Bless RESimon and shestoolazytologin for your beta/alpha work and endless patience. Love you both.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hermione's eyes opened the moment she felt a shift in the bed. The room was hued grey with dulled moonlight, dimming the brightly coloured furnishings. Despite this, Draco's hair still shone brightly as he slid out out the bed, and she longed to run her fingers through it, over his skin, to drink every part of him in because he was here—
She froze. There was a gasp tangled in her throat, caught behind the lump that had lodged itself there. A long, jagged scar stretched across his back, the cut shallow yet still as raw as though it had occurred only moments before. She reached out and pressed a gentle finger to the tender skin above the scar. It was hard and ice-cold to the touch, and likely pulsing with the same pain her own arm did.
Her touch lasted but a moment before he wrenched away violently and stood, pulling on his trousers.
"Draco," she called softly. The word was painful as it came out, tearing her throat raw as she forced it out despite knowing how little she deserved to speak it.
The wound almost pulsed as his frame tensed, drawing out the silence. Her fingers curled in the sheets as she pressed her eyes closed and waited for him to start shouting. She deserved it all.
But the silence stretched on, so long that she chanced opening her eyes to find him facing her. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest, every inch of his expression speaking to the storm that lingered in the air between them.
"Speak." His voice was low, carrying a dangerous edge.
She opened her mouth and closed it. Any word that came to her mind felt inadequate, swallowed by the void that had erupted between them.
A vein pulsed in his neck. "Did you expect me to shout? To break things? Scream 'fuck you' until I'm hoarse?" He was upon her then, snatching up her fingers and gripping her glamoured ring hard. The skin beneath it was still raw and blistered, the only part of herself she hadn't tried to heal. "I've done that. Now speak." He threw her hand down and moved away, leaning back against the dresser that stood across the room.
She closed a hand over her ringed finger. Her throat tightened further each time she tried to open her mouth, the weight of what she'd done to them suffocating. "I—" she paused and swallowed, "I— I won't ask for your forgiveness. There aren't any words that can encompass how I feel. I let my doubt cloud me. I couldn't tell anymore. And when we were at the Manor— he's your father, and you were so jaded, and you said I couldn't trust you, but— I don't mean to say it as though I'm blaming it on you because I'm not, I just— I'm sorry. It was me, it was all me, and I should have trusted you— I do trust you because I— I—"
There was a ripple in his posture that brought seeping darkness with it, and she found herself snapping her lips shut. I love you. I love you. I love you, she'd wanted to say. The words had caught and stopped short before the shift in the room, the words lacing her tongue in a treasonous film. She had no right — she probably never would.
Draco shifted again, this time his fists tightening briefly where they gripped the dresser on either side of him. "You think it's because you betrayed me."
The sentence was a twisted amalgamation of a statement and a question. Everything in his posture still bled darkness as he watched her silently, teeming with something that had her trembling as she waited for him to explode.
But the silence stretched longer, and she found herself trying to fill it. "This war— it broke me, shattered everything I thought I'd known," she stumbled over every word, each feeling more useless than the last, "When I did it, I was just— so confused, so scared, but I shouldn't have been. Not of you, because you're—" Everything. He was everything, yet the harder she tried to hold onto him the more she felt him slipping away, sinking through her grip like sand.
He let out a sharp chuckle. "I was there. You were nothing if not clear on your reasoning. I was the one who told you that you couldn't trust me, wasn't I?" His fingers curled briefly before he gripped the dresser harder. "You thought I wanted to go back. I did. But I didn't go, did I?"
"I didn't know," she said quietly. "I didn't—"
Draco's eyes flashed. "It is one thing to think I would take you there— but you knew what would happen if he discovered our bond. He would have locked you in the dungeons. Tortured you. Or worse—" He cut off with a sharp intake of breath. "And yet you what? Love me?"
He threw the word between them and let it linger, festering with a detachment as cold as their twin wounds. Everything had been wrong, so wrong since she'd torn apart the delicate balance they'd built together, leaving it in tatters around them.
"I was ready to leave — ready to give up everything I've been fighting for to go with you and our child if that was what it came down to," he said, his voice laced with cold fury. "I was ready to lose my leg instead of letting any harm come to you. I've set everything on fire countless times because of you. So why?!"
