good riddance.
Gaining the second story she sees him disappear into a room and she walks quietly but quickly to the door, pushing it slightly open and stopping still to see the normally so very composed man shaking, one hand placed against the windowsill, the other placed against the wall, forehead against the glass.
Hermione immediately goes to him, echoes of her memory before drifting through her mind as she presses her body close to his back, wrapping her arms around his middle.
He stiffens for a moment, stiffens and Hermione prepares to be told off, but as before, the body she presses against relaxes into her.
She presses her cheek against the roughness of his black cloak and holds him, gently, her magic, their magic, circling about them as she holds him up both physically and magically.
No words are spoken, standing together, the small witch curled about the backside of the taller wizard, her hands arms around his waist, hands grasped in front of him.
Holding him.
And slowly she feels the shaking subside, both magically and physically, slowly she feels the composure reextert itself and reluctantly she lets go, taking a step backwards.
Draco turns and looks down on her, his face guarded, but not expressionless, not blank, pain clear in the dark swirl of storm cloud eyes and the tightness about his mouth.
Hermione puts a hand up and cups his cheek and for a moment he closes his eyes, for a moment he stands there with his cheek in her hand and Hermione feels a rush of emotion so very strong, so very protective, so righteous in its brilliance, and knows she would do anything for this wizard.
Absolutely anything at all.
Though she doesn't say it, and when he turns to place a kiss in her palm she holds back the sigh that wants to escape, the breath at such a tender action.
Even in the midst of what is taking place.
She lets her hand drop and Draco opens his eyes, meeting hers once more, briefly, quickly, before looking over her shoulder.
A trunk.
Against a wall, old battered, but shining where someone has taken the time to polish the old wood, polish the clasps so they gleam bronze in the dim light.
The knowledge that no one else but Lucius could have done it, that no one else had access but the woman's husband, is not lost on Hermione and when Draco opens the trunk and inside there is an orderliness to the contents. As if someone had carefully placed them within the trunk.
Hermione can once again feel Draco's magic pull about her, the blood magic almost roaring in her ears, but when he pulls out a gold ring engraved with markings his hands do not shake and his face displays no emotions.
"My mother's wedding ring." He answers for her though she has not, and would not, ask the question.
A flash of something, something primitive, elementary, remembering that the man kneeling in front of the trunk, holding his mother's wedding ring, was the same man that brought her to her death.
Feeling the need to do something, anything, feeling his magic so very heavy, weighing her down in its darkness, in its absolute, blackness. No longer just shadowed, but like oil, dark and thick, pooling between them.
She falls to her knees beside him and without thought, takes the ring, ignoring the sudden fury that crosses his face, ignoring him, as she looks into the trunk and sees other things, other personal belongings. A dress. Dried flowers. Hair clips.
Personal things.
Intimate things.
She gently lifts them from the trunk.
"What are you doing?" Hissed next to her.
She does not look over to where Draco is staring at her, feeling his gaze, his glare, even as his magic attacks her.
Hermione ignores it, pulling out a crocheted wedding veil.
"I am helping."
A pause.
"I don't need your help." A low murmur. A warning.
Hermione looks over then, placing silk gloves on top of the wedding veil, looking over at the face who is now glowering, who is holding himself in control, but barely. She puts a hand up to touch his cheek again but Draco flinches, and pulls away.
She lets her hand drop.
Looking back into the trunk and taking out a delicate silver necklace, a small perfectly detailed ruby snake hanging from it. "We don't have time," Hermione explains, gently, using her magic, their bond, to help her words, to make him listen. "I know this excruciating, I know, I understanding, I do, but we have to get the book." A pause then, out of compassion, out of love. "We can come back, later Draco, after this is done, after all is done, we will come back for this trunk."
She lays the necklace down with the other items.
"We will take the trunk now."
A decision.
Hermione finds herself shaking her head.
This time the explosion is not verbal, its magical, and she rocks on her knees from the impact of her anger.
She looks away from the trunk, meeting cold steel eyes once more.
"Don't you see Draco, this is all he has left."
A pause, a narrowing of eyes.
"He doesn't deserve even this."
Hermione tilting her head, curls moving about her face. "I know, I think so to, on some level, that he should be punished, but don't you see how this is taken care of, how the trunk is taken care of."
Struggling to find words that will not offend, that will not have the wizard next to her erupting in anger, in frustration, in pain.
But deciding, finally, the truth is the best.
"He loves her still, no matter what the past, or how it makes no sense. Draco, your father still loves your mother."
The fury, whipping about her in jagged slices of cold pain.
"He does not deserve to love my mother."
The words spoken in the silky tones of murder.
Hermione nods, not looking away from those eyes. "No, you are right, perhaps he doesn't, but he does, and you wont take away his memories."
