She didn't hear from Harry or Ron for several days after the
Hogsmeade visit. During that time, she hadn't gotten a chance to speak to
Draco, either. He had taken to not coming home at all, rather sleeping in
his office at work.
"It's insane!" she cried to Hilda as she opened the letter from Harry. They were sitting in the kitchen, Hermione straddling the chair, Hilda tidying up the counters. "He's acting like I don't exist! How does he expect me to chose this way when I never see him?"
"Just because he's out of your sight, doesn't mean he's out of your heart," Hilda replied wisely and Hermione stopped scanning the letter.
"What?"
"My guess is if he figures you don't see him at all, it will make things easier for you. If you choose to stay and marry him, even after not seeing him for so long, then you truly do love him. If you leave, it won't matter to him anyway."
Hermione considered this as she read Harry's letter to herself. He didn't say much, only that Ron wanted to tell her what he wanted to say to her back when he was in the hospital. "He'll send his own letter soon," Harry wrote. "I tried to talk to him but it didn't work all that well. Let's just say I wound up with a black eye because he kept waving his wand at me, emphasizing what he was saying."
Hermione giggled, aware of the damage one's wand could do when being used carelessly. Hilda looked at her expectantly, waiting for the antidote to her laughter, but Hermione just shook her head.
"Nothing," she muttered, folding the letter in half. "Well, my friends were no use. What now?"
"Did it ever occur to you that your friends might not want to choose for you?" Hilda asked as Gemini entered the kitchen to grab some cleaning supplies. "Well, you've been friends for seven years, right?" Hilda asked.
"Yeah. So?"
"Maybe they both having feelings for you and don't want to give you a biased opinion."
Hermione thought for a moment. Ron, she knew, did have feelings for her and she felt the same way at one point. But Harry? It didn't seem logical. She thought of the lasting way Harry had hugged her in the Three Broomsticks and the glances he snuck her way every so often. "No," she concluded. "Ron, maybe, but definitely not Harry."
Hilda just shrugged and began scrubbing at a tough stain on the counter. "I don't know what these cooks of yours use to make that food, but it's definitely permanent."
Draco finally returned home the following evening. He walked in the door, avoiding Hermione's eyes, and went straight upstairs to the guest bedroom. Hermione, who had been reading in the sitting room, followed him immediately.
"Draco, open the door!" she called, knocking at the same time. When her requests went unanswered, she persisted. "Draco, we need to talk. Open up!" She knocked a few more times, then waited for an answer. It didn't feel right just opening the door and walking on so she knocked harder. "Draco, open the damn door!"
Suddenly it swung open, revealing Draco. His hair was in disarray, flying in every direction. He had large, dark circles under his eyes that made him resemble a raccoon. His clothes were the only orderly thing about him, but even they were a little disorganized.
"Have you reached your decision?" he asked pleasantly, his hand still on the door so she couldn't open it further. He appeared to even be leaning on it for support.
"Not yet," she replied.
"Then we have nothing to discuss," he said, just as politely, moving to close the door. But months of this experience taught Hermione a few things and she stuck her foot out to stop it.
Looking like a tired old man, Draco leaned around to see what the problem was. "Will you please remove your foot from my room?" he asked her.
"Nope." She shook her head. "We are going to talk. Now."
"Hermione, I'm giving you the space you need," he said, his voice withered. "I don't know what else to do."
"Talk to me."
"Fine." He threw open the door and Hermione almost tumbled inside. When she regained her balance, she followed him around the room with her eyes.
"I just have one question," she said, watching him pace the room in circles. "Do you know if my parents knew about the fake minister?"
"Nope."
"Is that you don't know, or they didn't know?"
"They didn't know." Draco sighed and flopped down on the bed, which groaned under his weight. "Dad told me that your parents were completely clueless to the entire scam."
Hermione felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders. So her parents didn't know; that was one less thing they had let her down on. "So why did your dad do it?"
"I guess he was afraid your parents would change their minds if he didn't hurry."
