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 Twenty
Wednesday, December 23rd, 1998
Harry picked her and Ginny up at the Platform the next day after work. Hermione nearly started crying right there when he hugged her. She missed him. She missed him so much, more than she had allowed herself to really feel until his arms were tight around her holding her against him.
When they arrived back at the house, she had expected Ron to be there. She missed him too, but Harry just shook his head and said he was at the shop working late. Hermione felt like a pretty shit friend at that point because she hadn't even realized that Ron was helping George out until Harry told her.
Harry and Ginny chatted with her for a few minutes, but she quickly excused herself to unpack. She knew they wanted to be alone. How could they not? She was reminded again at how little she had been focusing on her friendships by the fact that Harry and Ginny had been spending weeks apart at a time, doing over and over what she and Draco were so hesitant to do even once. The end of break seemed so far away as she watched Harry rub the back of Ginny's hand as they talked.
She used her wand to get her truck up to her room and clicked the door shut behind her. After months in her room at Hogwarts, this old room at Grimmauld seemed a bit foreign and lonely to her. She unpacked quickly, using magic to make the job less tedious, and then she curled up under her blankets with a book.
She had been reading for nearly an hour when he knocked. "Hermione?"
"Come in," she called to him.
Ron pushed the door open slowly as Hermione sat up. "Hey," he said.
"Hey," she told him, and then she patted a space on the bed.
Ron laughed and crossed the room to sit with her. He put his back up against the wall, and his feet dangled off the other edge. "How's it going?"
"Good. Just giving Harry and Ginny space," she explained.
"I'm pretty sure they are in Harry's room," he told her, frowning.
"Sorry it's weird," she laughed at him, and he shook his head.
"All the girls in the world, and he falls for my sister," he said, but he smiled as well.
"She's pretty great though," Hermione told him.
"Yeah, she is," he agreed. "He's not bad either, for a bloke."
"No, he's a good one. I heard you have a new job?" Hermione asked, pointing out that they hadn't talked about it before.
"Not really, just helping George a bit." He rubbed at his chin as he spoke, and Hermione noticed he needed to shave.
"A bit? I heard you were going to the shop every day after training and on the weekends. When do you have time to see Lavender?" She wasn't sure of this was a safe question between them, but she wanted to be supportive, to move back to being real friends.
"She, uh, broke up with me." Ron shrugged, but Hermione could tell it hurt.
"What? Why?" she asked, startled. She wished Harry had thought to mention it to her.
"I was getting distracted and working too much with George, and she thought if it was you, I would have made the time." Ron didn't meet her eye.
She wasn't sure what to say. "Oh."
"I think it's probably good. I need to figure out my own stuff first." He shrugged again.
Hermione struggled with what to say or do. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but she wasn't sure if that would be taken the wrong way. "I'm sorry, Ron."
"It is what it is." He shrugged again. "I'm just glad your back. Harry and I … we missed you. I can't keep going on like this."
"I'm seeing someone." The words slipped out, quick and awkward, before she realized what she was really saying.
Luckily, Ron just laughed. He laughed hard, shaking his head as his face turned red. He leaned forward, pulling her in to hug him. "Oh, Hermione." She hugged him back, feeling a bit embarrassed by her outburst. "I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I'll make breakfast. K?"
"Okay. See you tomorrow." Ron moved from the bed, still chuckling as he walked across her room. It was odd, not at all what she had been expecting, but maybe, just possibly, they could all move back toward what they had once been. She missed them, the way that they had been three parts of one whole. The past several months without them had been like living without part of herself.
XXX
Wednesday, December 23rd, 1998
Hermione was still reading, but now in her pajamas, her hair pulled up out of her face, when another knock came at her door. "Hermione?"
"Come in, Harry," she told him, smiling at the parallel. They were so unique her boys, but so alike as well. He moved inside, shutting the door behind him before he moved over to her bed and climb up beside her. She closed her book and turned on her side to face him. "Hey."
"Hey," he told her.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Nothing. I just wanted to tell you that I'm glad you came." He looked down at her book, and she could tell that something was off. She wasn't sure if it was something in particular or if this was just the general demeanor that he seemed to have about life now.
