Reformed

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Goldensnitch18

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Rated M for Scenes of a Sexual Nature, Language, and Violence.

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Summary: Draco Malfoy is released from Azkaban and sent to Hogwarts for his eighth year where he has a year to show that he can be reformed. Hermione Granger, and her friends, are struggling to come to terms with what has happened to them and move on, but she has agreed to be Malfoy's Muggle Studies tutor anyway.

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Disclaimer: I am not profiting from this story.

Anything you recognize belongs to the great and mighty JKR.

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Chapter Nine

Saturday, September 12th, 1998

"You must be Ronald," Lavender's mother said after the door opened to let him in. She was a slender woman with short hair. Her smile was not quite as warm as his mother's but welcoming nonetheless.

"Er, yes," he said, trying to not look awkward, but surely failing.

"Lavender is in her room. I can show you where it is." Her eyes fell down to the flowers he was holding. He had just realized that Lavender might no longer have a vase that needed filling.

"Thanks," he told her. How much exactly did this woman know about him? That they had dated? That he had been visiting in the hospital? That for some reason Lavender was the only person he felt like himself around at the moment? Probably not that last one, actually. He would have had to tell Lavender that first, hopefully. The flowers surely weren't helping if he was trying to discourage those types of thoughts.

He followed her through the house until she stopped in front of an open door. "Here you are," she motioned to the door, and he grinned like an idiot as he passed her. He heard the door pull shut behind him as his eyes fell on Lavender. She was sitting in bed again in a baggy white shirt with a blanket over her crossed legs. She looked up from a magazine as he walked into the room, her eyes lighting up, but his own eyes had fallen to her neck. The bandage was gone. He inhaled deeply at the sight and instantly regretted it. Her fingers moved up to her neck, hovering above her large wound, futilely attempting to hide it from him as her face fell.

"N-No." He moved quickly toward her, stammering out his words. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have."

"I know it's bad." Her eyes slid down to focus on the small flowers on her blanket.

"I'm an idiot. I should have expected." He was on the bed now, resting on the edge. His hand reached up and wrapped his fingers around hers. She let him pull their joined hands down to the bed and reveal the puffy, pink scarring.

"Bloody hell, you're incredible," he told her, voice full of awe and wonder.

She laughed nervously. "What?"

"You're just … This happened, and you still smile when I walk in the door. You still laugh and make me …" He stopped, and she let her eyes travel up his chest until blue met blue, their gaze locked. She waited a few moments, but he didn't continue.

"What?" she asked. He could feel the red flush of his embarrassment up his neck and across his cheeks. She smiled at the sight. "Ron," she said his name as if she knew every emotion running through his body at that moment, and he was sure that she did. They had been here before, back when they had been whole and stupid and had no idea what they really needed or wanted from one another. Could they be different now? He was sure as hell willing to try, willing to hope that they had learned from their mistakes.

He leaned in, closing the space between them. The flowers fell to the bed, and his newly freed hand moved up to rest gently on the unblemished back of her neck where he was sure not to hurt her by softly pulling her closely. She giggled as his nose brushed hers, and then he was gingerly kissing her as she wrapped the fingers of her free hand around his hip.

"I won't break," she murmured against his lips. She pulled her other hand from his and settled it at his waist as well. Everything about this was simultaneously familiar and new.

"You smell like lilacs," he responded, and then she was laughing against his mouth, and he joined her for a few moments before his mouth fell on hers again. She pulled at him with gentle suggestion, and let her body fall back until she was on her side, and he was lying beside her, their limbs entwined, flowers forgotten beneath his thigh. They readjusted, and his hand ended up on her hip, hers in his hair.

"Tell me if I'm hurting you," he told her. Her only response was her deepening the pressure against his lips as her hand moved under his shirt, touching skin to skin.