"What?" Hermione felt thoroughly confused.
Draco looked at her as if realizing for the first time that she really was there. "The minister couldn't make it that early; that's why the wedding started off so many years after school finished. Then, your father began showing definite signs of not liking the idea. My father got scared and decided to move the wedding up, but when the minister couldn't make it, he panicked. So he paid some guy that he used to work with at the Ministry to play the part."
"That's sick." Hermione immediately regretted the comment. "I'm sorry, Draco, but that's sick."
"Why do you think I don't want to go back to live with him?"
"Why don't you stay here?"
Draco gave her a scathing look. "Right. I'm going to stay in a house that's too big for the two of us, plus housing crew. Why would I stay here if it's just going to be me?"
Hermione nodded. "It makes sense. Even though my parents had no part in the scam, they've hurt me in enough ways to make me not want to go back there, either."
"I know." Draco's face revealed that he was thinking of that afternoon when Hermione's parents came to visit and the family skeletons that spilled out.
They looked at each other immensely before Hermione motioned to leave. "I've still got to think," she told him as she opened the door to leave. "I'll talk to you soon." And she ran back to her bedroom where she fell on the bed and cried.
Hermione spent the rest of the entire night in her bedroom, crying quietly and sleeping on and off. When she awoke the next day, it was after noon. Slowly, she got out of bed, only to hear Gemini call from down the stairs, "Mrs. Malfoy, you have a visitor!"
She quickly ran the brush through her hair and hurried downstairs, wincing at the sound of Gemini calling her, "Mrs. Malfoy." When she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, she was surprised to find Harry standing in the doorway.
"What are you doing here?" she cried as she threw her arms around him. Pulling him away from her was Ron, grinning from ear to ear.
"I made him come with me," he said as Hermione hugged him, too. "I wasn't coming alone in case Malfoy was here." His eyes travelled through the front foyer searching for any signs of the white-blond head.
"He's working," Hermione told them. "So what are you two doing here?"
"Ron wanted to apologize," Harry filled in for his friend, who was staring around the house in wonder. "He wanted to send that owl but never got around to it."
"I'm just a little spacey," Ron admitted, finally coming back to the conversation. "Anyway, at the time, I just wanted to give you my best wishes for the marriage and everything." He tried hard to hide the glint in his eyes, but to no avail. "However, now, I wish to retract that statement from any further conversations, as the marriage didn't actually take place."
Hermione smiled faintly, concerned with how Ron was going to react to the fact that if she had to choose right this second, she would choose to stay. She knew how it felt to dread going back to a house of parents you most definitely didn't want to see and she wanted to prevent Draco from having to do so. But on the other hand, she didn't want to live out the rest of her life as Mrs. Draco Malfoy. She had been that once, but now that the opportunity to change that had dropped into her life, she wasn't sure she wanted it to stay that way.
"Would you guys like to come in?" she asked them, stepping back so they could get out of the foyer. "Come on, I'll give you a tour." She took them all through the house, including up the grand staircase for which Ron almost lost his teeth.
"Close your mouth," Harry hissed at him as Gemini passed by, eyeing them warily.
"I just can't help it," Ron claimed, running his hand along the smooth banister. "I've just never seen a place like this before. Hey!" he cried, a sudden idea coming into his head, "Hermione, have you ever slid down this thing?"
"Sliding down the banister?" she repeated. "Not in the last few days."
Harry laughed as Ron tried to climb over it and slide down the banister. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow," he repeated until he reached the bottom. He hurried back up the stairs and said, "Remind me to never to that again."
The boys were still there when Draco arrived home from work. The three of them sat in the sitting room, chatting about old time, when Draco walked in. He glared at them, obviously unhappy to see them, but went upstairs without a word. Hermione could tell from the look on Ron's face that Ron had never truly forgiven Malfoy for his taunt, created in their fifth year, of "Weasley is our king" which unfortunately followed Ron throughout his remaining years at Hogwarts.
"He was unusually quiet," Harry remarked as his eyes followed Draco up the stairs to make sure he stayed there.