"Me too," she said, trying to decide if she should share the idea that had been on her mind the past few days.
"You see Ron yet?" Harry asked.
"He came in when he got home. He said he and Lavender broke up." Hermione watched Harry turn on his back and stare up at the ceiling.
"Yeah. Idiot." Harry sighed, and she decided not to push him about forgetting to share the news with her before she saw Ron.
"He seems to have realized he needs to be alone," Hermione told him.
"I suppose so."
They fell into a long silence. Hermione joined him on her back, looking up at the faded design on the ceiling. "Harry?" she asked finally.
"Yeah?"
"I was hoping you could take me to see Narcissa Malfoy."
Harry moved again, pushing up from the bed to gaze down at her. "What?"
Hermione followed him, sitting up before pulling her knees to her chin. "She isn't allowed to send any mail, and he can't either. I thought … maybe … she might want to hear how he's doing. Maybe send him a note or something."
"You want to go see her?" he asked, clearly uncertain about the entire situation. "Narcissa Malfoy?"
"Yeah." Hermione nodded once.
"Are you too friends now?" Harry asked.
"He's changed, honestly," Hermione told him.
Harry ran a hand through his messy locks. "I guess … that's good. I'm glad you're getting along."
"Me too. I was really worried, but he wants to pass this test, and he seems open to what I'm trying to teach him." Hermione wanted to ease him into the idea of Draco, and he luckily seemed open to this.
"She's been living in one of their smaller homes," Harry explained. "I'll owl her and see if I can set something up."
"Thanks, Harry. How are you holding up?" Hermione asked.
"Fine."
"Right, but for real?" Hermione watched Harry shake his head and look away from her as he didn't answer. She reached forward to grab his hand. "Hey. It's me."
"It's hard," he told her, his voice rough.
"What is?" She didn't want to push too hard, but she don't have much time here to figure out what was wrong if she was going to try to help him. He needed to open up.
Harry laughed, but it was the empty, humorless laugh of a broken soul. "Everything. Work. Ginny. Getting up in the morning."
It crushed her heart. The words floating from his lips to her ears stung her very core. He was her best friend, her brother, and he was hurting so horribly bad. She hated it. "Harry, you have to let people in. You have to tell them when you feel like this."
"I'm telling you," he told her. "Hermione," he hesitated, "it doesn't feel like it's over."
"It is over." She gripped his hand more tightly. "He's gone. He's never coming back." She felt like sobbing, but she held back the majority of her emotion, letting him feel her earnest need for him to know the truth through her tight grip on him. "Ron says you're working overtime on old cases. Why are you putting yourself through that?"
"It helps," he said simply.
"Does it really?" she asked, and then she gave voice to the words that had haunted her for months. "Does being an Auror help?"
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, as if he had never considered this.
"I mean, it seems like an odd career choice ... given everything." She was convinced it was killing him, holding him down in this dark place she didn't want him in. He deserved beauty and light in his life, and being an Auror was not going to give him any sort of peace.
"This is what I always wanted to do," he explained, but the explanation fell flat.
"I know, I do, but maybe it isn't right anymore. Maybe you need something a little less like the job you've been doing the last seven years." A little less like the job he never should have been given. She stroked his hand with her thumb while he stared back, dumbstruck.
"I don't even know what I would do if I wasn't an Auror."
"You could do anything," she insisted. "Play Quidditch. Travel the world. Renovate this place or build that new house you were talking about this summer."
"Everyone expects me to be an Auror," he said,
She felt a rush of rage fill her. He owed them nothing. Nothing, and yet here he sat, falling apart in this room, insisting that they needed him, expected things of him. "Everyone expects me to get some great Ministry job. Fuck them."
"Hermione!" Harry's face morphed into something between shock and amusement.
"No, really, we've given them enough. It's time we do what we want. I want you and Ron back, and I want you doing something that isn't killing you."
"It isn't killing me," he said. Any meaning the words may have had was lost by the giant dark circles under his eyes.
"It is," she said softly. "Ginny and Ron are both worried about you, too."
"They put you up to this?" he asked. It wasn't angry or accusatory, just curious.
"Of course, they did. They know I can get through to you … sometimes." She laughed, remembering times when she wasn't able to get through to him at all.
