Notes: Thank you all for your amazing support. I am thankful for each and every one of you who has given this a chance.
WARNINGS: None!
14. I Am to Wait, Though Waiting So Be Hell
Draco counts raindrops. It's a pointless enterprise, but he has little else to do. Potter is currently away and Draco isn't allowed beyond the confines of his small bedroom and the adjoining loo. Another version of Draco, the one still trying to hide his scars with rancor, might have protested. But Draco saw Hermione Granger survive in a black pit with a bucket for waste and sustenance only when absolutely necessary. He can spend his days in a quiet garret in some unknown corner of England—he thinks it's still England.
Who would he talk to anyway? The Order doesn't know he exists—both Draco and Potter agreed it was an unnecessary risk to tell anyone else, so he's not even at an Order safe house. No one but Potter will know if he expires here.
And no one but Tom Riddle will care. A derisive snort escapes his chapped lips. Who is he kidding? Tom won't even care. Tom may be shagging Draco, but his devotion is to Granger.
Draco lets his head fall against the window, his breath fogging the pane. He watches the rain trace patterns through the condensation, imagines he is making art.
He hates that he misses the other boy. Hates that he can feel Tom's lips ghost over his skin when he closes his eyes. Hates that a glimpse of dark hair across the room makes him think of crystalline blue before luminous emerald. Whatever they have done has burrowed under his skin and now Draco is saturated in the memory of it.
He is beginning to realize that although their agreement specified no strings, he has woven himself quite the rope. He wonders if it will be substantial enough to hang himself.
He wipes a hand across the window, the fog of his breath fills the momentary void. Groaning, he turns away from the window and flops back on the single cot. It is the most uncomfortable surface Draco has ever slept on, all lumps and creaking frame, but he has never slept better.
For the first time in his life, he's free. A prisoner in this room, but free of obligation, of the constricting bonds of being a Malfoy. His last name has no meaning here. He is simply a boy without a home. A boy with a past that threatens to consume him, but also a future that may spare him.
Almost free, he amends, looking down at his arm. A plain black jumper covers the mangled skin beneath, but Draco knows every line and ridge of the flesh.
He has tried to burn the Dark Mark from his forearm. Twice.
Compared to the Cruciatus Curse, neither experience was particularly harrowing, but that hardly means anything. Both times hurt like Viper's Venom was eating through his flesh. He thinks perhaps he'll try Viper's Venom if he ever gets his hands on it.
Neither attempt worked. But he hasn't felt a burn—besides that of charred flesh—so perhaps he has managed to sever some portion of the connection. He suspects Tom will know exactly what to do.
But he hasn't been feeling particularly patient and the spare room and dirty white walls don't always lead him to the sanest of decisions. He often thinks of Granger and her madness. What seemed so foreign becomes more familiar with each passing day Potter fails to return.
He knows this is no punishment, knows this is a trifle to endure, but that doesn't stop his mind from sounding the depths of his sanity. Some days the well is not particularly deep.
He wishes he thought to ask Potter for pen and paper, if not charcoal. Then his agitated fingers could trace the lines of his thoughts, letting the worry pour through his pen onto the paper below. He's traced ephemeral patterns in the fog of his breath at the window, but Draco yearns for something lasting, something he can hold against his fluttering heart in the dead of the night when he feels the bite of solitude most keenly.
Thinking, he decides, has become his least favorite occupation. But perhaps that is the true price of freedom. The ability to think whatever he chooses, to imagine a million paths and know he could take any one of them. To see a future of a million patterns of weft and weave, but know he will trace only one thread, that he will leave the rest behind.
Draco has never been particularly fond of hard choices. It is one of the many reasons he knows he is a coward. When given the opportunity to break with expectation, he remains steadily on target, dull and entirely as anticipated.
Except for the business with Astoria.
But he only came clean then, only took the more complicated path, because he would not see Astoria shamed because of his cowardice. He isn't sure he'd have made the sacrifice for anyone else.
Except, of course, Harry Potter.
He wishes his feelings remained simple. That he only had a schoolboy crush on Potter, but it's all so much more than that. Before Potter was more idea than boy, all disheveled hair and forbidden desire. A fever dream of hormones and hatred. But now Draco knows Potter, has talked with him extensively without trying to kill him or land a verbal blow. He knows how tight Potter's jaw clenches when he's thinking about Granger. How his pulse pounds at the base of his throat when he imagines his final confrontation with the Dark Lord.
Draco sees so much more than full lips and freckles he wants to trace with his lips. He sees a boy—a leader, who is just as piecemeal as Draco. He is no more a natural-born savior than Draco, but instead of caving inward, instead of succumbing to his lowest common denominator, he faces the future with brilliant emerald eyes wide and his heart unapologetically on his sleeve. He embodies a different type of strength than Draco has ever known. One that yields, but refuses to break.
As much as Draco frets over the ties that bind him to Tom Riddle, he worries far more about those he feels closing the distance between him and Potter. He is not ready feel his heart shredded quite so thoroughly.
