Notes: I love hearing from all of you. Thank you so much for your support. I'm so glad some of you truly enjoy this crazy romp. Anyhoo, onward to plot and mayhem.

WARNINGS: Mentions of sexual assault

18. For, Thou Betraying Me, I Do Betray

"Stop glowering like I broke your favorite broomstick," Tom groans, mixing the latest dreamless sleep potion for Granger in careful strokes. Draco definitely doesn't notice the slide of lean muscles beneath his rolled sleeves.

It's been a week since Potter stormed out of their cottage with fury in his veins and a look reserved for those destined for the ninth circle of hell. Draco can't exactly blame him. Tom did everything in his power to make the encounter as scarring as possible. Draco seriously doubts Tom truly listened to him about Potter and suspects Tom is merely appeasing him with half-assed gestures. It isn't terribly surprising, but he still feels the bitter tang of disappointment every time he looks at the other boy.

Why can't Tom see how much better they would all be together? Likely something to do with the megalomania that drove him to become Voldemort in the first place. But Draco knows he isn't the same wizard who crashed headlong into the darkness upon graduating from Hogwarts. He's seen Tom's carefully stitched seams come apart when he talks about Granger and what they experienced together.

And the little kernel of hope Draco derives from that evidence is enough to sustain him for now. Tom is not a monster, no matter how much he wants to be.

Draco leans back against the adjacent counter and clears his expression. "I'm not glowering."

"You may not be glowering this instant, but you've been a bloody raincloud this whole week." Tom doesn't bother to look at him.

"And I wonder why that is." Draco's tone is the appropriate level of scathing.

Tom huffs and pulls his wand from the potion. Liquid glimmers across its dark wood until he vanishes the excess with a simple flick. Draco hands him a storage vial.

"You can't still be upset about the business with Potter."

It takes a heroic effort not to sputter in Tom's face. He manages a halfway decent calm when he replies, "how could I not be? You spent the whole bloody morning he visited hanging over his girlfriend like she was your bloody lover. I'm sure he thinks the two of you are fucking like rabbits. Or if he realizes she's in no shape to be doing anything of the sort, he's thinking you're a bloody menace taking advantage of his girlfriend. Neither is particularly conducive to Potter helping us kill off your evil twin."

"He is not my twin."

"That's what you comment on?" Draco truly can't help the hand that tears through his hair. He'd be shaking Tom by his stupidly perfect shoulders if the other boy weren't pouring the potion meticulously into the vial.

Tom stoppers the ampule and holds out his hand for the next. Draco doesn't give it to him. Tom's sigh is particularly long suffering as he shifts to face Draco. "Fine. I can tell you have something to say, so bloody say it."

Draco has been bloody saying it and Tom's dogged stubbornness isn't going to stop him from saying it some more. "We need Potter. The best outcome for all of us—you, me and Hermione—is using Potter. I don't know what hairbrained scheme you've been concocting in your spare time, but it isn't going to work without Potter. There's a bloody prophesy about it, for Merlin's sake."

"And if I believe the prophesy, I'd be better off slashing Potter's throat with a simple diffindo. So don't try to use that as an excuse. I don't think you're interested Potter's blood all over our rug."

No, Draco isn't interested in that at all. "You know that's not what I mean."

"No, you mean that you're still bloody in love with the bastard and you want to save him from my nefarious schemes, as you so often put it." Tom's gaze has a hard edge that gives Draco pause. He appears frostier now, his eyes the brittle blue of winter.

Draco should think carefully about what he says next. He doesn't. "I'm not bloody in love with him. Not for awhile now. I care for him. And you're right, I don't want him caught up in something dangerous. But he's already at the top of the Dark Lord's list, so it's not like I'd be doing him any favors by bringing him here." He swallows hard and stares into Tom's stony visage. "I'm doing it for you."

Tom's icy façade cracks, confusion leaking through. "What?"

"You bloody heard me."

The dark boy blinks rapidly, sooty lashes long against his ivory skin. "I don't understand."