Harry didn't laugh. He held her gaze, his eyes boring into hers, suddenly serious. "You remember when we were alone, just the two of us, and it was like ... we could stay there forever and pretend like the world wasn't out here falling apart?"
"Yeah," she said, startled at the sudden shift in their conversation. "I remember." She had been devastated by losing Ron, torn apart with the pain, with the weight of all of of it, but she would have had to be dead not to feel the connection she and Harry shared then.
"Sometimes … sometimes I wish we had, and I feel like the worst person. It's not … not that I don't love Ginny and everyone, but … it would have been easy."
"You aren't the worst. Not even close," Hermione promised him. "But, if you feel like this, you've got to make a change."
"Yeah. Probably." Harry rubbed at his face. "I always wanted to be an Auror," he whispered, and she wasn't sure he was talking to her anymore.
XXX
Wednesday, December 23, 1998
Hermione had only left that morning, but it felt longer somehow. He missed her. It was crazy, but he was wallowing in missing her. How had they allowed themselves to get here, to this messy and murky location of having fallen too far to go back? He was sure that it wouldn't end well, that it couldn't possibly be any good for either of them, but when she was next to him, it was so easy to pretend that all of that would never really matter.
Theo had gotten them some sort of terrible liquid he was sure he shouldn't be drinking, but he had been good - so fucking good - for months, and tonight he was sleeping alone, dreadfully alone. If he had to struggle against the nightmares without her warmth beside him, he may as well do it shitfaced. Draco poured the vile liquid past his lips, grimacing at the taste. He would stop caring what it tasted like soon enough. He would stop caring that he wasn't going to taste her lips, her skin, her body open to him.
Fuck.
"What is wrong with you?" Theo asked, his eyes narrowed.
"Nothing," Draco responded. It came out harsh, and he was sure that it was entirely unconvincing. Fucking Granger. Leaving him. But, he had told her to go, told her that she should go see her parents, so it wasn't really her fault.
"Yes. Nothing." Theo scoffed, and took a drag of his cigarette.
"Just the normal shit." Draco hoped that he would drop it, but Theo shook his head, grinning.
"You're extra miserable to be around tonight, Draco. What's going on?"
Draco scowled, taking another drink. "What is this shit?" he asked with disdain.
"No clue." Theo shrugged "But, it gets the job done."
"Clearly," Draco agreed.
"Is it something with Granger?" Theo asked. "Did something happen again?"
"No. Why do you think it always has to do with Granger?"
"Because it always does lately."
"She's just my tutor," Draco insisted.
"Yeah, okay. You tell me you're not fucking her, and I'll tell you I'm not glad my Dad's in Azkaban this Christmas, and we'll both be fucking liars." Theo didn't meet his eye. He just inhaled on his cigarette again.
Draco stared, his jaw failing to respond to his orders to close his damn mouth. "I'm not," he sputtered finally.
"Oh, so you're just cuddling with her every night? Sitting in the chair while she sleeps? How noble of you. How very un-Malfoy."
"You - What do you want?" Draco asked, knowing he had lost, sure he was about to be blackmailed.
"Ouch. I don't want anything, Draco. I just want you to stop lying to me," Theo told him.
"I'm not lying," Draco said automatically.
"You just said you weren't fucking her," Theo told him, gesturing as if he could grab the words from the air.
"Stop saying it like that," Draco demanded.
"Oh, Merlin's sagging tit." Theo stared, eyes wide. "You like her, Granger?! She's off limits, mate."
"What the fuck does that even mean?"
"It means your a fucking parole, and she's a hero. It isn't going to work. You're better off ending it now."
Draco pulled the rest of the liquid from his cup and shook his head, staring away from Theo hard.
"Fuck, Draco." Theo's voice was low, as if he was suddenly understanding something profound. "Fuck."
"Yeah," Draco agreed. "I know."
"You … Does she know how bad this will be?" Theo asked.
"Of course, she knows," Draco snapped, thinking of her brow furrowed as she worried over a problem while tutoring him. If only their problem were so easily solved as homework.
"Fuck," Theo said again, pity thick on his tongue.
A/N: Hope you liked this chapter !
Xoxo
Meg
