A/N: Hey y'all. I couldn't believe the good reviews I got for my first chapter. They inspired me to hurry with this one for my attentive readers. In the course of writing this chapter I got dragged to the beach, where my very important fanfiction manuscript was attacked by children with water guns, one of which being my brother, but it survived, so here it is! Thanks to my BETA: A.N.L. I love you girl.
(Disclaimer: I own nothing whatsoever, and if I did I sure as well would not be writing a fanfiction about it, I would be out being rich! But enjoy anyway)
Last time on Broken Angels: "Well, I will leave you two to exploring your new rooms" Dumbledore said with a smile as Hermione and Draco walked into their new common room and the painting swung shut behind them.
And now, the continuation:The room was quite large big for just the two of them. Three sofas sat around a coffee table in front of a large fireplace off to the right. The left wall was covered on bookshelves. Directly ahead of them there was an open staircase with oak banisters. At the top of this staircase were three doors. Draco and Hermione ascended the stairs to examine the doors. Two intricately carved doors stood facing each other at the top of the stairs, the one to the right engraved with the letters HB, the one on the left bearing the letters HG. The door directly in front of them was unmarked. Hermione opened her door and stared at the spacious interior. She had a queen sized four-poster bed, a desk, a large closet, and a tall chest of drawers. She pulled her wand out of her pocket and lit the torches. Her trunk sat at the foot of her bed, she observed as she turned to explore the other room, the unmarked one. She opened the door slowly. As she opened the door the light inside the room got brighter and she looked in at a large bathroom lit by a large chandelier that held many candles. The wall to the left was a mirror, below it were two gold sinks set into a white marble counter. Across from the mirror, there was a large bath sunk into the floor with many taps around it. The tub was also marble, and large enough to swim in. At the back of the bathroom, there was a door, which opened to reveal a small room with a toilet.
"Awesome bathroom, huh?" Draco stepped into the room behind Hermione, who nodded.
"The only problem is privacy when one is taking a bath," She pointed out, "As the bath is in the middle of the room." Draco smiled at her.
"Wear a bathing suit." He suggested, walking out the door. Hermione rolled her eyes and walked back into her room, locking the door behind her. She removed her robe and camisole and knelt in front of her trunk. She took out her two-piece bathing suit and changed into it, glaring disgustedly at her bruises. She opened the door to her room, and walked into the bathroom. Draco was already there, kneeling in front of the tub in swim trunks. She watched silently as he turned on different taps. She looked at his back, noting the belt marks and different bruises.
"You know, overall you don't look too bad." She informed him, turning to stare at herself in the mirror. Draco looked up at her and winced.
"The Cruciatus curse leaves no scar," He said bitterly, "And Dad's quite fond of that one." Draco looked up at the bruises that adorned Hermione's body and wished there was some way that he could help her. "Do they all still hurt?" He asked, coming to stand next to her in front of the mirror.
"Sometimes." Hermione stared at their reflections. "Look at us. Two victims. Who would have ever thought we would ever have this much in common?" She turned to look at Draco. "Would you?" Draco slowly turned to look at her.
"No. I was always jealous of you. You seemed to have this perfect life, the good grades, supporting friends, everything I didn't. I never would have thought that your life could get this bad." He looked down at the full bathtub. "After we get our bath, I have some ointment that will help the bruises heal faster and not hurt so much. You can use some if you like." Draco stepped into the bubble-covered water.
"That would be nice, thank you." Hermione slid in from the side and found, to her surprise, that the water was almost too deep for her to touch the bottom of the tub. "Honestly, this isn't a tub, it's a pool." She told Draco with a laugh. "You could swim laps in this thing." She moved to the edge of the tub where there was an underwater ledge to sit on.
"But why would you want to swim laps when you could simply relax in the bubbly goodness?" Hermione giggled. "What?" She only laughed harder. "Hermione…are you okay?" She was laughing so hard that tears streamed down her cheeks and she clutched at her stomach. Draco waited until her laughing fit subsided, then looked at her curiously. "What?"
