Chapter: White and Red

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"We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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There was something unreadable in his eyes, even as he took her elbow and led her into a large sitting room across the hall. She sat on a slippery horsehair chair and he stood by the empty fireplace, a long way away from her. She didn't have and couldn't think of anything to say; her brain was still casting an odd fuzzy feeling throughout her body after her collapse and weeks of minimal sleep and food.

He seemed to be waiting for something to happen, for some catalyst to arrive and make everything occur at once. She asked for a glass of water and he poured some from a weeping pitcher on a table that stood next to him. It slid cool down her throat and calmed her enough so that she could trust her voice.

"Draco, what—"

He shot her a look that demanded silence and stared into the blackness of the fireplace. Minutes passed, and she finally slung her bag over her shoulder and rose to leave.

"This is not something that I often do," came his voice, quietly and without expression, but she could still hear him because everything else was utterly silent. She stopped and sat back down. Then he seemed to collect himself, draw his shoulders square and turn his head so that he could see her. That incomprehensible thing was still roiling beneath the surface of his eyes. She folded her hands in her lap and felt that they were hot and clammy like sickness.

"Everything started, you see, on the day that I felt your tears," he said at last, and Hermione stared up at him wondering what "everything" was. But she understood on a most basic level, and that was enough.

"I think I knew that," she whispered, but he put up his hand, palm facing her, as if he could physically stop her words. She fell silent and he went on.

He was open and raw and unprotected, and she could only just understand why. Everything that made him that boy she had known from school was gone or altered. There was no sarcasm and no disgusted smirk.

And then she recognized the one thing that lied hidden beneath his eyes, the only thing besides blankness and calm that she could see on his face. It was resentment.

But there was something deeper that she couldn't see, she knew. Something more frightening and more wonderful.

"I've always been particularly interested in how different people cope with suffering. If I were to psychoanalyze myself I would say that it was because I experienced and saw so much of it as a child and adolescent. A defense mechanism, I would say."

Just then, Hermione wanted to cry. This was not the Draco Malfoy she knew. "Draco…"

"I'm tired, Hermione. I'm tired of dancing with you. The past year…" He started to say something but didn't.

That she understood perfectly. They were waltzing, hopping and sliding over what remained, fixed and forever, beneath.

"As I was saying, I've always been interested in suffering. Yours, that day when you cried and cried but were so strong it almost leveled everything, ­fascinated ­me. Something about the way you had given yourself so wholly to another person and how you were suffering so much for it amazed and frightened me. After that I began to think more about you."

Hermione couldn't breathe because there was a foreign weight on her chest.

"I hated myself for it. I ­hated myself. But most of all I hated you, because something about you had changed so irrevocably since I last saw you. Was it the war? Was it loosing Weasley and everybody else?" He was asking her now, staring at her with an alien intensity that made her want to crumble.

"Yes," she whispered after a long while. "It was everything. I… I'm not the same person I was."

"And something about the new mudblood Granger fascinated me," he continued, in a matter-of-fact tone that caused her to flinch. "It was your grief and your pain, and how you had suffered through so much and still had the bollocks to slap a man who was far out of line. Could stand up in front of your erstwhile enemies and beat them down and bring them back up again." He paused, still staring at her while she stared at the floor because she couldn't look at him.

"So?" She asked, bitter then. "You've never noticed before. You never noticed anyone who didn't believe what you believed or posed a significant threat."

With a terribly ironic half-smile, he quipped, "Again, your fault."

She remembered closeness and another sort of explanation, after she had broken down and cracked and before he had touched her, really touched her, for the first time.

The reason I've changed is because I fucking know that.

"Oh." She wanted to apologize, but then she remembered what is right and good.

He took a deep breath and something was betrayed by the way it shuddered out. "So after our class was meant to be over, after I told you the story half-way and kissed you, I couldn't take the idea of never seeing you strong again, before an enemy and annihilating what they think they know. I couldn't comprehend a life without you to guide me because in six weeks my life was completely different. And the way you looked, with tears…" He stepped forward as if he didn't know his legs were moving and traced a path from the corner of her eye down to her jaw and then to her lips. "…here. I don't think you realize…"

But he stopped and shook his head. "I needed something, some kind of closure. So I performed a locating spell and went to your flat and… you know the rest."

Tell me, Granger. Tell me you don't want this. Please.

"But then you left," she said, and her voice wavered.

He looked at her sharply. "Don't blame me. You would have done the same in my place. It was too confused and too frightening for both of us. You know that."

She did.

"I went to America, and then Morocco. Sri Lanka and Venice. I couldn't stay in one place very long because I would get restless. I never missed anything from here, but there was something essential that I couldn't find. Then the lawyer found me and told me of Snape's trial. I walked into that courtroom and saw you take down that bastard of an attorney and I couldn't… I couldn't handle seeing you again. Something in me closed off even as I wanted to touch you. So I told you I never wanted to see you again and hoped I could forget."

Hermione decided that this was going to destroy her and she set her lips in a thin line of white. "I should go. I'm going now," she said quickly, and made it half-way to the door before he stopped her with a hard hand on her elbow. He looked at her steadily.