His hands, curling at his side, ready to strike out, harm, demolish. Hermione knows, she can feel it through their bond.
"Why?"
A question, rather than something else, rather than a demand, a snort of disgust, a fury. A testament to the changes between them.
Hermione reaches up again and this time he lets her touch his cheek, her finger moving across his jaw, over his lips.
"Because you are a better man than that."
Words, whispered in the silence of the room.
Draco stares at her and she sees those steel grey eyes soften, not to the quicksilver she loves so much, but to the storm clouds of earlier.
Hermione drops her hand away but before she can turn back to the trunk to begin their search anew Draco reaches over with his own hands, cups her face, palms against her cheeks and kisses.
Brutally.
A confirmation.
A thanks.
So much.
And she willingly opens to the assault, her own hands coming up to run through the silky strands of hair, her body instantly humming at the contact.
She just barely strangles the groan when he pulls away, putting his forehead against hers.
Stilling. Sharing breath.
And then pulling away.
The go back to the trunk without another word until several moments later Draco lets out a hiss of breath and pulls, from under another lovely dress, an old looking book, leather, worn around the edges.
"Is that it?" Hermione whispers, not sure why she whispers but feeling as if it is appropriate.
Draco nods almost in reverence, opening it quickly, and then shutting it almost as quickly.
Hermione looks up at him in surprise.
"Later," he explains. "I will take this, nothing else, but I will take this."
She nods, understanding.
The put the rest of the items back into the trunk. Draco lays a hand on the top piece of cloth, a blue silk that, if Hermione remembers correctly, would have exactly matched Narcissa's eyes.
Hermione feels her own eyes twinge in tears, seeing Draco close his, before opening them and gently shutting the top of the trunk.
They rise in tandum and move back down the stairs.
Lucius and Severus are sitting in the library, across from each other, staring at one another. Lucius, clearly annoyed, Severus as easily relaxed as always.
Lucius glances towards the door when he hears the noise, seeing his son, book in hand.
"You found it then?" He asks, and something in his voice is broken, like shattered pieces of glass long left out in the elements, duller than they once were.
"Yes."
One word. Hermione moves slightly at the tone of it, a movement she should have not made, as Lucius immediately heard it, and saw it, rising to his feet and raising a wandless hand almost immediately.
If the suddenness of his actions did not startle her so, Hermione would have found the older man's automatic defensive stance amusing.
As it is, she could just react, pulling her own wand, holding it easily in her grasp, even as she realizes that Draco stands in front of her.
Blocking her.
Shielding her.
The action is not lost on his father and a sneer, very much old, disdainful, arrogant. "So, you are protecting mudblood whores now?"
Draco's response immediately, rising a hand, with a wand, and the older man stumbles backwards, hitting his chair and immediately bound to it by thick ropes around his wrists and ankles.
The look on Lucius' face is shock and horror.
Draco walks slowly forward, wand now in his hand, though clearly he did not need it.
"Father, tut, tut, having to live like a Muggle, I would think you would have more respect for them now."
The older man's gaze narrows as he watches his son walk towards him, though he does not speak a word. Two spots of colour highlight his cheekbones and his all ready thin mouth is barely visible in his face.
Draco stops just in front of his father, looking down on his, the difference between them substantial now they stand so close.
One young, virile, alive, passion burning in his eyes.
The other world worn, barely living, and then living a life over bare existence.
"This, father, is Hermione Granger. In a few days I am going to ask her to be my wife. If she accepts then she will be the new mistress of Malfoy Manor, the new Mistress Malfoy in general. As you are dying and I have no desire ever to see you again, there is not much reason for me to care about your opinion on the matter one way or another, but, if for some strange reason, some weird stroke of fate, I do see you again, and you call her a mudblood, or anything else, I will kill you, and make no mistake that I can." A pause. A leer. "After all father, you were the one who taught me to murder."
The words. Making the elder Malfoy pale even further if such a thing is possible.
Hermione stares at Draco speechless. His words echoing about her mind as she looks on the man confronting his father.
A moment of silence, until Severus breaks the spell by standing up.
"We are done here then?" A drawl, easy, sarcasm just barely underlining the question.
"Yes." Draco says, turning his back on his father, on the stricken and pained expression there, on the murder still rushing through his veins.
Turns his back and goes to Hermione, lacing her hand with his own without thought, without any other need than to have contact with her.
His rock in the storm moving about his mind, his magic, his being.
She takes it without hesitation.
They leave the house, Severus following them, closing the door with a quiet click, creating the wards once more on the doors and the windows.
Draco and Hermione do not return to the house for another two years. Two years later, when Severus finds Lucius dead in the upstairs room, a crocheted wedding veil clutched in his dead fingers.