"You said…" Her mouth twitched. "You said bubbly goodness. I was wondering who you are and what you've done to Malfoy." She laughed, but stopped abruptly and her expression softened. "You called me Hermione," She observed quietly, "Does this mean I'm allowed to call you Draco?"
"Of course you can. Who am I? I'm Draco and I've currently thrown Malfoy into the deepest, darkest whole I could find, and hope that he can't get out." He smirked and leaned back against the edge of the tub. "I think I'll go by my mother's maiden name from now on. Draco Black. What do you think?" Hermione thought of Sirius Black and his death. She knew that Sirius had died fighting Voldemort's followers and that Draco was now quite obviously unaffiliated with them.
"I think it's wonderful." She smiled at him.
"You'll find that Draco Black is very different from Draco Malfoy." He climbed out of the tub and stood in front of the mirror, looking at his reflection critically. "Do you think I should change my hair color?" He asked, running his fingers through said hair. Hermione looked at him for a moment.
"I like your hair. Just try not putting all that gel stuff in it to hold it up." She motioned him over and pulled him into the tub. "Tip your head back." She ordered. He obeyed, looking up at her smiling face curiously. Hermione got his hair soaked in the water, running her fingers through it to get all the gel out. The fact that Draco's head was in her lap did not seem to faze her at all. "There." She announced. "That looks better." Draco looked at his reflection in the mirror. "And you should let it grow long." She suggested.
"I guess" Draco looked back at her. "Since when were you the expert on hair?" Hermione laughed.
"Since I charmed my hair black and straight. You wouldn't believe how many colors I tried before I decided on black." She climbed out of the tub and wrapped a towel around herself.
"I'll go get the ointment I told you about." Draco draped a towel over his shoulders and walked out of the bathroom. Hermione ran her fingers through her wet hair as she dried herself off. Draco returned quickly, a large glass bottle filled with what looked like lotion. He put it down on the bathroom counter. "Just put some of this on your bruises. Don't worry about using too much, I have a lot more." He poured some on his hand and began to rub it onto the bruises on his arms. Hermione poured some onto her hand and began rubbing it on her own bruises. Draco watched her out of the corner of his eye. She had bruises on her arms, a few on her stomach, and some on her legs. She turned away from him to get her leg and he caught a glimpse of her back. He flinched from the sight. She had bruises, welts and cuts all across it. "Is this a burn mark?" He asked, running his fingers across the long red mark that sat across the whole of her lower back. Hermione turned her back to the mirror and looked over her shoulder.
"Yeah. That was the time he used a hot fire poker." Draco, for all he had been through, and all the pain he had felt, could not believe the calm way that she had said that. He looked at her and saw the shimmer of unshed tears glimmering in her dark brown eyes.
"I'm sorry." Draco walked to Hermione and hugged her gently, carefully aware of her bruises. Hermione began to cry, sobbing hiccuping sobs as tears flowed down her cheeks. Draco held her until she finally stopped crying and pulled away.
"Thank you." Hermione wiped tears from her cheeks and splashed cold water on her red puffy eyes.
"Anytime." Draco replied. "Do you want me to help you get your back?" She nodded, gathering her long hair and pulling it forward over her shoulder. Draco poured some of the ointment on his hands and began gently rubbing it onto her back.
"Where do you get this stuff?" Hermione asked softly, eyes closed as Draco gently worked on her back.
"I found the recipe in an old potion book in my house. I made it myself." He responded, gently running his hand over her scars and cuts. His hand skimmed over her burns, barely allowing his fingers to touch her.
"You must give me the recipe." Hermione's voice was relaxed, at ease.
"Of course." Draco finished her back. "Will you help me with my back?" He asked her as she turned to him.
"Of course." She replied sweetly, pouring the ointment onto her hand. He turned his back to her and she rubbed her hands against his back, carefully working over the bruises. Her hand came to a scar that ran all the way across his back. "What is this?" She asked him softly, running her fingers across it curiously. Draco shivered at her touch even though the room was quite warm.
"That was from a knife. I was disrespectful to my father, and then I turned and walked off. It's probably very lucky that I turned when I did, otherwise he would have gotten my stomach." Hermione nodded understandingly as she rubbed the ointment onto his shoulders.
