Yay! They're cooperating now, and I actually got another, longer chapter done. I hope you enjoy the story, and the thanks-for-comments section at the end!
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Aftershock
Part 5
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When Hermione saw Draco walk in the next morning, it became obvious what the problem was. The man looked like he hadn't slept and this made two days in a row. Something was eating at him. Her worried gaze followed him until his office door closed, softly and slowly, behind him. A frown creased her brow.
What was going on?
Deep in thought, Hermione set about her own work, back at her desk. The reports didn't require much of her attention, so she was free to ponder the question of Draco Malfoy. It was darkly amusing when the realization struck her that this was how she had spent the majority of her years at Hogwarts. Giving the busywork a fraction of her attention while pondering a problem that her teachers wouldn't approve of... like Polyjuice potion and how to get a dragon away from Hogwarts. How often those extra projects had involved Draco in some way, even just having to think up a way to avoid him finding out about it. Hermione smirked to herself.
She paused in her thoughts, running through what she knew about him, and the way he acted. His attitude at Hogwarts couldn't have been an act. It had been too perfect to be an act, too consistent. She filled out the last report, the beginnings of a headache blossoming above her right eye, and decided to get it at the source.
Besides, if she'd forgiven Draco, she had a right to know why he had become worth it.
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Draco was dozing in his chair when a knock on the door startled him awake. He had finished the artifact identification for the day, and had started the reports (in-triplicate) and that was the last he remembered. A quick look around revealed that he had not drooled and the desk still looked presentable.
"Come in."
He bit back a groan as Hermione opened the door with a smile, two mugs levitating beside her. Should have known. Nobody else bothers with me. The thought was both bitter and relieved.
"I wanted some hot chocolate, and you looked like you could use some cheering up this morning." She smiled uncertainly, and Draco took a moment to admire the slight blush that it brought to her skin, and the twinkle in her eyes. He fought not to sigh, and smiled back.
"Had a bad night. Have a seat." He waived to the chair in front of his desk, standing to retrieve the mug floating towards him. Taking a sip, he realized that it was muggle hot chocolate, from the little packets, and couldn't stop the wide smile from crossing his face. He should have known that she would have that particularly muggle treat. Looking back at her, he saw the uneasiness in her eyes, the slight dimming of her expression. Licking his lips nervously, Draco sat back down, trying to figure out what to say to make her realize that his past prejudices were just that...past.
"This is a coincidence. I usually make myself cocoa, but there wasn't any time this morning." He tried for a reassuring smile, and it was returned. He also caught the look of startled curiosity, and got the sinking feeling that he was Hermione's latest project. He cleared his throat nervously. "The packets with the little marshmallows are my favorite."
"But...!" She look startled, and then tried to hide it. Draco even saw her bite her bottom lip just as she lifted her own mug to mask the action.
"Hermione," he leaned forward, over his desk to look her in the eye, "I lived as a muggle for four years, just like you, Weasly and Potter did. It forced me to realize what that world was really like instead of my skewed view of it." Her eyes were so beautiful, glinting the way they did as she absorbed the information. It took more self-control than it should have for Draco to lean back into his chair and away from her. This was not a good moment for getting lost in just looking at her. She may be alright with the new-and-improved Draco, but Smitten-Draco would be something else entirely.
"That makes sense." She looked into her mug, thinking. He continued to sip his, taking the moment to watch her slender fingers hold the ceramic. The first finger of her left hand was tapping slightly on the handle. He saw the smudges of ink on the ring finger of her right hand, where he supposed her quill rested as she wrote. She shifted and he caught the fainter smudge on the pad of her right middle finger, and had to choke back a laugh.
"What's so funny?" The question wasn't angry, but could easily turn that way depending on his answer.
"I just noticed that the Ministry must have you doing an insane amount of reading or research. The ink from the pages is starting to stain." Sure enough, she looked at her right hand, and the smudge on her finger.
"Oh, that's not from this assignment, that's been there for yea..." she stopped, realizing what she was saying, and blushed. Draco couldn't choke it back this time, and did laugh. It felt good. Then another sound joined in, and he realized that Hermione was laughing too. It was such a trivial thing, the ink smudges on her hands, but it was so funny.