Tuesday, September 15th, 1998

Hermione had found them an empty classroom and cleared their usage with McGonagall, explaining the trouble they were dealing with in the library. Each day, they took over the Professor's desk at the head of the room for their lessons. It was working much better than stares and whispers of the library, but now Draco was facing a different struggle, an entirely unexpected struggle.

In the library, he had looked at her from the outside in, seeing them together, and he couldn't turn it off. Her hair, her knees, the soft flush up her neck when she laughed, her habit of tapping softly on the table as she waited for him to respond … all of these things distracted him as they worked, further confusing him.

They had been in classes for about two weeks, and even that was somewhat surreal. Just over two months ago, he had been locked in Azkaban, sure that he would be spending the rest of his life there. He could still feel the dirt on his skin, the utter sense of emptiness about his life that had engulfed his every moment.

And, now, he was here. He was sitting next to Hermione Granger, learning about Muggles in a way that he never expected, and trying to avoid staring at her in class. If father knew. He was in constant battle, trying to somehow forge the two versions of himself, Draco before the War and Azkaban and after, but it was proving impossible. This version of himself was lost and confused. Everything he had ever been told was, at the very best, a cruel twisting of the truth.

If he was going to be honest with himself, part of him had always known that there couldn't truly be something inherently inferior about Hermione Granger, except, perhaps, her hair. She was brilliant, but that brilliance went far beyond books. She mastered in moments spellwork that took most weeks to exact. She was a source of frustration and conflict inside of him from the very beginning, but he had denied that part of him. Facing it would have meant accepting that he was not himself superior to anyone, and that was unacceptable. Pre-war Draco loved his status and everything that came with it, especially the power. He watched his father bring Ministry officials to their knees, and he had wanted that ability. His parents had assured him that he deserved it. It wasn't until he was in too deep that he realized exactly what that path truly meant. As he remembered how painful those realizations had been, Draco rubbed subconsciously at the scar across his chest.

Suddenly, a hand was waving in front of his face, pulling him from his wandering mind. "Are you in there today?"

"Yes," he answered. "Of course."

"I've asked you three times if you understood what I was saying, and you've ignored me." Her lips tensed, and he stared at them.

"Yes, definitely," he assured, but she shook her head.

"If you need, we can take a break," she suggested. As she spoke, she pulled her arms up above her head, stretching her body. He was sure that she had no idea the effect she was able to have on him now, but the supple curve of her breast under her white button down was cruelty at its best.

"That might be good," he pushed his chair back from the desk, moving away from her. He stretched his own body as he faced away from her, trying to push the images away from his mind. It's completely normal to fantasize about girls. She's just another girl. Which was true, but lately every time he closed his eyes in the shower as his hand moved down his body he remembered the way her skirt slid up her thigh as she bounced her leg or the day she had worn a dark bra, and he hadn't told her that he could see it through her shirt after she pulled off her sweater. His mind also created other images, pulling them from his imagination. Afterward, he always felt wrong. Wrong for using her. Wrong for feeling this way about her.

"So, I wanted to ask you something anyway," she said behind him.

Draco turned back to face her. "Yeah?"

She reached up to pull her hair behind her ear, and he watched for the flush as she smiled nervously. "It's my birthday on Sunday."

"Oh, okay." He wasn't really sure why this would be relevant to him. It wasn't like he could buy her something. He had zero access to his accounts.

"Some of us are going down to the village. I thought, maybe, you might want to go. You could ask your friends to come if you want." She rushed the words out of her mouth, and he stared, disbelieving. She was asking him to go to the village for her birthday. He wasn't even sure what that meant. For a moment, he wondered if she was asking him because … no. That was stupid.

"I, uh," he fumbled with words, trying to decide what to do. His gut reaction was to go, but then he immediately remembered that would involve talking to her friends. "I'm not sure your friends would want me there."