"There." She announced. "I'm done." She sighed and sat on the bathroom counter.
"Thank you." Draco put the stopper back into the bottle. Hermione nodded and yawned. "I think it's time for us to go to bed." He suggested with a smile.
"Yeah, probably." She replied, sliding off the counter and walking to the door. "Goodnight Draco."
"Goodnight Hermione." Draco followed her out the bathroom door and watched as she walked into her room. She shut the door and turned out the lights. Draco smiled and wondered if she had even bothered to change into pajamas before she had gone to bed. He shook his head and went to his room to go to bed himself.
Across the castle two boys sat awake still, discussing Hermione.
"Something's wrong with her. Since when does she hang out with Malfoy?" Ron was pacing back and forth in front of the Gryffindoor Common Room's fireplace as Harry watched him from a couch nearby.
"Well I think Malfoy is a bit different then last year." Harry pointed out calmly. "He defended Hermione, did you notice that?"
"She needs to stay away from him, even if he is acting like a perfect gentleman." Ron seethed. "And he better stay away from her."
"Why?" Startled, the two boys looked up to see Ginny Weasley standing at the bottom of the stairs to the girls' dorms. She had a robe thrown on over a white cotton nightgown. "Is it just 'cause you're jealous of him?" She walked, her slippers silent on the floor, over to the couch and sat down next to Harry.
"He's Draco bloody Malfoy for Merlin's sake!" Ron ranted. "His father's a bloody Death Eater!"
"Look at Sirius' parents. Look at Snape. Your parents don't make you! I will tell you that Draco is different this year. I shared a carriage with him and he didn't insult anyone. He said that he has rethought his values and position in life and I believe him." She finished this all in one breath and on the final him, gasped for air. Ron took this chance to continue ranting.
"Since when do you call him Draco, huh? Did it ever occur to you that he could just be a spy? Here to find out how best to kill Harry and report back to Voldemort?" He stammered on Voldemort's name, but then his voice hardened. "Do you want to help him do that?"
"Did it ever occur to you that this might have nothing to do with Harry or Voldemort? I mean honestly, not everything in the whole goddamn world revolves around them." Ron opened his mouth to tell her off for cursing. "Don't you dare interrupt me, Ronald Bilius Weasley! Maybe Draco has decided that what his father does is wrong, or maybe he has gone off and joined Death Eater Youth. You don't have to have anything to do with him if you'd like, but I believe everyone deserves a second chance, no matter who they are or who their parents are." She smiled at him. "Now you may speak." Ron exploded.
"Is everyone here going mad? First Hermione, now you? You want me to give Draco Malfoy a second chance. There's no way he could be good, he's been raised to be bad!"
"Maybe if you could open your eyes and look past your squashed ego, your jealousy that she is hanging out with him instead of you, and they share a Common Room, then maybe you could see that Draco is different."
"And hot." Ginny turned to see Lavender at the foot of the stairs, along with most of the girls from the house behind her. Ginny's gaze shifted to the boys' staircase and saw most of the guys there.
"She's sharing a common room with him?" Ron went on as if there had been no interruption.
"And a bathroom." One of the girls added from the stairs. Ginny stared at her. "I heard some of the teachers talking about it." Ron became even more agitated.
"Brother of mine, I love you a lot, but sometimes you can be quite an idiot," Ginny stopped Ron from speaking, "Go to bed and try to be civil to everyone tomorrow." She turned to the crowd on the stairs. "Alright everyone, show's over, go back to your beds and sleep." She walked up the stairs to the girls' dorms and soon Harry and Ron were the only people in the room again.
"She's right Ron, it's time to go to bed." Harry stood and walked to the foot of the stairs. He looked to Ron. "You coming?" Ron shook his head.
"I'll be up in a minute, you go ahead." Harry nodded and left. Ron sat down on the couch and stared into the glowing embers that remained in the fireplace.
"So today I think we should sit at your table." Hermione commented, not taking her eyes off the mirror as she did her makeup.
"What's that?" Draco pointed at the tube in her hand.