They calmed down and an uneasy expression crossed Hermione's face. Draco braced for whatever question had come to her mind. He was sure that he wasn't going to like answering it.
"Draco... is living in the muggle world why you have changed so much since school?" The question was soft, he almost didn't hear it. He took some courage from the fact that Hermione was as uncomfortable asking the question as he was hearing it.
"Not entirely. " He paused, trying to explain it to her in a way that wouldn't make her leave. He didn't want her to leave. He looked back into her eyes, trying to borrow some of that famous Gryffindor courage. It helped a little. "I've changed because I found out that my Father had been misleading me. I was a good little Dark Wizard during school, I did everything that he expected of me, and I enjoyed it." The hurt nearly shouted from her brown eyes, causing his throat to constrict. He continued, just to try and erase that look. "When it came time for Voldemort to keep his end of the bargain and give me a world's worth of power, the promises my father had made crumbled. Voldemort was the only one who would get that power, no matter what my father seemed to have." Disgust was replacing hurt on Hermione's face, and Draco had to look away. He couldn't believe the shame that slammed into him. He had thought he was done with that emotion, had wished that he was done with it.
"I ran away from my own initiation, because I saw my all-powerful father, the great Lucious Malfoy bowing to the ground and groveling in front of Voldemort. I wasn't going to do that, I bow to no-one." The anger and pride still came to him at the thought. "Potter was waiting in the woods, watching, I'm sure, for an opening to come snatch me out of evil's grip. I nearly ran into him, but got a broomstick to the gut instead." He smiled a little, Potter had not been happy about having to save him. "We flew away, Potter taking the lead, and presenting better bait than I ever would have, and me casting every curse and hex I knew over my shoulder." It was ironic that he'd learned most of them because he was planning on using them against Potter, but he didn't say that to Hermione. He didn't think that she'd find it as funny as he did.
"After we were safe, Potter and I got into a fight. Actually, we had that fight that had been building since that first day at Hogwarts. We beat each other into the ground as the sun rose and the adults came to find us." Hermione's eyes widened, she obviously remembered Potter's hospital stay while the bruises, cuts and scrapes healed. "I don't think I could move anything normally for weeks, but after that Potter and I came to an understanding. Seeing that neither of us was exactly evil, and we both needed to hide from the Death Eaters, we started working together, putting our considerable experience in the matter to good use."
"You." Hermione gasped, "You lead us to all of those meeting places and artifact caches." Draco drank in the sight of surprise overcoming the anger and disgust on her face. He wondered if he'd make it through the explanation with her still speaking to him.
"Yes, that was me. I put my eavesdropping skill to use at home as well as Hogwarts." He smiled slyly and was rewarded when she laughed. "Potter and I made a good team, and became friends because we worked so well together. It was impossible to keep the animosity when our lives depended on each other. It made me realize what the three of you had had during school. How much I had missed out on because I was waiting for this promise of unequaled power." He couldn't read the expression on her face now, but it didn't matter. She was the first person besides Potter that he's told any of this to, and Potter wasn't the mushy emotional sort, so Draco's own feelings on the matter had remained his own.
"Do you miss it? All that influence you had because of your father?" The question was blunt, but her face was kind. Draco felt his heart contract again, knowing that, if he didn't feel that for her, then it was damn close.
"Sometimes, though that's mostly because it's the other extreme now. Nobody does anything for me anymore, even the basics. It makes life difficult, but I'm managing alright. Keeping a part of my muggle life helps. At least there nobody alters their behavior because of my name." He paused, thinking about why he was alright with the way things were. Why he had helped Potter instead of trying to grab the power for himself, a rival to Voldemort. "Potter showed me that some things were just as good, if not better than the power that I wanted."
"What things?" Her eyes were glinting again, and it made Draco smile. That expression was his favorite, with her eyes alight and her expression so focused.
"Once, we were trying to evacuate a muggle orphanage. Potter was having a hard time with the directors, and an Auror had to step in. The Auror didn't look anything like the police officer he was trying to mimic, and the whole thing was turning into a mess. Then one of the kids comes up to me, she must have been five or six, and hands me this dragon plushy. It was blue. And she asks me if we can save Edger too. The kids could understand what we were saying, even if the adults couldn't, and they were scared.
