Why?
Hermione Granger had been watching Draco Malfoy since it had stopped. Their moments of friendliness, their late-night study meetings, their even later romantic trysts. She had wondered why one night he went to her room and said, "It's over.", why he avoided her, why he would leave their common room and even changed the portrait of his room so it would insult her mercilessly.
She wondered why she heard him leave late at night, and return just before the sun was fully up. She had her suspicions, that was what happened to her during their late-night meetings, if she even made it back to her room. These suspicions became stronger when he would disappear to the dungeons after classes, only returning for a brief time before leaving again at night.
"I want to know her name." she said one day as he snuck back into the common room.
"Whose?" he asked.
"Whoever you're fucking." she said digging her nails into the large couch by the entrance. She had been waiting all night for this.
"None of your business Granger." he replied and walked into his room.
"Don't worry I doubt a mudblood is much to compete with anyway." his portrait smirked. Hermione threw a book at it.
A few weeks later Draco would disappear for longer amounts of time, to places she could not follow him to, and Hermione was lucky to get a glimpse of him. When she did she saw that he was exhausted and sickly- looking. Could it be something else?
Several more weeks passed when Draco was suddenly unoccupied for long intervals of time, and then suddenly disappear for another few weeks. Hermione could not conclude to anything that would explain this, until one day they were both in the common room and Draco fell to the floor hissing in pain clutching to his arm. Hermione rushed over and tried to help but he pushed her away and ran out of the room. He disappeared for another week.
When Hermione brought this up to Dumbledore he just smiled sadly and told her he knew nothing about this, that was a lie and she knew it.
When Draco returned he looked more ill then he had before; his eyes were red and had heavy bags under them, he seemed to have lost an alarming amount of weight in a short period of time, his skin looked lifeless, and his mouth was dry and cracked. At lunch time several Slytherins patted him on the back and whispered something in his ear, a few shook his hand, and many of them applauded when he entered the Great Hall.
Hermione felt herself become sick.
At dinner she watched him finish his meal and leave the Great Hall. She followed.
"I want to see it Draco." she said when they were in an abandoned corridor. He turned around.
"Go away Granger." Draco snarled.
"Is it true then?" she asked walking towards him. He pushed her away.
"I said go away you mudblood." she felt tears form.
"Draco, I want to see it!" she wailed grabbing his sleeve. He looked at her hand then stared at her face. After a few moments he grabbed her hand and lead her to his bedroom.
"Oooh! Smoochy smoochy!" his portrait said as he said the password.
When they entered the room he lead them to his bathroom and put a silencing charm on the door.
"Do you want to see what pathetic pure-blood children think is so glorious? So heroic, and admirable?" he growled. "Do you want to see what will mar my skin until the worms consume me? Do you want to see what the result of hours of hexes, and bottle after bottle of potions is? Months of cautiousness and paranoia resulted in? Months of falseness?"
Hermione nodded slowly, and Draco pulled his robe off.
She was silent as he unbuttoned the sleeve of his shirt. He slowly rolled the sleeve up, and she gasped and started crying when she saw the black skull with the snake twisting from the skulls mouth.
She ran into his arms, he was surprised at first but quickly pulled away and dressed again. "They may not be watching me, but they will detect you if you touch it. You will be harmed Hermione."
She sniffled and wiped her eyes, nodding when she realized something. "You called me Hermione..."
"That is your name isn't it? You're not so shocked that you forgot?" he pulled his robe on.
"Is this why it stopped?" she asked.
"And why it cannot continue..." he said as he pulled his wand out. "They're watching you Hermione."
"What?"
"They're watching you. It took me forever to convince father and Voldemort that I was still loyal to them, that you were just a fuck." she winced and he put the wand down. "You weren't Hermione... They're watching you now, they've stopped watching me except Benedict outside."
"He's one of their's? Is that why he's so rude?"
"No he's just an asshole." Draco smirked and Hermione smiled.
"Why were all the Slytherins congratulating you?"
"They must've found out that he trusts me. Trusts me as much as he does at least, Benedict's still there."
"What is he going to say about you bringing me into your room?"
"Nothing, it's my word against his and Benedict's known for trying to create havoc."
"I miss you, you know that right?"
"Yes I do. I'm sorry I've had to be unpleasant to you."
"When can we be together again?"
"When the war's over." She nodded unhappily and Draco sighed. "The mark is covered Hermione..."
She looked at him and saw that he lifted his arms slightly. She embraced him and cried into his chest. He kissed her forehead and her nose. When he kissed her mouth she thought, 'When the war's over, when the war's over we can be together again...'
A/N- My spin on an overused event. I think it's overused, I'm not sure I drew a picture and it came out to something that made me write this and it seems very familiar. It's either overused or I wanted to write this before and I was just to lazy