"Mascara." She replied as she quickly applied some. "Makes your eyelashes look longer. Don't you dare put gel in your hair."
"Okay, I won't." Draco ran a comb through his hair, examining it in the mirror. "Sure. We can sit at my table today. Tomorrow we're sitting at yours though."
"'Kay." Hermione braided her hair into one long braid that hung down her back. You could barely see her dark hair against her black robes. "I woke up today for the first time in months not feeling sore. I have to say that you're a good potions maker." She rolled up her sleeves. "And the bruises are mostly gone." Draco smiled at her.
"That's mostly the point of the ointment. In two or three days, you should be able to wear short sleeves again." Hermione grinned broadly. "Are you ready to go?" Hermione took on last look in the mirror, then nodded. She picked up her backpack and lifted it to her shoulders. She groaned under the weight of all her books. "Hold on." Draco held out a hand as he drew his wand from his pocket. He took her backpack from her and cast a cushioning charm on the straps. He handed it back to her. "Try this." She slipped it on with a smile.
"I should have thought of that." She said with a small frown, shaking her head. Draco smiled at her.
"Well I guess that's why I'm here. To help you think of stuff like that when you forget." He sighed dramatically. Hermione rolled her eyes at him.
"No, you're here because Dumbledore believes in inter-house unity and in giving everybody a second chance. Even Slytherin ex-prefects who abuse their privileges horrendously, then decide to become a member of the Inquisitorial Squad instead." Draco smiled at the memory.
"If I remember correctly, you and your friends lied to the Headmistress then attacked us. I seem to remember being attacked by little flying things." Hermione giggled.
"Well I didn't like the Headmistress and I don't think that you were scarred for life. Are we even then?" Draco nodded. "Good, let's go to breakfast then, I'm starving."
Breakfast in the Great Hall that morning was a very subdued matter. The Slytherins stared at the Gryffindoor girl sitting voluntarily at their table, but could and would not do anything about it as she was sitting with Draco Malfoy. The Malfoy family name was an old name, which demanded respect. They did not yet know about his choice to go by Black yet, but Black was a respected name as well, if you could count out Sirius as a member of that family. The Gryffindoors stared at one of their own sitting with the Slytherins. The girls gossiped quietly, clustered around Ginny Weasley. The boys mostly discussed Quidditch, looking over occasionally, with the exception of Ron, who glared at Draco for the entirety of the meal. The Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables were amused, and took bets on how they thought this would turn out. The professors sat up at their table, unaware of the conflict that was happening right under their noses. They did, however, wonder why the Hall was so quiet, but assumed their students were just tired. Dumbledore, of course, knew exactly what was going on, but he was the Headmaster of the school, so it was not unusual for him to know everything that happened under Hogwarts' roof. He merely thought it was wonderful that two students from opposing Houses got along so well.
After they had eaten breakfast the Heads of Houses came to distribute schedules for the year. Hermione begrudgingly went back to her table, but only long enough to get her schedule. She immediately went back to the Slytherin table to compare schedules with Draco. She had Defense Against The Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Charms, and Potions class with him.
"I've got to go to Ancient Runes now. Work hard in your break hour." Hermione teased Draco, winking at him before rushing off, her backpack bouncing on her shoulders. Draco smiled as he watched her hurry off. He headed back to their shared common room and reread through his schedule. He had an hour of break, and then he was to go to Defense Against The Dark Arts. Draco's eyes wandered to the tall bookshelves in the room and his thoughts wandered to the incident yesterday involving the blood oath. He approached the bookcase thoughtfully.
"Blood oath…blood oath…what book would that be in?" The library was Hermione's domain, not his. The bookcase, either in pity for him, or from an ironic accident, swayed slightly as he put his hand on it. It quickly steadied, but a book fell out and landed on his foot. "Ouch" He muttered, looking down at the book. "Blood And Its Many Uses. What on earth is a book like this doing here?" He shrugged, as the empty Common Room offered no answers. He walked back to a couch, opening the book and scanning the pages.
An hour later Draco hurried to the Defense Against The Dark Arts' classroom, Hermione only arriving just before him.