Hermione nodded. "He's 'giving me space' until I make my decision." The room suddenly got very quiet as the great clock above the mantle ticked away the minutes. Finally Hermione said, "Even if I do stay, I can do whatever I want." She drew herself up proudly. "Draco said I'm a free woman."
Ron tried to smile but failed. Harry continued to look around the room in awe, his eyes bulging at the sights. Trying to change the subject, Hermione asked Harry if he had seen the Dursleys recently.
"I went to visit them one day," he said, "just out of the goodness of my heart. But Dudley slammed the door in my face. I don't suppose the robes, wand and wizard's hat had anything to do with it."
Hermione laughed loudly. She had the displeasure of meeting the youngest Dursley once before and was in no hurry to do so again. "Your aunt and uncle must have been furious."
"Oh, they were!" Harry raved. "But they didn't contact me. Ever since the Order threatened them at the end of our fifth year, they've been a little more kind." He sighed.
"By the way, Hermione, Dumbledore sends his best wishes." Harry's eyes gleamed at the sound of Dumbledore's name.
"Does he know yet?" Hermione asked, referring to the sham marriage.
Ron shook his head. "We didn't know if you wanted us to tell him or not."
Hermione thought for a moment. "Might as well. Lucius will be trying to keep things quiet so we might as well anger him as much as we possibly can." She let out a weak laugh.
"We had better get going," Harry said, standing up and looking at the clock. "We were supposed to be back at the Burrow ten minutes ago. Your mum will have our heads," he said turning to Ron.
Ron stood up, too. "Right," he said. Awkwardly, he hugged Hermione, followed by Harry, who held Hermione tightly. Thoughts of what Hilda had said floated through Hermione's mind, but she pushed them away.
"I'll see you two soon," she said just before she closed the door in the foyer. "Maybe sooner than you think." She leaned against the door. Their visit had put a lot into perspective for her. Everything around her was falling apart. The once-strict relationship with Draco was ending and suddenly she was free to do as she wished. All the things that were once tied up in a neat little package were unravelling quickly and she wasn't sure what to think of it all.
"It's insane!" she cried to Hilda as she opened the letter from Harry. They were sitting in the kitchen, Hermione straddling the chair, Hilda tidying up the counters. "He's acting like I don't exist! How does he expect me to chose this way when I never see him?"
"Just because he's out of your sight, doesn't mean he's out of your heart," Hilda replied wisely and Hermione stopped scanning the letter.
"What?"
"My guess is if he figures you don't see him at all, it will make things easier for you. If you choose to stay and marry him, even after not seeing him for so long, then you truly do love him. If you leave, it won't matter to him anyway."
Hermione considered this as she read Harry's letter to herself. He didn't say much, only that Ron wanted to tell her what he wanted to say to her back when he was in the hospital. "He'll send his own letter soon," Harry wrote. "I tried to talk to him but it didn't work all that well. Let's just say I wound up with a black eye because he kept waving his wand at me, emphasizing what he was saying."
Hermione giggled, aware of the damage one's wand could do when being used carelessly. Hilda looked at her expectantly, waiting for the antidote to her laughter, but Hermione just shook her head.
"Nothing," she muttered, folding the letter in half. "Well, my friends were no use. What now?"
"Did it ever occur to you that your friends might not want to choose for you?" Hilda asked as Gemini entered the kitchen to grab some cleaning supplies. "Well, you've been friends for seven years, right?" Hilda asked.
"Yeah. So?"
"Maybe they both having feelings for you and don't want to give you a biased opinion."
Hermione thought for a moment. Ron, she knew, did have feelings for her and she felt the same way at one point. But Harry? It didn't seem logical. She thought of the lasting way Harry had hugged her in the Three Broomsticks and the glances he snuck her way every so often. "No," she concluded. "Ron, maybe, but definitely not Harry."
Hilda just shrugged and began scrubbing at a tough stain on the counter. "I don't know what these cooks of yours use to make that food, but it's definitely permanent."