"Well, it's my birthday," she countered, "and, I don't know, I thought maybe that we had, somehow, sort of, started …" She trailed off, and he just stared. What was she not saying? She covered her eyes with her hand and laughed. "This is stupid. I'm being an idiot." She dropped the hand back to her lap. "I thought we might be friends now, and you might want to come."

"Oh." His hand moved up to rub at the back of his neck. "Yeah, I mean, I think so, too."

She laughed again. "It's actually been really strange having everyone else here."

"Yeah. It has," he agreed.

"So will you come?" she asked.

"I don't think it's a good idea. It might just end badly. You should go with your friends and have a good time." He watched her frown, but he knew that he was right.

"Okay, yeah." She shrugged and turned back to her work. He was tempted to ask her if they could do something else on Sunday, but that was a line he was unable to cross.

Sunday, September 19th, 1998

The common area was empty when Hermione returned from Hogsmeade with Neville and Hannah. They wished her a happy birthday one last time, and both retreated behind closed doors as she did the same.

She moved over to hang her jacket, wondering when Ginny would sneak back into the castle that night, and if she was going to end up in any trouble. She understood that she and Harry missed one another, but she was now off grounds after curfew, and that wasn't something Hermione could support. She shook her head at the pair as she kicked off her shoes, and moved towards the bathroom.

She stripped down to her skin and soaked in the hot shower, washing away the day. It had been a good day, but she was ready for bed. Harry and Ron had come up, and she had felt awkward. Everything was still wrong between them. Something had fallen out of balance. It had happened before, and somehow they had always found a way to fix it. She hoped that this would be the same, that time could heal this strain. She stood in the shower until she could no longer resist the pull of warm sheets, and stepped out. She dressed again and walked back out to her room. She was halfway to her bed when she saw them. Four vanilla cupcakes on a white plate. The frosting was chocolate, and obviously inexpertly applied. She stopped abruptly, staring at them. Something was off with the sponge.

After several long moments, she stepped forward, and grabbed the plate, lifting it from the bed. She crossed the room to her door and pulled it open. The common area was still empty as she knocked on his door softly. He opened it moments later, staring at her with his brow crinkled.

"Did you make these?" she asked him.

"Well, the elves helped," he told her. He had made her cupcakes. Draco 'this is ridiculous' Malfoy had gone to the kitchens alone and made her cupcakes for her birthday.

She smiled broadly and looked past him into his room. There was a book lying open on his bed. "Can I come in? We could share them."

He looked into the empty common room and shrugged. "Sure." He moved back, letting her walked past him and then shut the door behind her. Hermione moved over to his bed and climbed up onto it before setting the plate before her. She watched Draco walk towards her, close the book, and set it on his nightstand, and then he sat across from her. Once he was settled, she reached down for one of the cupcakes and handed it to him. His fingers touched hers as he took it and something flashed across his face that she didn't quite understand.

"Did you have a good birthday?" he asked as she reached for one of her own.

"Yeah. Harry came up. He and Ginny are probably still off somewhere now."

"She's out past curfew?" He cocked a brow at her.

"I guess."

"Saving the world really does come with its perks," he mumbled, and she chose to ignore him in favor of biting into her dessert.

"Oh," she moaned as her tongue tasted the sweet flavor of the cupcake. "These are wonderful. Really," she told him after she had finished her first bite.

"It's okay," he said after trying his own.

"What did you do today, other than sneak down to the kitchens and bake?"

"Studied. That's pretty much all I do now." He shrugged and took another bite.

"You should really find something else to do. Your brain needs a break every so often."

"Granger telling me to stop studying. Never thought I would see the day."

"Ha. Ha," she feigned annoyance. "I'm not saying you shouldn't be working hard, just that sometimes you should do something else for a bit to recharge."

"Like chess or eating cupcakes?" he asked, his smirk free of its usual malice.

"Yes, exactly like that," she agreed.


A/N: I wasn't going to post this until Monday, but the next chapter is almost done, and I'm being irresponsible. I hope that you enjoy!

Xoxo

Meg