She curled her fists tighter in the sheets to stop them from trembling. "I just— I didn't know— You've been clear from the beginning that your mother is your priority—"
"I have never given you a reason to doubt that I loved you!"
Her fists were tangled so tightly in the sheets that her nails dug into her skin through the thin fabric A deep greyness crept at the edges of her vision, pulsing in time with the pounding of her heart in her ears. The words curled in the air before her, swirling and re-forming as she tried to process them. He'd said— he'd said—
He let out another sharp, humorless laugh as his lips curled. "Ah," he said. "I'd forgotten that you thought me incapable of any sentiment."
He— loved her. There were a thousand things she wanted to say, yet every word felt so useless in the wake of what she'd done to him. "That's not fair," she whispered instead.
She regretted the unbidden words the moment they left her lips, but it was late, too, late, and his face was already reddening further, his jaw grinding as he stared her down. "Fuck you. Fair? You want to bring up fairness—"
"I sent you somewhere safe!" she said. The sheets fell away as she got out of the bed, the cool air chilling her naked skin. "I would have never sent you anywhere where you would have been in harm's way—"
"You thought I would have you locked up," he snapped, cutting her off, "So you did it first. Don't you fucking dare act as though you are some kind of martyr—"
"You looked me in my eye and told me I couldn't trust you!" she said. "I was so confused, so scared—"
"What kind of monster do you think I am?" He crossed his arms across his chest, glaring at her. "How little do you think of me that I would do that to my own wife?!" He spat the word wife as though it were poison. Perhaps she was.
"Did they?" she asked softly. "Lock you up?" Her heart clenched at the thought of him in chains.
He didn't answer. He turned away instead, storming over to the windowsill and bracing himself against it. She longed to walk up behind him and wrap her arms around him, to whisper how sorry she was. How much she loved him.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It isn't enough— not nearly enough to encompass what I've done to us. But I am. I will always be." Something curled in her stomach, filling her with a sinking feeling as the silence in the wake of her words stretched out. "I'll give you some space."
Fear. That was the feeling that had settled in her, radiating through her. Fear of losing him. Perhaps she already had.
She turned and started to gather the tattered remains of her clothing from the ground. She lifted her wand, ready to mutter cleaning and reparation charms when he spoke. It was only one word, yet it was enough to make her jerk and freeze, her heart flying into a staccato.
"Hermione."
She turned to look at him, at a loss. She'd always wondered what her name would sound like coming from his lips, but never like this.
"If you leave," he said slowly, "don't ever fucking come back."
At one time, she would have snapped back, told him to never try and threaten her again. This time, however, she simply stood frozen. She was losing him.
She ran a shaking ran through her hair. "I just don't know wh—" She turned to find him suddenly closer than she'd realized, looming over her with wild eyes as he looked down at—
Her arm.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Her hand slackened and the bundle of clothing fell to the floor. Her opposite hand immediately flew to cover it, but he was across the room in two quick strides, eyes blazing. He snatched her other arm away before she could cover the wound and turned her forearm to the low light, baring it.
The deep brown of her skin was mottled with an even deeper black, the bruising punctured red in the middle by the red of the wound. It was a jagged line with a slight nick at the end.
His hands were tight yet gentle as he twisted her arm toward himself. His fingers ghosted over the wound before he paused and drew them back. "Was it her?"
She'd thought she'd witnessed every facet of darkness in his tone. But this— this had her heart twisting and burning, her body frozen under the sudden force of his rage.
She wanted to lie, but she knew that he'd felt the answer before she put it in words. "I'm alright," she breathed.
His eyes blazed as they snapped to hers. "Do not lie to me—"
"I brought this upon myself," she said. She tried to pull away but his grip only tightened.
A myriad of expressions passed across his features then, each fracturing her heart further than the last. Was this what he'd been holding in all this time? Had this been swimming beneath the walls he'd so carefully erected, only to be shattered by what she'd done to him? Or had it simply been...her? Her eyes traveled from where he still gripped her arm, up to where his wild eyes were focused on her wound. He'd said it, that he—
"Did you mean it?" she asked softly.
He looked up at her, and her chest spasmed at the raw emotion she saw shining in them.