Draco finally returned home the following evening. He walked in the door, avoiding Hermione's eyes, and went straight upstairs to the guest bedroom. Hermione, who had been reading in the sitting room, followed him immediately.
"Draco, open the door!" she called, knocking at the same time. When her requests went unanswered, she persisted. "Draco, we need to talk. Open up!" She knocked a few more times, then waited for an answer. It didn't feel right just opening the door and walking on so she knocked harder. "Draco, open the damn door!"
Suddenly it swung open, revealing Draco. His hair was in disarray, flying in every direction. He had large, dark circles under his eyes that made him resemble a raccoon. His clothes were the only orderly thing about him, but even they were a little disorganized.
"Have you reached your decision?" he asked pleasantly, his hand still on the door so she couldn't open it further. He appeared to even be leaning on it for support.
"Not yet," she replied.
"Then we have nothing to discuss," he said, just as politely, moving to close the door. But months of this experience taught Hermione a few things and she stuck her foot out to stop it.
Looking like a tired old man, Draco leaned around to see what the problem was. "Will you please remove your foot from my room?" he asked her.
"Nope." She shook her head. "We are going to talk. Now."
"Hermione, I'm giving you the space you need," he said, his voice withered. "I don't know what else to do."
"Talk to me."
"Fine." He threw open the door and Hermione almost tumbled inside. When she regained her balance, she followed him around the room with her eyes.
"I just have one question," she said, watching him pace the room in circles. "Do you know if my parents knew about the fake minister?"
"Nope."
"Is that you don't know, or they didn't know?"
"They didn't know." Draco sighed and flopped down on the bed, which groaned under his weight. "Dad told me that your parents were completely clueless to the entire scam."
Hermione felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders. So her parents didn't know; that was one less thing they had let her down on. "So why did your dad do it?"
"I guess he was afraid your parents would change their minds if he didn't hurry."
"What?" Hermione felt thoroughly confused.
Draco looked at her as if realizing for the first time that she really was there. "The minister couldn't make it that early; that's why the wedding started off so many years after school finished. Then, your father began showing definite signs of not liking the idea. My father got scared and decided to move the wedding up, but when the minister couldn't make it, he panicked. So he paid some guy that he used to work with at the Ministry to play the part."
"That's sick." Hermione immediately regretted the comment. "I'm sorry, Draco, but that's sick."
"Why do you think I don't want to go back to live with him?"
"Why don't you stay here?"
Draco gave her a scathing look. "Right. I'm going to stay in a house that's too big for the two of us, plus housing crew. Why would I stay here if it's just going to be me?"
Hermione nodded. "It makes sense. Even though my parents had no part in the scam, they've hurt me in enough ways to make me not want to go back there, either."
"I know." Draco's face revealed that he was thinking of that afternoon when Hermione's parents came to visit and the family skeletons that spilled out.
They looked at each other immensely before Hermione motioned to leave. "I've still got to think," she told him as she opened the door to leave. "I'll talk to you soon." And she ran back to her bedroom where she fell on the bed and cried.
Hermione spent the rest of the entire night in her bedroom, crying quietly and sleeping on and off. When she awoke the next day, it was after noon. Slowly, she got out of bed, only to hear Gemini call from down the stairs, "Mrs. Malfoy, you have a visitor!"
She quickly ran the brush through her hair and hurried downstairs, wincing at the sound of Gemini calling her, "Mrs. Malfoy." When she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, she was surprised to find Harry standing in the doorway.
"What are you doing here?" she cried as she threw her arms around him. Pulling him away from her was Ron, grinning from ear to ear.
"I made him come with me," he said as Hermione hugged him, too. "I wasn't coming alone in case Malfoy was here." His eyes travelled through the front foyer searching for any signs of the white-blond head.
"He's working," Hermione told them. "So what are you two doing here?"
"Ron wanted to apologize," Harry filled in for his friend, who was staring around the house in wonder. "He wanted to send that owl but never got around to it."
