Chapter Twenty Four
Previously on Through the Ages:
"He told me that you're going to be initiated into the Death Eaters soon."
There was a shocked pause before Draco replied.
"…What?"
"Don't act like you haven't heard it all before, Malfoy. Just tell me the truth. Is it true or not?" Hermione asked tensely.
"Absolutely not! Oh god, Granger, you've got the wrong guy." Draco replied with a horrified expression.
"What are you talking about?" Hermione said with her eyes narrowed.
Draco exhaled.
"Blaise is a Death Eater."
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"You can't be serious." Hermione stammered, her eyes wide.
"Unfortunately, I am." Draco replied with a sigh.
"Why do you keep making up these ridiculous lies to tell me, Malfoy? I don't understand…what have I done to you that makes me deserve all this? Why cant you just tell me the truth for once?" She responded bitterly, pushing him away from her.
"Granger, trust me on this one. I am telling the truth. If you still don't believe me, go to Blaise and ask him. I'll be here waiting for you." Draco said with a hint of desperation.
He turned and unlocked the door, opening it for her to go through.
"I know that you're still angry at me from what Blaise told you and that you're probably in love with him now judging by the way you keep defending him…but I just want you to know that I'm sorry about what I said to you this afternoon. I didn't mean it." Draco murmured.
Hermione didn't answer and instead gave him one last fleeting look before disappearing down the winding staircase.
Hermione toyed with the idea of just going back down to dinner and forgetting what Draco had said about Blaise, but her curiosity overpowered her and before she knew it, she was standing in front of the Slytherin dungeons staring inquisitively at the stretch of bare stone wall which was the entrance to their dormitories.
She was starting to regret coming down here - what if Draco really was just lying again and Blaise got angry at her for even thinking that he was a Death Eater? She didn't want to lose him…
In fact the more she stared at the wall, the more she was convinced that it wasn't even the right patch of the wall and she wasn't really sure that she wanted to know whether Draco was telling the truth or not about Blaise because…well…she didn't really want to go through the pain of finding out that she had been fooled yet again by another Slytherin.
She had felt so flattered when Blaise started giving her so much attention and he had seemed like a much more reliable guy than Draco ever had been and…honestly did she want to risk losing Blaise over some unfounded accusation by a jealous Malfoy?
Hermione leant against the wall and sighed.
She calmed herself down and tried to think rationally. Who was more important to her at the moment? Blaise or Draco?
Blaise, she supposed.
But there was just this annoying little part of her that wanted to believe what Draco had said, because that kind of explained why Blaise was acting so nice towards her all of a sudden…
Before she could make a decision, the wall behind her slid open and she fell backwards into someone's arms.
"Oh god, I'm so sorry!" She exclaimed embarrassedly, disentangling herself from her saviour.
"Well, Hermione I didn't think that you'd make your choice so quickly." Blaise responded with a smirk, the stone wall closing behind him.
Hermione flushed even redder than before upon realising that it was the person that she wasn't ready to see.
"Oh no! I haven't thought about it yet, I erm, was just…you know passing by here and I guess I just wanted to talk to you." She stuttered.
"Right. What did you want to talk about?" asked Blaise, leaning against the wall lazily.
"Er…I was just wondering when's our next…tutoring lesson." Hermione lied.
"Thursday evening, as always." Blaise replied with an eyebrow arched.
"Oh, okay then…ahem well I guess I'll see you then." she said uncomfortably and then she turned to walk away before she made a further fool of herself.
But he grasped her arm before she could move.
"Wait." he murmured.
She turned around and looked at him nervously.
"You didn't come here to ask me about tutoring, Hermione. What did you really come here for?" he asked softly, moving closer to her.
"I…I just don't know what to do. I don't know how I feel about you." Hermione answered truthfully.
"Is that so? Well, I hope that this will make your choice easier." He smirked and leaned in to kiss her.
In the few seconds before their lips met, Hermione had three thoughts flying through her mind.
1. He was really good looking.
2. She didn't want to lose the chance to be with him but…
3. Now was the perfect time to find out once and for all whether he or Draco had been lying to her.
So as his lips touched hers, she brought her hand to the left sleeve of his black robe and pushed it up…
And there it was.
The Dark Mark branded against his pale skin.