And yet he has no power to stop what's begun, what he never imagined to be truly possible. He prays Tom contacts him soon, before he loses too much of himself.
The rain continues to patter gently against the pane. He goes back to counting errant beads of water as they skitter across the glass.
Hermione walks again. Slowly. In fits and starts and almost steps. She falls more than she stands until one day she doesn't.
Her skin evolves from sallow grey and mottled yellow to rosy damask.
She sits on the pale sand of the beach and listens to the chatter of distant voices—tourists on holiday or locals gathering for a beer at the shore. They are no longer in England. She finds this fact comforting rather than alarming. The local language is one she doesn't understand, that doesn't seem familiar to her scattered brain. She is perfectly content to misunderstand.
She eats fine meats—small bites at first, then entire sausages and steaks. She nibbles on chunks of dark bread that fill her instantly. She selects fruits from the local market by color, not taste, reveling in the rainbows she creates.
Tom is patient, never alarmed by her caprices or her idle stares. He lets her take the lead. Hermione decides when she is comfortable to visit the market and how close she will stand to the patrons. It takes several days before she can hand their money—Muggle coins, to the cashier without flinching. It takes another two before she can make her lips twist upward when she murmurs danke shön.
Tom confuses her. She knows too much about him—about his dark desires—for this gentle behavior to make any sense. But neither does she doubt him. They are isolated here, in this coastal town at the mouth of the Elbe River. She does not remember enough to survive without him, so she trusts that he will help her. She does not think about later, when magic and power and other allegiances will inevitably return to their lives.
She walks the path from the sea, the memory of worms squishing between her toes in the wet sands of low tide a visceral ghost against her skin. She does her best not to squirm. She doesn't quite hate the feeling, but neither does she enjoy it.
The sun sinks later each day, the horizon promising summer breezes and warmth beneath her skin. She thinks she'd like to watch the sun sink as the infinite tide trickles out, its rays glittering in the calm water for miles.
She takes no ray of sunlight for granted nor any breath of fresh sea-salt air. The fear that it will all vanish at a moment's notice, that she will be underground in the coal-black night again, never fully retreats. It lingers at the edges of sunlight, in the shadows she casts across the sand even at high-noon, in the fathomless depths of Tom's eyes. She does not think she will ever outgrow this fear.
Tom is standing at their makeshift stove, a single burner he claims to have purchased, but she is sure he stole. Despite the meager appliance, the aroma coming from the pot is robust, making her mouth water.
Tom smiles at her and stirs. She is reminded painfully of her father. Hermione has no idea where he is now, but she can see him standing next to her mother in the kitchen, laughing, a spoon to his lips as he tested her latest creation. She blinks and only Tom looks back, stare heavy, but comforting. She steps closer and peers into the pot. "What is it?"
He laughs, low and oh so real. She likes it when he cracks open like this, when she sees the boy instead of the monster. When she can imagine his soul is complete and not scattered across creation.
"I'm not entirely sure," he admits. "One of the witches at the Wizarding market recommended it."
She looks up sharply. "You went to the wizarding side?"
"I was careful." She continues to stare and he sighs. "We're in Germany, Hermione. Even I wouldn't expect me to come here."
She swallows around the doubt in her throat. "You promise?"
"Cross my heart." It's a school girl phrase, but it's deadly serious on his lips.
"Fine." She won't back down completely, but there's no point in arguing about something he's already done. She switches to another topic he abhors. "So when are you going to contact Draco? It's been two weeks."
Tom's expression tells her he knows exactly what she's doing and he isn't pleased. "When you're ready."
"I walk the tides nearly every day and you don't worry about me being swept out to sea." She crosses her arms and leans against the cupboard door. The handle digs into her back. She's surprised to notice to the pain. It's a trifle compared to what she has endured, but now it is enough to bother her.
"That's different."
She narrows her eyes. "Are you spying on me, Tom Riddle?"
"No."
"But something very nearly like it."
They stare at each other, neither willing to concede. Hermione glares into the depths of his sapphire eyes. They are a million jewel tones, from dark cobalt to the lightest aquamarine. She could get lost in their oceans.
She swallows, the honeyed taste of something just out of reach on her tongue. She takes a deep breath that rattles her imperfect lungs. She will not drown in him today. Today he is going to answer her. She is tired of his games, his half-truths and his complete control. She is no longer an invalid and he no longer has a valid excuse.
"You put a tracking charm on me." She doesn't know exactly how one would go about applying such a spell, but she feels in her bones that he has cast it.
Tom is silent a long moment, the pot sizzling beside him. He stirs the tomato sauce within, but doesn't look away. His jaw tightens and she imagines his teeth grinding in frustration. Good. She wants to wring his neck, to demand he treat her as an equal, not a child. Hermione says nothing, which seems to compel his confession.
"Yes, but not on you. On those," he indicates her shoes. She almost laughs. Clever. It is not quite warm enough to go barefoot through the dunes.