He's going to make Draco bloody spell it out. "I—" his voice cracks on the single syllable and he clears his throat. Tom is staring at him like he's suggested they walk into Malfoy Manor holding hands and handing out lollipops. That might be saner. "I see you, okay? Not just the front you put up in front of me and Hermione. Not the version of you that splintered off into fucking madness. Just you. And you aren't nearly as horrible as you might think."

"I killed my father and grandparents in cold blood, Malfoy."

"But that was half a century ago. You've mostly been in a book doing absolutely no harm at all."

Tom's lips press into a thin line. "What exactly are you trying to say? I may have been in a book, but I spent the ensuing decades plotting how to get out of it. I was fully prepared to kill the first person I could convince to give me a drop of their blood."

"You didn't kill Hermione."

Draco's pulse is doing an irregular jig and Tom's expression is a scary type of blank. He blinks once before replying coldly. "I very much would have, but it wasn't particularly smart to put myself in a cage."

"You didn't kill her," Draco repeats, closing the distance between them. Tom shifts back the barest millimeter and Draco knows he's not as aloof as he appears. "You didn't kill her and then you spent hours in that cell with her. You watched her be tortured. You felt her be tortured. You felt her agony, her hopelessness. And you didn't turn away. And when McNair came down those stairs and tried to tear her in half, you felt that too. I can't even imagine what that must have been like for her, but you know. You know deep in your bones how it feels when a man rapes a woman, Tom. And you are not the same because of it."

Tom's pupils are blown wide. He stares at Draco with an expression that makes his features look too soft. Tom bites his lip hard and Draco watches a bead of blood well up and slip down his chin. Draco wipes it away with his thumb. "So don't pretend you're nothing but a murderer. Don't pretend you don't know how much Potter can help us. And don't pretend you don't understand how bloody much I care about you."

The dark boy's breath hitches, his lips falling open. Draco's hand is still at his mouth. It is perhaps the first time Draco has seen him undone by something beyond lust. He wants to see it again.

Tom's lips brush against Draco's thumb as he murmurs, "don't bloody fall in love with me, Draco Malfoy."

Draco lets his hand fall slowly from Tom's parted mouth, dragging his bottom lip. His breath is as much Tom's as his own. "I wouldn't dream of it."

For once, Tom moves first. Draco gasps, hot and eager against his lips. The matter of Tom's reluctance to consider involving Potter in his plans slips like morning fog from Draco's mind. Only Tom's demanding lips exist, his tongue scouring the recesses of Draco's mouth. Draco lets out a needy whine and Tom slams him against the fridge. The old appliance shudders behind Draco's back, but neither of them notices. Neither of them stops to breathe.

Their hips grind together with perfect friction. Draco winds his hand in Tom's silken hair and drags his mouth down to the column of Draco's throat. Draco mewls in satisfaction when Tom scrapes his teeth across the sensitive skin.

He is lost in a haze of pleasure, his legs turning slowly to boneless mush.

He is staring into eyes of the deepest cinnamon.

Granger.

Draco lets loose the foulest curses he knows and shoves Tom away from him. The taller boy stumbles back, expression clouded, his azure eyes tinged with hurt. Draco realizes Tom still doesn't see Hermione Granger standing in the entryway to the kitchen, her jaw dropped and her eyes splintering.

Draco swears again and pulls Tom around to face her. The blood drains from his face, the aroused flush from their encounter erased in a heartbeat. Granger stares at Tom as if he is a stranger.

Draco can't believe they've been so reckless. So cruel as to have her discover their—he can't put a name on it no matter how hard he tries—this way.

"Fuck," Tom says, voice flat as the floor they stand on.

Granger's wild gaze flickers to Draco and her eyes are glossy. She's about to bloody cry. Sweet Merlin, this is worse than he ever imagined.

She flees between this breath and the next. Tom surges after her, but Draco clamps a hand on his forearm. Tom tries to throw Draco off, but he doesn't yield.

"Let me."