"We ended up fighting off the Death Eaters, keeping them away from the orphanage, still full of people. It was tough, but we did it. A week later, I got a letter, through someone doing clean up. That little girl had drawn me a thank-you card, with Edger on it." Draco paused, trying to put the joy, relief and warmth he had felt into words. "Potter showed me the joy of saving lives. And it was better than the power, and it was enough to keep me fighting. It still is."
Draco's throat was raw with emotion, his hot chocolate gone, and Hermione sitting opposite him with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes. He leaned away from her as the almost over-powering impulse to hold her washed over him. The separation from her was nearly painful, the amount of control needed to deny the impulse making it more so.
"They were both the real you." Her voice was thick with emotion, and she was smiling. She was beautiful. He stared at her, deciding if he really wanted to know what that statement meant. Hermione stood up while he was staring at her, levitating both mugs again. She paused at the door, as his heart sank, thinking she was running away.
"Thank you for telling me. I know that you didn't have to." She waved her hands in the air, seeming to search for words. "I'm going to go collect myself... you don't need an emotional female messing up you work. ...I'll see you later... Draco." The words came out in a broken up rush, and she was gone before he could respond. It left him hovering on the edge of both intense joy and despair. He couldn't tell if she'd meant that she'd see him, or if she couldn't stand to be in his presence after finding out that he really had been a monster.
He leaned his forehead on his desk with a thump. The reports suddenly looked very good, their mind-numbing properties very welcome at the moment.
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Hermione dumped the mugs on her desk and bolted for the ladies room. She was causing a minor scene, but she didn't care. Locking the bathroom door, she slumped against the wall, tears streaming down her face.
She didn't know which of the jumbled emotions she should be feeling. The Draco in his office was so much at odds with the Draco she remembered, that she wasn't sure what to do with the information she had just gotten.
The look on his face when he talked about the little girl and her thank-you card... Hermione had been swept away by the joy and peace on his pale face. Even if his words didn't convey how important that experience had been, his face had. He had been breathtaking, beautiful, and Hermione wasn't sure what she felt about that.
He was so good now. Understanding and warm, he even liked muggle things, had kept aspects of his enforced muggle life. So different from the Draco she remembered. And so similar to the Draco she had wished for in school.
She remembered how, in a fit of frustration and anger, she had imagined the perfect Draco Malfoy. A boy who would help in their schemes instead of hinder, who would work in potions, was kind, generous, and a friend. School would have been so much more enjoyable with this imaginary Draco instead of the real one.
She had kept imaginary Draco close to her heart, and by seventh year had dreamed up a whole life with him, her perfect companion. It had hurt to look at the real man, so different from the one in her mind, and so beautiful. Her dreams had alternated between the happiness of life with imaginary Draco, and the nightmares of real Draco handing her over to Voldemort because she was muggle-born. There had been mornings when she woke up with the taste of him on her lips, had reached for him in the bed next to her to whisper Good Morning, and a piece of her had died when she realized that he wasn't there, and never would be. Her Draco didn't exist. And there had been mornings when she'd woken up tasting her own blood, his beautiful face laughing as he tortured her the only thing she could see. Those mornings it had been everything she could do just to sit and eat breakfast without it coming back up every time she saw him.
And today he had told her that there was no imaginary-Draco and real-Draco, that they were both real. And the man she had been dreaming about was the one sitting in that office everyday, so close. Hermione felt the sobs start in her chest, painful as they welled up her throat. There he was, and she didn't know if she could deal with it, knowing that the dream and the nightmare were tied together, the same person.
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End Part Five
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Many Thanks
jessiCA, Medrelina the Weird, kxs, and stephanie: I'm so glad that you're all liking this. I promise to get the rest out a quickly as possible ^_~
Seeress: I always like hearing from you. I tried to make Draco less of a caricature, and this is what happened. Hope you keep enjoying the story.
rori: That's hefty praise, and I'm afraid you made me blush. I like getting into characters heads, to find out what makes them tick. My interpritation is usually a little off center, and I'm glad that you approve of this one.
Everyone: Keep reading and commenting. My ego appreciates it ^_^
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and Co. do not belong to me, they belong to J.K. Rowling. I'm just speculating the "Happily Ever After", and not making any money off of it.