"Take it off."
He clearly disagrees with her directive, but he pulls his stolen wand from his back pocket—he wears grey slacks and a hunter green button down rolled up to his elbows. Despite his supposed hatred of Muggles, she finds he dresses like one with alacrity. His style isn't particularly modern, but rather the classic dress shirts and trousers that were ubiquitous for so many decades in men's fashion. On occasion she has even seen him don a bowler hat—the sight was enough to make her knees a hair too weak and her pulse a touch too fast. He never wears a tie or suit jacket, but the overall effect is suave and timeless. She knows he owns several pairs of wizarding robes, likely acquired at the local market, but she hasn't seen him dress in them once.
Tom waves his wand in a complicated pattern Hermione can't quite track and settles back against the kitchen counter. "There."
She doesn't feel any different and neither do her dusty converse. "How do I know you did it?"
The ghost of amusement passes over his full lips. "You don't. You're just going to have to trust me."
That seems to be all she does these days. "Fine, but stop avoiding the truth or whatever it is that's keeping you from contacting Draco."
Tension radiates along the line of his shoulders and in the hollows of his cheeks. He brings a hand to his temple, pushing ebony hair off his forehead. For once, she can't get a read on his expression. His eyes roam her face, searching. After a long moment, Tom turns off the burner and motions toward their small kitchen table.
"Perhaps it would be better if we sat."
She may not remember much, but she knows no good conversation ever began with those words. She sits. Her pulse is a maddening throb at her temples as she waits for him to speak.
Tom licks his lips, and she follows the motion of his tongue with keen interest. Not out of any latent desire, but rather as a distraction from the gravity of the silence. He lifts his sapphire stare to her.
"You know that Draco had to fake his death too." She nods. That was her idea to begin with. "Well, he used the Order of the Phoenix to do it. Do you remember them?" She doesn't, although the name seems oddly familiar as she mouths the syllables. "Well, they're the main fight against… me. Led by Harry Potter."
Hermione blinks and murmurs, "oh."
Tom looks at her like he expects more, but she has nothing else to say. He shakes his head, ebony curls falling over his eyes. "Anyway, Draco's with Potter now."
"What's so complicated about that?"
Tom squeezes his eyes closed, as if it physically pains him to speak the next words. "Potter is your boyfriend. I've mentioned it in passing before, but I wasn't truly sure until recently."
Hermione doesn't understand what he's said for several heartbeats. And even then, the implications only slowly trickle into awareness. She's frozen and Tom still hasn't opened his eyes.
Boyfriend. She knows what the word means, has a fair idea of what it implies, but never imagined it would be associated with her. She doesn't remember having a friend, let alone a boyfriend. She frowns. That's not quite right. Sometimes she would wake from the throes of some foreign dream to the memory of arms around her and eyes of the brightest green.
She chews her lip and searches farther. But there's nothing, just the brief impressions from her time in the darkness, the sense that once she had more.
"He has green eyes, doesn't he?"
Bright blue eyes snap open as she speaks. Tom's lips twitch and his eyes ice to a colder blue than she remembers. "I don't know. I've never met the boy."
Of course not. He's only been here for a handful of months. His existence and Hermione's complete memory encompass approximately the same time span. Hermione tilts her head at him. "Why didn't you want to tell me?"
He opens his mouth, then closes it, lips a firm line. He looks away from her. His hand twitches against the table top and she realizes he's twirling a cigarette between his fingers. She's never seen him smoke, but each day she realizes how little she knows about this dark boy. He raises his head and stares directly into the depths of her soul. "A variety of reasons. The simplest being I don't want to lose you."
Her heart skips a beat for no particular reason. She frowns across the table at him. "Why would you lose me?"
Tom lets out a self-deprecating laugh. "That's easy. He's the hero and I'm the villain."
"Except you saved me and I have no idea who he is."
Tom's entire visage lifts, as if illuminated from within. His lips curve upward into a satisfied smirk and he tucks the cigarette back into his breast pocket. "Except for that."
Hermione rolls her eyes at him and motions toward their cooling dinner. "Save the dramatics for when they're actually warranted, Tom. You know I don't remember shit. Now can we eat?"
She hears relief in his laugh, or perhaps it is wishful thinking on her part. She studies him as he prepares their plates. He must have known about Harry for a long time, but he didn't push the issue until now. But why? What does he have to gain from keeping Hermione's lost relationship from her? She already knows she's forgotten too much, has holes in corners that can't be rightly explained even by trauma.
His eyes slide towards her again and she is sure of the relief hidden in their depths. No, she decides, he hid this truth out of fear. Fear that Hermione would leave him behind for a boy she has yet to meet. But the trauma that lies between them is far more than an empty shell of a memory. She knows even if she one day remembers, Tom has nothing to fear. They are so much more than boyfriend and girlfriend, than partners, than romance. They are the diamond left after the crush and burn of the world imploding, stronger than ever, united and unbreakable.
She smiles at him and accepts her plate.