"Hermione." She glanced up at him, turning around halfway through the door to the classroom. "You have to see this." He handed the open book to her and pointed out a paragraph at the bottom of the page. Hermione quickly took a seat at a table and began reading.
/In some rare cases, a blood oath can be the cause of a rare type of magic sharing. This is usually a result of the two wizards involved having an important event in common. If the two wizards are thinking about this event when making the oath, and emotions are very high, magic sharing may occur. In this sharing, the two involved will exchange powers, thereby creating an unbreakable magical bond. There have been few people who have had this happen, and not much is known about the effects./
"An unbreakable magical bond? What is that supposed to mean?" Hermione gasped, looking up at Draco. At that moment Professor Tonks walked into the room. Her hair was a bright shade of red.
"Hello students. Some of you I already know." Her gaze swept over Harry, Ron, and Hermione. "Others of you I don't. I am Professor Tonks. You may call me Tonks, but anyone who uses my first name will be put in detention and will probably be unable to speak for a week." She said this all quite cheerfully. "Today we will be practicing nonverbal spells. Many of your teachers will require it this year, and many defense spells are more effective nonverbal. To start you off, however, I would like you to try a simple charm. How about starting with Wingardium Leviosa? At your tables, try to make a piece of your parchment float without saying anything." Hermione drew her wand and pointed, cursing softly as her sleeve got in the way.
"What?" Draco asked, looking over from the seat beside her.
"My goddamn sleeve is in the way." She muttered back angrily.
"Tie it back then." He suggested nonchalantly, as if this was a problem he faced everyday. Maybe it was.
"With what?" She hissed.
"Silently children." Tonks instructed from the front of the classroom. Draco wordlessly reached into his bag and handed her a rubber band. She smiled and shook her head as she wrapped it around the cuff of her robe, keeping it firmly at her wrist. Silently she flicked her wand at the piece of parchment in front of her. 'Wingardium Leviosa?' She thought silently, as if inquiring if this really worked. The parchment did not so much as twitch. 'Wingardium Leviosa' she thought firmly at it, flicking her wand. To no one's surprise, she was the first to accomplish this feat. What surprised people was the fact that her and Draco's pieces of parchment rose into the air at the exact same time. They rose lazily into the air, synchronized perfectly. Hermione felt the same buzz of magic she had felt when she had performed the blood oath.
"This is too weird to be a coincidence." Hermione muttered in Draco's ear.
"Tell me about it. I was just about to say the same thing." He murmured back as Tonks congratulated them on their spectacular bit of magic and awarded both their Houses twenty points.
By the end of class, both of them were extremely disturbed. The magic bond was more obvious than either of them would have ever thought. Every time they were both attempting to make their parchment float, both of their pieces would float up together. The only way for them to avoid this was for one of them to think of something other then the task at hand, or for one of them to put down their wand.
"We need to talk." They chorused as they walked out of the classroom. They both had an hour off now as Hermione had dropped Arithmancy this year for a lighter class load. They went back to their common room.
"Okay. So this unbreakable magic bond of ours, what exactly does it do?" Hermione asked, tossing her backpack aside and sitting down on one of the couches.
"I don't know. The book doesn't really say anything about it besides the fact that it's rare." Draco replied.
"Well I guess we should go to the library." She replied after rereading the page in the book. Draco shook his head.
"Anything that would mention blood magic would be probably considered Dark and locked in the restricted section. I was surprised to find this book here." He sighed.
"Why? What's so bad about…" She broke off as Draco turned the book to a page on blood Voodoo dolls, then to a page on blood sacrifices to strengthen oneself. "Oh." He nodded and shut the book.
"And as I can't find a good excuse to get us into the restricted section, that pretty much rules the school library out." Hermione nodded slowly.
"Well we should at least see what we can do with these powers." She said resignedly. (Dramatic background music)
(All for now. I hope you enjoyed immensely. If so review. If not, review. Flames are more then welcome, I love s'mores. And besides that, I'm a pyro, so it's all good. Next time, their newfound powers and how to handle potions class, Draco's way. Anne)