Hermione tore herself from him as he frantically jerked his arm back from her grasp to hide his awful secret from her once again.
"Oh god, Blaise…how could you?" Hermione gasped.
"I can explain, Hermione." he responded.
"Don't you dare say that to me. You lied to me about everything!" she hissed at him.
"Yes but only because I was in love with you." he whispered.
"Oh give me a break. I'm definitely not going to fall for that again!" Hermione said bitterly.
"Hermione you have to understand that I never meant to hurt you." He tried desperately.
"Oh really, so when were you planning to tell me that you were a Death Eater anyway?" she asked sarcastically, and then she cut him off before he could reply.
"Maybe after you had hexed me and brought me to your Dark Lord so that he could do whatever he wanted with me. God, Blaise. All this time I never saw through your act…I thought that you were the good guy that was genuinely interested in me, and that Draco was the villain who was just using me when it was really the other way around!" She exclaimed.
"Hermione I really do have feelings for you. Ok I'll admit that at first my intentions were not so…admirable but I've changed now, I've fallen for you." Blaise insisted.
"You cant expect me to believe that after I've just found out that everything you've said to me in the past week have all been lies. How could you betray your best friend like that? Don't other people mean anything to you?" she asked.
"I betrayed him because he doesn't deserve you."
"Shut up! No one deserves what you did to him no matter what your reasons are for doing it. For god's sake, Blaise you're a DEATH EATER. How can you expect me to have anything to do with you? You're serving a man whose soul purpose in life is to kill my best friend! How can you do this to me? How can you put me through so much and expect me to forgive you!" she yelled at him.
"I don't expect you to forgive me…but I do hope that you'll give me a second chance…please." Blaise responded quietly, reaching out to pull her to him.
"Don't touch me! Don't ever come anywhere near me or my friends again…and don't even think about talking to me. Its over between us." Hermione spat lividly.
Blaise tried to hold onto her but she slapped him hard across the face and then ran as fast as she could away from him.
Draco staring out into the night sky, feeling completely insignificant in comparison to the millions upon millions of stars that twinkled above him.
He was still in shock about what Hermione had told him.
Blaise?
Out of all people, his own best friend had betrayed him?
Draco shook his head. It just showed that Slytherins could never have true friends. They were too much of a cunning and backstabbing bunch of people to ever let something as stupid as a friendship getting in the way of getting what they wanted.
God, he remembered so vividly the day Blaise got his Dark Mark…
Flashback
"Hey Draco, are you ready to go?" asked Blaise, coming into his room.
Draco was lying on his bed reading Quidditch Through the Ages and he lazily shook his head in response.
"I'm not going, Blaise."
"You've got to be kidding, Draco. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity! We'll be the youngest members and the only Death Eaters in Slytherin at the moment. It's the ultimate status symbol." Blaise replied with a smirk.
"I said I'm not going and that's final." Draco answered.
"Why? You've got nothing to lose getting it earlier, I mean after all its only a matter of time before you get it anyway so why not get it now and make all the other Slytherins jealous?" Blaise reasoned.
"I don't need some stupid brand on my forearm to make the rest of the Slytherins jealous. I'm not going to give that half-blood megalomaniac the power to order me around. I'm a Malfoy, we don't serve anyone but ourselves." Draco stated nonchalantly.
"Well, that's funny considering your father is like the Dark Lord's right hand man." Blaise retorted.
The next thing he knew Draco had gotten up out of the bed and tackled him onto the carpet in one fluid action.
"Just because my father chose to sell his soul to that pathetic…creature does not mean that I'll do the same to myself. I am not my father, Blaise." Draco growled.
"Alright, alright. Geez, Draco, there's no need to act like such an ass to your best friend you know." Blaise muttered.
Draco rolled his eyes and pulled Blaise up.
"Are you sure you're not coming? Your father wont be pleased at all." Blaise remarked.
"I'll deal with him later. You should probably go now, you don't want to be late for your initiation." Draco said sardonically.
"Yeah fine I'll go, but don't come crying to me when you realise that you made a mistake not coming with me." Blaise smirked and then left the room.