"She can barely stand you," Tom hisses, syllables on the cusp of parseltongue.

"Exactly."

"I want to talk to her," Tom insists, dark fringe falling across burning azure eyes.

"And you will, but not now. Right now, she needs someone she doesn't expect anything from. Someone she doesn't feel betrayed by." At least he hopes that's what she needs. Draco recognizes how precious the connection between Hermione and Tom truly is. He is more than willing to put himself in the crossfire to preserve it.

Tom is mere breaths from cursing Draco and storming after Granger. Draco pulls him closer, until the other boy has no choice but to look at him.

"I will never stand between you and Hermione," he whispers softly. Any harsh words may send Tom crashing out the door. "So much of what I respect about you is because of how you feel about her. Maybe that makes me crazy. I honestly don't give a fuck. You keep telling me to stop being such a coward. Well, this is me stopping. I am going to go out there and I am going to fix this, Tom."

He can feel the coiled tension release in the muscles beneath his fingers. Tom is looking at him now. Not glaring or sneering or anything else. Simply looking. Draco takes that as a good sign.

"So I need you to trust that when I go talk with her, it won't be to pull the two of you apart. You would have fucked me until you got what you wanted and then killed me if it weren't for her. So I'm not about to drive her away from you. I'm pretty sure my life depends on it." He takes a breath. His pulse thunders at his temples, but he ignores the ache. "Okay?"

Tom is silent long enough that Draco begins to frantically formulate plans B, C, and D. He's staring at Draco with searing intensity that burns like a wildfire consuming dry timber. Draco would suspect Legilimency if he didn't know his Occlumency skills were incomparable.

The dark boy swipes his tongue across the still oozing slit in his lip before nodding. "Okay."

Hermione doesn't look up when footfalls crunch the sand beside her. She can't bear to see Tom right now.

The missing piece. The truth even Harry Potter knew. She can't get the sight of them out of her head. Tom's mouth against Draco's neck. His hands buried in the fabric of the other boy's shirt. The breathy noises coming from both of their throats. Dilated pupils eating away sapphire irises when Tom finally turned to face her.

She feels numb. The sand is no different from the air as she moves her toes.

Everything is slowly being rewritten. Every touch, every word brings Tom further away from the boy she thought she knew. She was prepared for his darkness, but not for this.

The worst part is she has no right to care. She has never kissed him, even if his lips have written promises across the graveyard of her skin. She has nothing to give. She cannot love the way a woman ought to. Not now and perhaps not ever. It is unreasonable to expect he will simply wait.

And wait for what? Does she even love him? Hermione isn't sure. She doesn't remember enough of love to know.

And there is the matter of Tom himself. He's not quite real, a fragment of a person, the refraction of light controlled into an imitation of life. But his lips feel true against her wounded flesh and his voice is softer than the sleekest satin. He is real is every way that counts. Real enough to bury his hands in platinum hair and moan like debauchery is going out of style.

Hermione trembles, her toes curling into the cool sand. She hates the memory of Tom's mouth on Draco's skin.

It's wildly unfair to expect him to be hers. Tom isn't even completely his own, his soul only a piece of a greater whole. He isn't beholden to anything, except perhaps the dark magic that brought him here.

But God, does she want him to belong to her. It's a dark urge, possessive instead of caring. He is her drug, her only protection against the nightmares that crawl beneath her skin. And she is not willing to give him up.

Her nails dig into her skin. She is fairly certain this greed makes her a bad person.

Tom should be free to make his own choices, to be with the person he desires, even if that person isn't her. She may not remember her time as a witch, but Hermione is certain her morals haven't changed so drastically. She knows only too well what a life without agency holds.

But she is willing to hang her morals to fuel her freedom. When did she slide so far down this slippery slope? When did she break so cruelly?

A body settles into the sand beside her. Hermione still doesn't look.

"I'm not him."

She inhales sharply and swings to face Draco. He isn't looking at her, but rather across the beach and out to the sun-kissed horizon. It's late, nearly ten at night, but light still clings to the clouds in shimmering pinks and deep fuchsias.

