Notes: Thank you for your continuing interest in this one.
WARNINGS: References to sexual abuse, assault.
39. O Cunning Love, with Tears Thou Keep'st Me Blind
Her feet move.
That's all she knows. They pound against the dewy heather and the distance between Hermione and her worst nightmare lengthens.
If she goes far enough, perhaps the thread will snap and she will no longer remember.
She made herself forget once. She can do it again.
She has to do it again.
Because this…she can't live with this.
There's rage, but it's nothing compared to the overwhelming terror rushing through her veins like water cascading over a fall. It's ripping her apart from the inside, crashing through every illusion of safety she created.
He would always be there. He understood. With him by her side, she could survive this.
None of it matters now. None of his promises were real. Within a year of existence, he's agreed to disappear once more.
Hermione trips, chunks of earth and heather flying as she stumbles to the ground. Despite the urge to flee that still pounds like a drum in her head, she sinks further into the ground. Her fingers claw into the damp soil, mud caking beneath her nails. She digs like a rodent, searching for answers in the dark peat.
When the earth provides no solace, she turns her head to the sky and screams. The sun has burned away the fog. She feels no heat from it.
She feels nothing at all.
Not the deep chill that has locked her bones in layers of ice for months. Not the maelstrom of emotion that should tear through her. Here, hands buried in the earth and face turned up to the sky, she snaps.
What she held in check for so long—the pain, the shame, the scars—burns into nothing as her lips part. There is no point in fighting. No point in holding back or holding on.
She is merely atoms, bonded into chemistry and then biology. Her breath the exchange of molecules, her thoughts the crackle of electricity.
The simple interaction of matter. Heat and light and forces of attraction and repulsion. Not alive. Not real in the ways that defy science and speak to the greater depths of the soul.
Because her soul has shattered, its pieces absorbing into the dirt and blowing away on the wind.
This purgatory swallows her, holds her. The sun climbs the ladder of grey clouds to the sky, but Hermione is beyond such observations.
Even when warm arms come around her shoulders, she does not stir. She is deep within this well and no echo of the sky reaches her here.
~*~ Break ~*~
She cracks her eyes open and stares into the depths of a raging fire. She's on her side, facing the flames, blankets swaddling her like a mummy. The wood crackles and pops pleasantly.
Hermione shifts closer, unwinding the blanket enough to free her shivering limbs. Because despite the heat, she feels like the depths of the artic, frozen and barren. She inches forward until she can hover her hands just beyond the leap of the flames.
"Thank Merlin."
She looks over her shoulder and finds Draco at the entrance to the living room, steaming cup of tea in hand.
Her mouth is like sandpaper, coarse and raw. She swallows and her throat burns. "What happened?" she croaks.
His stormy eyes cloud even further, like the depths of a winter blizzard. "You don't remember?"
For a moment she doesn't and the world is still whole, still a place she wants to be.
But then she does and it cracks in half, dragging her down into its icy depths.
Draco's forehead presses against hers, sure and real. "I need you to stay, Hermione. I know how tempting it is to go. But I need you to stay."
She hates him for the request. For the pain she cannot erase. But she forces her eyes to his. "I'm here."
He doesn't release her. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. "If I could change it, I would."
Hermione feels absent despite the welcome heat of his skin against hers. Despite tenderness in his voice. She can't allow herself to feel right now. Can't exist in this moment or she will splinter apart once more.
So she girds her feelings until they are mere shadows of the truth. Until she can breathe without her lungs splintering with every exhale. Until she is not herself, but close enough.
"Did you know?"
He sucks in a breath and pulls back a fraction. Enough that she sees the agony imprinted on his features, an echo of her own. The teacup clinks, sharp and distant, as he sets it down. "No, but I suspected. I feared. But no, he didn't tell me before."
So his pain is as raw as hers.
"Did he say why?"
Tom must have given an explanation for the devastating choice he made. An explanation must exist. Because from where she sits—trembling on the brink of total desolation—there is no plausible explanation that could explain this hurt, this desecration of everything she thought she had.
Her hand wanders to her stomach and a fissure cracks through her control. God, her child…
She doesn't allow herself to continue. She digs her hands into Draco's dark jumper and repeats, "he must have said why."
"There is no explanation for this," Draco hisses. They are clearly in alignment here. "But, yes, he has his reasons. And from his point of view, perhaps some of them are not so rubbish."
Hermione pulls her knees to her chest, still tangled in the blankets, and edges closer to the fire. Draco follows her, his chest molding to her back. The combination of the heat from the fire and the warmth of him is almost enough to drive away the insistent chill.
The chill that is a sign of what Tom has done.