"For the last month I've tried. I tried so hard, Hermione. But you won't leave me. As soon as I saw you collapsed on the ground, I couldn't lie anymore."

Her shoulders slumped and she leaned forward, leaned close towards him for just a moment. And then she understood something primitive and basic and frightening about them.

We are connected, even if we don't want to be.

Because just then she felt the same way as he did. She was tired of lying.

He said her name very softly, his unsure fingertips hovering over her cheekbone. She tilted her head forward and touched her lips to his so lightly that she barely felt it, and then her breath shook out as he lowered his hand and wrapped his arms around her so that she curved in a sharp angle towards him.

"I know," she whispered in quiet song. "I know."

He kissed her again, hard and insistent, and then she stepped away and took off her shoes. She unzipped her skirt at the hip and let it slide down her legs, she unbuttoned her blouse and pushed it off her shoulders. She stood before him in her pale bra and knickers and watched his face. He looked at her for a long while and took her in his arms again until they were both bare and ready. She kissed him and moved, moved, moved until they both saw white.

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Later, after they had slept on the carpeted floor of his sitting room and eaten dry cereal and bananas for breakfast because it was the only thing they could find, Hermione stepped away from him and went down the stairs. She felt him watch her for a moment and then heard the door close with a barely audible sound like a promise. She walked down the path and saw something she hadn't seen before. She saw two rosebushes intertwined completely as they both sought the sun, one blooming large red flowers and the other white, with roots in the ground far, far away from each other. A thrush sang overhead.

-

The next day found Hermione on Ginny's doorstep. "Ginny, I've got to talk to you. Are you free? Is Harry here?"

Her friend gave her one piercing glance, but she let her in. "He's at the Ministry."

Hermione murmured her thanks and took a seat at the kitchen table while Ginny made them each a cup of tea. She watched the long-awaited glint of gold on the third finger of Ginny's left hand with a faint smile. "Have you started planning the wedding, Gin?"

Ginny suddenly turned and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against the counter and eyeing Hermione with an incredibly shrewd expression on her face. "I'm glad that you're looking better," she said, smiling knowingly.

"I am?" asked Hermione, a faint flush passing over her cheeks as she tried to ignore the fact that Ginny had just completely side-stepped her question.

"Your color is better. S.P.E.W. dying down?"

Hermione stared at her hands, folded neatly on the table.

"Draco Malfoy show up again?"

She jerked in her chair and looked up into her apparently more-perceptive-than-she-knew friend. "H-How did you know?"

"Sweetheart, you had hot tortured sex with him and didn't see him for a year. You've been miserable since the trial when you saw him again even though you should have been ecstatic because you won your case. You come to my house with a flush and a post-coital satisfied glaze in your eyes and you still manage to look confused. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out."

Hermione sighed and let her head fall forward onto the table. She felt Ginny's hands, small and light, on her hair. Her voice sounded muffled against her arm. "I fell down in Diagon Alley yesterday and he was there. I must have passed out because I woke up at Malfoy Manor. I tried to leave but Draco saw me and he told me… a lot of things. Scary things. I just got sick of pretending everything again. I slept with him again."

"Was it angry like last time?"

"No."

"Was it good?"

"Mhmm." Hermione propped her chin up on her forearm and stared through her hair at the woman across the table from her who understood so well.

Ginny smiled at her. ­Smiled. "Was he good to you?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Do you love him?"

Hermione's eyes froze in place. "I… I don't know. I can't tell. I don't think so."

Ginny pushed the steaming cup of tea towards Hermione so she could sit up and take a long drink that burned down her throat. After a deep breath, Hermione continued. "He's taking me out to dinner on Friday."

"Ahh. Are you alright with that?"

"It's going to be strange, but yes."

"'Mione, I'm so glad you're happier."

-

"That one."

"Are you insane? He'll jump her as soon as he sees her in it. I say the black."

Hermione rolled her eyes at her bickering friends. Blaise sat on her bed while Vulpe pawed through her meager closet, tsking her lack of clothes. Deciding on a proper dress for the famed "Malfoy Date"—dubbed appropriately by Vulpe—was turning out to be a major production. Hermione had wondered whether she ought to wear robes, but her friends who more familiar with wizard customs had assured her that the traditional styles were just that, too traditional and slipping slowly but surely out of fashion. Both Vulpe and Ginny had volunteered several garments for the occasion, but Hermione was rather picky when it came to fancier clothes, a condition that was not being helped by the uncomfortable case of nerves she had contracted sometime around midday.

"Isn't that the point?" asked Blaise cheekily, eyeing Hermione up and down as she apprehensively tugged up the neck of the slinky red dress she was wearing. It skimmed tightly down the line of her body, stopping in a slanted cut just above her knees, and displayed enough cleavage to stop an adolescent boy in his tracks. She glared at him and he averted his eyes with a sly smirk.

Vulpe squeaked suddenly. "I'll be right back." She disappeared with a crack.