"Is he too much of a coward to face me?"

She knows she sounds bitter, like a scorned woman. She has no right to the feeling or the tone. Draco merely shakes his head, platinum strands falling to frame his angular cheekbones.

She is struck by how handsome he is. She never bothered to notice before. He was always the boy who didn't save her, then later the boy who tried too hard to make amends. He has never simply been Draco Malfoy, former Hogwarts student and attractive human being.

She can see the appeal now; the reason Tom's lips so greedily devoured his alabaster skin. She wishes she couldn't.

"No." She realizes Draco's answering her question. "He was running after you, but I stopped him."

Her brows knit together. "Why?"

"Because you and I need to talk."

Hermione would really rather not. "About what?"

"Him."

What else? She sighs and drops her gaze to the grains running down her feet as she shifts them in the sand. She's tempted to literally bury her head in the sand.

"Just because he's kissing me doesn't mean he doesn't care about you."

Objectively Hermione knows Draco's correct, but the throbbing ache in her chest says differently.

"How long?" The words are sharp, like acid on her tongue.

"Since the Manor, shortly after he became corporeal."

God. It's worse than she thought. What must they think of her? The poor broken girl too damaged to notice what was right in front of her. The sudden change in their behavior. The odd flushes that would spread across Draco's cheeks. The looks that lingered a touch too long. She had the evidence, but she was too lost to see. She screws her eyes shut, but the image of their bodies pressed against the fridge stays with her.

"It began as a weapon, a means of leverage to get me to rescue you." Now he sounds nearly as bitter as Hermione. Good.

"But it didn't stay that way." She states the obvious and Draco doesn't deny it. "Does he simply go from your bed to mine every bloody night?"

The choking sound Draco makes fills Hermione with perverse glee. "No. He doesn't sleep with me. He stays in his own room. Occasionally if you're having a good night, we will…"

He trails off and Hermione is thankful. She honestly isn't sure she can bear any of the mundane or perverse details right now.

Draco lets out a ragged breath and she can feel the weight of his quicksilver gaze upon her. "He loves you, Hermione, not me."

She doesn't want his love—or perhaps she does, but what she wants most is Tom beside her. His lips against only her skin. His warmth upon only her sheets. His devotion to her alone.

But for all the wrong reasons. Not because she loves him. Not because she desires him. But because she is terrified of the world without him.

She understands at once how selfish she's become. How weak he has made her. Regardless of his intentions, it's a toxic combination.

She can't let go.

"I'm so bloody fucked up, Draco," she says instead. "My memory is shreds, my body is butchered, and my mind is cracked. And the only thing holding me together is Tom. And I can't stand him with you. And I have no bloody right to feel this way."

Hermione swipes angrily at an errant tear. "I wish I could say I was happy for you. I wish I didn't want to throw you into those waves and hold you under until your lips are blue and he's only mine." She shakes her head. "God, just listen to me. I'm psychotic."

Draco is silent, but he doesn't retreat from her.

"Half the time I can't forgive you for letting me rot down there. The other half I'm elated to have another person to share my time with. I want Tom to be mine, but I don't want to truly be with him. I'm a mess of contradictions and dead ends."

"What you've been through, it takes time." Draco swallows. "If you need us to be over, we will be. What you need matters more to both of us."

"I can't ask that of you. Of either of you."

"You're not asking. I'm offering."

She desperately wants to say yes. To destroy whatever joy they might have found because she can't let go of a boy, of a feeling.

But she reaches into the depths of her soul and finds a foothold. It is nothing more than a scratch in the darkness, a divot in a wall that used to be smooth glass. Tom cannot put her pieces together again and she can no longer let him handicap her progress. She pulls herself up the barest distance. It is nothing like progress, but she does it alone.

"No." It is the hardest choice she remembers making. "No. I need to learn to stand on my own two feet."

"Don't forget he needs you too."

Hermione finally looks at Draco. "Perhaps he needs to learn as well."