Recap:

"But when they see we're gone they'll come after us," Hermione sighed. "And risk even more."

So, reluctantly, the two girls climbed back into the Gryffindor common room.

Within seconds most of the house was up as well.

Chapter 21: Elle Est Belle

Draco's eyes flashed open and he peered into the weighty darkness. All around him were the sounds of the forest, the gentle hum of wild animals both slumbering and out to hunt. He didn't know where he was, but that was nothing new, for he hadn't known where he was for three days now.

It was not the fact that he'd had the dream that startled him, but the strange occurrences in it. He had viewed portions of a memory that was not his. He was absolutely certain of this because in all the others dream-memories he was in his own body, playing out the memory as if it were actually happening. But, in this dream, he was disembodied, floating on the outskirts, a fly on the wall.

And, his mind racing, he could only reach one conclusion.

It was Hermione's dream.

But how? How could he know hidden memories he had never seen? Even if Hermione had told him what was said before he arrived, that still didn't explain it, not really. It didn't feel fabricated, but like he was viewing her memory on a screen.

But still, that was not what gave him that dull, sinking feeling in his gut. It was the bitterness with which his dream-self had bore. He was sneaky, conniving, and, above all, insensitive to the woman he loved, who his dream-self would love. He had lured her into his bed for his own pleasure and gains; to seek revenge against his father for offering him up to the Death Eaters. If he had ever used such information he did not know, though, as he pushed his mind, some pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. For one, his parents had died in Azkaban prison sometime over the summer. He had visited them just before they died, Hermione had told him that. Perhaps he revealed his secret to them and the shock sent them to their early graves.

"No," he muttered aloud, shaking his head. A few droplets of dew splashed off into the lightening night. It was nearly dawn, which meant that he should get going. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Of course it doesn't."

Draco whirled around, feeling his heart jump into his throat. In a matter of seconds he was on his feet, wand poised and ready.

"H-H…Hermione?" he gasped, his wand still aimed. Slowly he lowered it, tilting his head slightly to the side. "Hermione?" he said again, this time taking a step forward.

"Yes, Draco, it's me," she said, her voice sweet and silky, just the way he remembered it. She stepped forward as well, the light of the fast approaching sun silhouetting her body, magnifying the beautiful curve of her protruding belly. "I've been looking all over for you. Where have you been?"

He was about to embrace her, his mind and soul lost in a whirling cloud of emotion, when something hit him. Why was she acting so calm? And why was she alone? Surely her friends and his mother would have kept careful watch on her to ensure that she didn't try to find him on her own. She was pregnant for Merlin's sake!

"Why did you come after me if you don't love me?" he asked stiffly. Hermione's smile flickered for a moment, then brightened.

"I was lost and scared, Draco. I didn't want to believe I could fall in love with you because I still feared you and your family."

"What changed your mind?"

"Nothing," she said simply, with a shrug. She gave a little wrinkle of her nose, in that cute and irresistible way she did to make him melt. "I always loved you, Draco. Only now I know it."

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?" She was now so close to him that he could smell the shampoo in her hair, see the flecks of different shades of brown in her eyes. But, no matter how happy and beautiful she looked, he could see through the mask. And he cracked a smile.

"How did you find out about my mother?"

"I told you," she half laughed, fluttering her long lashes.

"No," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You didn't, Bella."

"Hermione!" Harry panted, clutching a stitch in his side. They had been running for so long no one could remember what normal breathing felt like. And they were beginning to lag.

"Don't stop now!" she called over her shoulder, her oxygen supply running low as well. But she wouldn't stop. Not now. Not for something so silly as loss of breath.

"You don't even know where you're going," Ginny managed, pulling her body up level with Hermione, who continued to sprint, fueled with the deepest need known to human kind.

"Everyone in the Order knows where Voldemort is hiding," she said, not slowing in the least. "Melantha is in the Order. When Draco refused the Death Eaters, who's to say that Dumbledore didn't allow him into the Order as well? As a spy in Slytherin House, maybe. And Melantha could give him necessary information about Slytherin children's parents."

"What are you getting at, Hermione?" Ron was now up with them as well, Harry right on his tail.

"Draco must know where Voldemort is hiding too! Which means that he's heading this way."