"I'm just a little spacey," Ron admitted, finally coming back to the conversation. "Anyway, at the time, I just wanted to give you my best wishes for the marriage and everything." He tried hard to hide the glint in his eyes, but to no avail. "However, now, I wish to retract that statement from any further conversations, as the marriage didn't actually take place."
Hermione smiled faintly, concerned with how Ron was going to react to the fact that if she had to choose right this second, she would choose to stay. She knew how it felt to dread going back to a house of parents you most definitely didn't want to see and she wanted to prevent Draco from having to do so. But on the other hand, she didn't want to live out the rest of her life as Mrs. Draco Malfoy. She had been that once, but now that the opportunity to change that had dropped into her life, she wasn't sure she wanted it to stay that way.
"Would you guys like to come in?" she asked them, stepping back so they could get out of the foyer. "Come on, I'll give you a tour." She took them all through the house, including up the grand staircase for which Ron almost lost his teeth.
"Close your mouth," Harry hissed at him as Gemini passed by, eyeing them warily.
"I just can't help it," Ron claimed, running his hand along the smooth banister. "I've just never seen a place like this before. Hey!" he cried, a sudden idea coming into his head, "Hermione, have you ever slid down this thing?"
"Sliding down the banister?" she repeated. "Not in the last few days."
Harry laughed as Ron tried to climb over it and slide down the banister. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow," he repeated until he reached the bottom. He hurried back up the stairs and said, "Remind me to never to that again."
The boys were still there when Draco arrived home from work. The three of them sat in the sitting room, chatting about old time, when Draco walked in. He glared at them, obviously unhappy to see them, but went upstairs without a word. Hermione could tell from the look on Ron's face that Ron had never truly forgiven Malfoy for his taunt, created in their fifth year, of "Weasley is our king" which unfortunately followed Ron throughout his remaining years at Hogwarts.
"He was unusually quiet," Harry remarked as his eyes followed Draco up the stairs to make sure he stayed there.
Hermione nodded. "He's 'giving me space' until I make my decision." The room suddenly got very quiet as the great clock above the mantle ticked away the minutes. Finally Hermione said, "Even if I do stay, I can do whatever I want." She drew herself up proudly. "Draco said I'm a free woman."
Ron tried to smile but failed. Harry continued to look around the room in awe, his eyes bulging at the sights. Trying to change the subject, Hermione asked Harry if he had seen the Dursleys recently.
"I went to visit them one day," he said, "just out of the goodness of my heart. But Dudley slammed the door in my face. I don't suppose the robes, wand and wizard's hat had anything to do with it."
Hermione laughed loudly. She had the displeasure of meeting the youngest Dursley once before and was in no hurry to do so again. "Your aunt and uncle must have been furious."
"Oh, they were!" Harry raved. "But they didn't contact me. Ever since the Order threatened them at the end of our fifth year, they've been a little more kind." He sighed.
"By the way, Hermione, Dumbledore sends his best wishes." Harry's eyes gleamed at the sound of Dumbledore's name.
"Does he know yet?" Hermione asked, referring to the sham marriage.
Ron shook his head. "We didn't know if you wanted us to tell him or not."
Hermione thought for a moment. "Might as well. Lucius will be trying to keep things quiet so we might as well anger him as much as we possibly can." She let out a weak laugh.
"We had better get going," Harry said, standing up and looking at the clock. "We were supposed to be back at the Burrow ten minutes ago. Your mum will have our heads," he said turning to Ron.
Ron stood up, too. "Right," he said. Awkwardly, he hugged Hermione, followed by Harry, who held Hermione tightly. Thoughts of what Hilda had said floated through Hermione's mind, but she pushed them away.
"I'll see you two soon," she said just before she closed the door in the foyer. "Maybe sooner than you think." She leaned against the door. Their visit had put a lot into perspective for her. Everything around her was falling apart. The once-strict relationship with Draco was ending and suddenly she was free to do as she wished. All the things that were once tied up in a neat little package were unravelling quickly and she wasn't sure what to think of it all.