Hermione sank down on the bed next to Blaise with a shaky sigh. He, hearing and seeing her nerves, slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. "Alright, gorgeous?"

She nodded. "I'll be fine. I just… It's just strange to be going on a date with Draco Malfoy."

"Yeah. But I've known him forever, Hermione, and he's not the kind of person to hurt someone he loves."

"He doesn't love me," she responded immediately.

"We'll see, won't we?" Blaise grinned as Hermione hit him weakly in the shoulder.

"He doesn't love me. He's confused about me."

"Exactly."

Just then Vulpe appeared abruptly, causing Hermione to jump up from the bed with a surprised yelp. "Ta-da! Oh, sorry Hermione. I've the perfect dress!" She waved a mass of fabric about, grinning wildly. It was a mid-length dress of either burnt orange or rust, depending on the light, which shone off its folds with a distinctly understated glow. Hermione glanced at it doubtfully.

"It's orange."

"Merlin knows ­I can't wear it; it transforms my lovely pale skin into that of a ghost," she simpered, batting her eyelashes prettily. "I don't know what I was thinking when I bought it. But, I think with your warmer coloring it will bring out the gold in your skin and hair."

With a shrug Hermione snatched the dress from Vulpe's appeased grasp and went into the loo. The dress fit surprisingly well, considering Vulpe's slight frame when compared to her own, more rounded one. She made sure the thin straps rested comfortably over her shoulders and zipped up the back as far as she could without hurting herself. Blaise let out a low whistle through his teeth when she stepped from the lavatory and Vulpe's grin grew wider. Hermione chanced a look in the mirror and decided immediately that she liked the dress, "orange" as it was.

-

She managed to throw Blaise and Vulpe into the floo ten minutes before he arrived. She sat on the couch, and then a chair, and then the stool in her kitchen because she couldn't calm her nerves, the fluttering raptors in her belly and throat. A knock sounded at the door and she nearly fell off her stool. She fought the outrageous urge to arm herself with her can of pepper spray as she went to the entrance of her flat.

He looked at her a long while when she opened the door.

"Hi."

"Hello."

-

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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Author's Note: Oh God, I know how evil I am. Mwaha. I'm sorry! The surges of power that accompany these awful cliffhangers are addicting, I think.

I hope Draco wasn't out of character in the first bit of this chapter, and if he was my excuse is that he's finally let down all of his guard and self-imposed protection. There—try to argue with that!

I've always wanted a burnt-orange/rust-colored dress, by the way, considering that I am the only person I know who can pull off orange. I'm not bragging, people, it's a fact. In my little world, Hermione looks phenomenal in a little orange dress, so there. I get bored of black and red and blue and normal colors. And yes, I do know how pointless that little dress scene was, but Blaise and Vulpe are so fun to write and I like a little girly-corny stuff every once in a while, despite what it may seem like.

Also, someone go look up the significance of white and red roses together.

Mmm. Something about the image of confused/angsty/turned-on Draco Malfoy staring at Hermione while she looks so gorgeous for a full minute is really, really sexy hot, I think. Mmm. I can see the chiseled jaw and concentrated gaze now...

ARGH! I finished this chapter a WEEK ago, and damn wouldn't let me post it! I finished it the night before I was going on vacation for the exact purpose of pleasing you guys! Ugh. Soo frustrating. I'm sorry, but I really did have it finished a week ago.

Good news: I've already written the first bit of the next chapter (on notebook paper because I had no computer! Worship me, please! No, don't, actually, because it would be frightening.)

I find—strangely and inexplicably—that I have far more difficulty writing happy things or situations that turn out for the better than angsty and depressing things. Hmm. And I'm not even that much of a depressed person. Maybe I am inside. I certainly don't feel very depressed most of the time. Any thoughts? Let us have a Socratic seminar in the review board, shall we? We can pretend to be in university at Cambridge. No, scratch that. It would be really annoying.

I'm terribly sick and hacking up green-colored stuff, so excuse my oddities and peculiarities.

As always and forever, I love everyone who reads this even if you don't like it and I'm so completely elated that this little story has received so many reviews, all thanks to you.

And, as always and forever, tell me what you think.

Ooo! I forgot. This story has received the Runner Up Award at the Dramione Awards Site for WIP! I'm so happy! It was such a nice surprise and a real treat for me to see during last week was a bit trying in all other areas.

Ooo! I forgot again. This is important like a good fanfic always is. I've forgotten an author I really really like. She's (He's?) written a post-war story in which someone different than Voldemort ended up being in control (I love originality. Starts with an "M"?), and he really has a problem with women's lib, apparently. Hermione has become a sex-slave in these strange commun/society/cults of men who "own" women (hmm) and she thinks everyone she loves is dead until Draco shows up and teaches her what real sex is like. He reunites her with Harry and everyone (enter floo communication with books (an extremely sweet scene), pregnant Ginny, and angst) and Hermione becomes confused and all that. Ring a bell?

And yes, I know it's an obscenely long author's note. Sorry. The only truly important part is the last paragraph and, of course, the part where I thank all of you numerous times as always. :)