"But that's hundreds of miles away! It'll take months to get there!"

"Not if we have Thestrals," she said matter-of-factly, pulling her wand into ready position. Having mastered non-verbal spells, she uttered not a word, and a long thin knife appeared out of nowhere a few inches above her outstretched hand.

It took a few moments for everyone to grasp the idea, and by the time they realized what she meant to do, it was already too late. The molasses-thick blood dripped precariously onto the thin-strewn floor of the forest, a dark and desolate place where neither sun nor snow reached. The wound was deep enough to draw the necessary amount of blood, though shallow enough to keep from causing any serious damage.

"They're here," Harry announced, pointing to a cluster of bushes that shuddered slightly as if an impossible wind had just blown through them. A second later Hermione flinched and clutched her arm.

"It licked me," she said, giving a strange sort of half smile. "Harry, could you?"

One by one Harry helped his friends onto the backs of four Thestrals, leaving the others with only a small pool of Hermione's blood to fight over. Harry gave simple and concise instructions for where to go.

All that was left to do was wait.

"Bella?" Hermione asked, taking a small step back.

"Bella," Draco repeated. "As in Bellatrix, my would-be aunt."

"What does she have to do with anything, Draco?"

"The foul woman is so desperate for Voldemort's approval that she would stoop so low as to try and seduce her own nephew, assuming to be Hermione, of course, after having drunken Polyjuice Potion."

"How dare you speak of the Dark Lord in such a way! How dare you use his name, you foul blood traitor!"

Bellatrix reached for her wand, but she was too slow for Draco's movements and wound up shoved unceremoniously against the nearest tree. Her wand dropped to the ground, though that was the least of her worries with her nephew's iron-clad grip pressing at her airways

"Get. Off. Of. Me," she hissed with what little oxygen she had left, clawing at his hands and kicking at his shins.

"You know," he said, digging his fingers in ever harder, "you were always my least favorite relative. It's a good thing we're not actually related."

"Ishosaso," Bellatrix wheezed out incoherently.

"Excuse me? I didn't catch that." He loosened his grip slightly in order to hear her words. But, instead of reiterating, she was able to pull him into her trap. He was almost instantly prostrated on the forest floor, his arms bound behind his back so fast he didn't realize he was tied until he tried to move.

"I said," she laughed, her voice a howl of glee, "that 'I should say so', my disgraceful ex-nephew."

"They'll find me," Draco said into the dirt. Bellatrix pressed his face deeper into the ground, her illustrious cackle echoing through the trees.

"Who will? Your friends?"

Draco's entire form stiffened. Who did he mean? Hermione and his mother, Melantha? If they hadn't found him by now then surely they wouldn't find him before Bellatrix did him in. Or, more horribly, if she brought him before Lord Voldemort himself. Surely Draco's wrongs constituted the sort of viciously painful death Voldemort would give him.

"Face it, blood traitor," she spat, giving him a hard kick in the side of the head before she gave a flick of her wand to levitate his stiff, immovable body. "You are as alone as you always were. No one is coming. And, even if they were, we would find them first."

Draco snapped his eyes shut, his heart unable to stand the sight of Hermione's angelic face anymore. A face that was twisted into a horrid smiling grimace.

How ironic, he thought, as his body floated in front of the disguised Bellatrix Lestrange. He had been captured, bound, and beaten for all intensive purposes by the woman he loved. Hermione's glistened silken locks framed Hermione's wonderfully angular face, that held her shockingly gorgeous brown eyes. She walked steadily behind him, her wand out, delivering him to his death.

"You can't be pregnant!" Draco hissed, nearly falling out the window he was perched at. "You're lying!" His stuck his face in hers, willing her to contest him, to be stupid enough to repeat what she'd just said.

"I was supposed to get my period a week and a half ago," she said, straightening herself up. "You're the only person I've ever slept with. You do the math."

"Just because you were a virgin when I had you doesn't mean I'm the only person you've been with!" he countered, his rage reaching immeasurable levels.

"Believe what you want," she said hotly. "I only told you to satisfy myself with your overreaction." And there was a hint of a giggle behind her voice. "Do you think I would actually want you to be a part of my child's life? Sorry ferret, but our one night mistake ended two weeks ago."