End Flashback
Draco laughed softly to himself - he would bet anything that Blaise wished that he hadn't gotten the Dark Mark now that he was involved with Hermione. He must really like her if he was willing to risk their friendship to get her…
In fact, he wasn't even sure that Blaise's feelings towards her were real…she was after all, St. Potter's best friend and a powerful witch in her own right so perhaps the Dark Lord had sent him to befriend her or something.
Draco shook his head again. He wouldn't put it past the Dark Lord to try something as farfetched as that to get to Potter.
Draco still hadn't spoken to his father about his decision not to join the Death Eaters - he had sidestepped the last initiation by insisting that he was too young to be initiated but he knew that when he went back for Christmas break in a month, his father would not be quite as lenient.
Suddenly, he was jerked from his thoughts by the sound of the door being opened.
Hermione stood framed in the doorway, her face tearstained, her expression unreadable and her hair a mess…but Draco didn't care because what mattered was that she had bothered to come back to him and that she had still trusted him enough to find out the truth.
"Hermione…" he started off but he didn't get to finish off his sentence because she had flung herself on him in a desperate kind of hug and she had buried her face into his shoulder.
"Oh god, Draco…I'm so sorry for what I've done to you. I've been such a bitch about all this and you just had absolutely no idea what was going on. I'm sorry that I didn't trust you enough to try and find out the truth earlier and I'm sorry that I believed Blaise's lies." she whispered.
"I'm sorry that you believed him too…if you hadn't, none of this would've happened." Draco said seriously.
Hermione looked at him with watery eyes and took a deep breath.
"Look, I can understand if you hate me at the moment and I can understand if you never really want to talk to me again but…do you think you could give our relationship another chance?"
"Hm. I don't know, Granger." He said after a pause.
"Please, Draco…we've been through so much to get to this stage and I don't want it all to go to waste over his lies." Hermione murmured.
Draco took one look at Hermione's earnest expression and laughed in spite of himself.
"Its not funny, Draco! This means a lot to me you know." she exclaimed indignantly.
"I know. It means a lot to me too." he answered softly.
"So does that mean that you're willing to forgive me?" Hermione asked tentatively.
"Yes, but on one condition." Draco answered.
"Alright…" Hermione responded uncertainly.
"Stop hanging out with Potter and Weasley?" Draco grinned.
"Draco! You know I cant do that!" Hermione exclaimed.
"Yeah well it was worth a shot." Draco answered with a smirk.
Hermione playfully slapped him on the arm and they shared a smile…the next thing she knew, Draco had placed his lips on hers and was exploring her mouth gently, slowly savouring every feeling and Hermione responded to the kiss just as tenderly. When the kiss ended, she looked at him with a half-embarrassed expression.
"Wow…that was so…mind-blowing." she remarked breathlessly.
Draco smirked, and responded before he could stop himself,
"All my kisses are like that, you should know, Hermione."
She stared at him in shock for a moment before it clicked in her head.
"What? You mean you remember our first kiss?" she asked.
Draco bit his lip and grimaced - he hadn't meant to let that slip.
"Yeah…I remember every moment of it." He answered with a small smile.
"I thought that you were drunk. Oh my god, you have no idea how much that kiss has affected me." Hermione stated incredulously.
"Oh really? Would you care to explain?" Draco teased.
"Well I thought that you only kissed me because you were drunk, not because you had feelings for me. Wow, I feel so much better now that I know that it wasn't because of the Muggle liquor you had." she responded elatedly.
"If I had known how much grief my little white lie would cause you, I would've never denied it." Draco told her softly. She smiled embarrassedly.
"It doesn't matter, we're together now aren't we?" she replied. He nodded and drew her more tightly towards him.
As they stood there, two silhouettes on the Astronomy Tower just holding each other, Draco felt for the first time since he had come back from the past, that everything was right in his life again.
A/N: YAY! Draco and Hermione are finally together! Haha well it only gets fluffier from here, so stick around if you're a hopeless romantic and don't worry if you're not because I still have a few twists up my sleeves to use. Oh my god, I was so amazed at the response that I got for the last chapter -I don't think I've ever received as many reviews at once!
Thank you all sooo much for supporting me - you really motivated me to write this chapter so this one was for all you wonderful REVIEWERS!
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You guys are my inspiration to write and I hope that you all enjoyed the new chapter.
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psychohart