It was gone as quickly as it had come. "You don't realize that every road we could have taken would have brought us to this," he jerked his chin at her arm. "No matter what we would have done, there is only so much running, so much fighting we could do before we ended up exactly where we did—" He cut off, his entire form trembling with repressed anger.
Hermione swallowed. "Draco—"
"You thought the way you did because I'm a Malfoy," he said flatly. "You're clearly too blind to see that everything I've done lately has been me trying to rid myself of everything it means to be a damned Malfoy in the first place."
He dropped her arm abruptly and stormed into the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind him in dismissal.
X
She hovered in the room for a long while, prolonging the cleaning and repairing spells she'd performed on her clothing. He didn't emerge. She left when the rays of early morning illuminated the room, pulling the door closed behind her and looking at the other closed doors along the hall of the foreign space she now found herself in.
A door opened across from her. The kindly-faced man from the forest stepped out, his eyes widening in surprised recognition.
"You must be Hermione Granger," the man said, breaking the silence. "I'm Ted." He reached out a hand, and she blinked at him for a moment before shaking it.
"I— hello," she said.
The man chuckled. "I should apologize — you know little of me. Nymphadora has spoken quite highly of you, however. It was more than well earned — I must thank you again for saving my life."
"I'm sorry that it came to that," she said softly. "It shouldn't have happened at all."
His eyes dimmed. "There are many things we could say that about now, can't we?"
She nodded mutely.
"Are you hungry?" he said, nodding toward the steps. "Please, help yourself. I'm due for an Order meeting shortly, but please make yourself at home."
"Thank you," she said.
He smiled at her again before hurrying down the steps. She hovered for a moment before making her way down the steps, facing the room where the chaotic events of the previous night had unfolded. She averted her eyes and turned to duck through the archway next to the stairs only to pause mid-step.
Two women were seated quietly at the dining table, their eyes on her.
The one closest to her was a perfect inverse of Narcissa Malfoy. Where Narcissa was made of fair hair and eyes the color of the sky, she was dark. Her hair was a deep brown, her eyes an even deeper shade of hazel. She shared the same fine beauty as her counterpart, their difference betrayed only by the laugh lines etched around the woman's mouth.
Narcissa Malfoy herself sat beside the woman, watching Hermione with an unreadable expression on her face.
"Good morning," the dark-haired woman spoke. "I'm Andromeda. I've heard much about you. Please sit."
Hermione's chest tightened as she made her way to the table. "Good morning," she said carefully, her eyes straying to Andromeda for only a moment before moving back to Narcissa. "Good morning, Narcissa," she said, sliding out the only vacant seat, which was next to Narcissa.
"I imagine you both have much to talk about," Andromeda said, taking up her mug of tea and standing. "Do excuse me." She left without another word, leaving Hermione and Narcissa in silence.
It was Hermione who spoke first. "I know what I did," she said. "And I will regret it for the rest of my life. But I will never allow you to strike me again." She held Narcissa's gaze steadily.
The silence stretched for a long moment before Narcissa spoke. "Are you alright?" she said, nodding toward Hermione's arm.
Hermione stifled her surprise and nodded. "Yes," she answered.
Narcissa scoffed lightly. "You are not."
Hermione tensed but didn't argue.
"I am not accustomed to giving apologies," Narcissa said. Her slim fingers curled around her mug of tea, the imitation of the Malfoy family ring glinting in the morning light. "But I wish it had not happened."
Hermione fought the urge to curl in on herself, weighed down by all that she'd been suppressing.
"I was not aware of how they were tracking you," she said. Her eyes glinted. "I thought my son safer by placing him with the Order. Nowhere is truly safe in a war though, is it?"
Regret coursed through Hermione's system, as potent as it had been the moment she'd discovered the small orb in Draco's pocket.
"I'm sorry," Hermione said.
Narcissa watched her for another moment. "Do you know where he went when you sent him away?"
Hermione thought of the way his eyes had blazed as he'd found her the night before. "It was here, wasn't it?" There was a dull ache in Hermione's chest. "I'm sorry that I couldn't save him from anything, in the end," she said.
"War isn't about saving. It is about surviving." Narcissa said. She stood and turned to leave before pausing and looking down at Hermione. "He chose you."
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