"I can't let you have this baby," he said in all seriousness, her brows narrowed. A sudden new and terrifying emotion was gripping him, making it almost difficult to breathe. It was like fear, only worse, and it intensified when his eyes met hers. "It will ruin us both," he added, questioning himself immediately for the use of the word 'us'.

"What do you care what happens to me?"

"I don't." But he could barely make it convincing to himself, let a lone her.

After a long pause, in which neither moved nor spoke, Hermione's eyes softened and she took a bold step forward.

"I want so badly to hate you the way I should," she said, bowing her head in shame. "You torture me and my friends. You used me. And now you're ordering me to get rid of my child so that you can sit high on your pure-blood throne…And still I can't hate you. Because…because I know, somewhere—buried so deep it may never be found—that there is some amount of good in you, no matter how small."

"Why are you wasting these words on me?" He tried to look into her eyes, to prove that it wasn't her that was filling him with that foreign emotion. But, the harder he tried, the more adamant his eyes were to disobey and stare fixated at the night sky. "I don't need them, nor do I want them."

"Because no one in your life has ever shown you an ounce of kindness, deserved or not. You're more alone now than you ever were, and still you push people away…I pity you, Draco, but not in a bad way. And I think I could feel something more than hate and pity towards you if you'd only—"

"Save it, Granger," he barked, pushing off the ledge to stand towering before her. She didn't flinch; not in the least.

"It's probably my hormones or maternal instincts making me say these things," she went on, ignoring the pulsing vein in his forehead. "But it doesn't matter. You won't take in a word."

"Exactly," he said with a huff. "Now, about this baby business."

She nodded.

"It's not only your baby."

"It is if you refuse to acknowledge it as both yours and mine."

"You said—"

"I say a lot of things," she laughed, causing him to shudder involuntarily. "Look, like it or not, I'm pregnant and you are the father. Nothing will ever change that, or the events that led to this. If you want to be involved, then be involved, be a father. If not, then say so now and I'll raise the baby by myself. But, if you choose to stay out of the baby's life now, then there is no way in hell I am willing to let you into his or her life later on. Is that clear?"

Without meaning to, he nodded.

"When you say involved—"

"I mean completely. As in everyone knows you are the father."

What little color Draco had left in his cheeks disappeared entirely at this statement.

"But…that's impossible!" he snapped, as if trying to convince her of something she already knew. "You know—" He stopped short. Of course she knew. That's why she was offering him this, because she knew he couldn't accept it without damning himself in the process. She's more ruthless than I am!

He advanced on her so quickly and so suddenly that she didn't have even a fraction of a second to react. He pressed her against the nearest stone wall of the Astronomy Tower, forcing his mouth on hers, his arms snaked around her waist.

"Malfoy, what—"

"You should have been in Slytherin," he breathed, his old self returning full force. "You know I can't be known as the father, Granger, but you will not deny me my right to see my own child. I won't let you have that hold on me."

"I have enough of a hold to be satisfied with," she shot back, easing into her position. "I deserve as much."

"You deserve what I give you."

"I deserve what I give you in return."

He opened his mouth to protest, only to find that Hermione's lips were on his, suckling at them with a fierce and dangerous vigor.

"Granger—"

"Drunk or not, there was something valuable that night two weeks ago," she said, her voice husky with want. "I've been holding onto that, turning it over in my head."

Draco was surprised that these words didn't affect him in the way they should have. Instead, he found himself nodding slowly, feeling her words as his own.

"I've come to a conclusion just now."

"And that is?"

"I'm attracted to you, Malfoy. Something about you, that small measure of good that I know is there."

"I won't let you get close to me," he stated blatantly, as if reading a fact from a book.

"I didn't ask for that. Only—"

His lips curled into a smirk, before plunging onto hers.

"One more thing."

"What?"

"Call me Draco."

"I will if—"

"Shut up, Granger. You're ruining the moment."

Doo doo doo doo! Ahhh! Ok, so that didn't get us much further, but it's getting there. I didn't want to jump into anything, so I'm taking this slowly. Hopefully not too slowly, because the last thing I want to do is tick off my readers. Anyway, hope that was to your liking.

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