He played with the darkest of powers and it should not be such a surprise to learn he paid a price. She ought to have known this happiness was too good to last. It was merely another veil pulled across her eyes, another opportunity to learn the contours of loss.
She stifles an anguished moan as her hand traces the curve of her belly. In the handful of weeks since Tom admitted the truth—or perhaps only the barest sliver of it—her stomach has swollen in size from the slightest curve to a distinctive bump. By standard terms, she should be nowhere near such a state, but nothing about this is standard.
They have no idea how long her pregnancy will last. They have no assurance of her survival or the baby's. Nothing except the knowledge of what this will cost.
Draco's fingers lace with hers. He presses his lips to the nape of her neck and sighs, deep and hollow, against her spine.
"He has so much fear," he whispers into her skin. "So much that he doesn't let either of us see. And it's that fear that led us here."
She leans into him. Into the one person who remains. The person who she can depend on above all others.
Until this morning, that person ignited her blood and taught her the messy truth of redemption. That person loved her above all else.
But how can he love her and leave her like this?
Hermione shudders and Draco pulls her closer.
"How could he?" she implores, slipping further toward the abyss.
Draco lets out a stuttering sigh against her shoulder blades before he says, "because he loves you. Because you are everything and he is nothing."
"That's not—"
"I know. We both know that. But he doesn't. He only sees what Voldemort did. What a twisted portion of him did. And he's powerless, Hermione. Utterly devoid of magic and impotent. And in some ways, I can understand the desperation that brought him here."
"You're not nothing either," she murmurs vehemently.
There's a pause, when only the fire crackles. When Draco barely breathes.
"When you've been told one thing for the majority of your life, in one way or another, it's nearly impossible to change how you think." His fingers clench tighter around hers. "Without Tom, or you, I would never have found the courage to fight that voice in my head that tells me I'm nothing but a cowardly child. That I will never equal the Malfoy name, let alone become someone greater, someone independent of my upbringing."
It's a loaded truth she can accept. He is so far from the boy who would not save her. And she saw how Tom changed him. How the relationship between the two of them was so much more than clandestine bedrooms and fleeting looks.
And now he is losing Tom just as surely as she is. Because of her.
"Draco," she whispers, tentative. "I'm so sorry. I never wanted this for either of us. I never wanted him to choose only me."
He muffles his laugh on her shoulder. "Then you're bloody blind. I knew Tom would pick you before I ever touched him. Whatever happened in that cell, it remade him. And I can't regret that, because that change was the catalyst for everything he did."
Right up to this.
This is the result of their shared suffering. Of the immovable bond forged in the agony of violation. Tom understood so keenly what she lost that he missed the most important truth.
Although she wants her body restored, although the life growing inside her inspires wonder and awe, none of it means anything without him.
It never occurred to her how little he valued himself. She saw only the lust for power that clung to Voldemort and feared it festered within Tom.
Perhaps she feared all the wrong things.
That notion is a punch to the gut. She sways, rocking back against Draco. How could she have been so blind? So caught up in who he might become that she missed who he is?
He is a boy willing to sacrifice anything for her.
He's said it a hundred times by now and she never once considered that anything includes himself. That he holds himself in such low regard. That he does not understand his worth to her at all.
She watched him struggle with losing his power, with losing the thing he felt defined him and she never stopped to wonder why he felt so strongly that magic was essential to his existence. That he was nothing without it. Never imagined he didn't understand how much more he is to her, to the entire bloody world.
Searing guilt evaporates the anger and terror threatening to unmake her.
This might have been his decision, but it is her fault too.
Hermione tears away from Draco, surging to her feet.
"Where is he?"
The blond stares at her with wide eyes. But he jerks his head toward the front door. "I imagine there's a pile of cigarette's rivaling Mount Everest out there."
Hermione's out the door before he finishes the sentence. The world has gone grey, the depths of winter closing in. She tastes snow on the air. It's only a matter of time before the clouds break open and the world is painted white.
She finds him instantly. A solitary black silhouette against the encroaching grey. His leather jacket hangs open despite the bitter chill. The cigarette on his lips is nearly spent and his hair is a riotous mess.
He has never looked so painfully human.
His head snaps up as she steps off the stair. The lit cigarette tumbles from his fingers, charring the vegetation before sputtering out.
Tom opens his mouth, but can't seem to find words. Hermione crosses the distance between them and throws her arms around him. He shakes like an unmoored leaf when she pulls him into her. For a moment he's stiff, the tension between them ratcheting up instead of easing. Then he exhales, a great faltering breath that she can feel in her bones. An instant later his nose nuzzles her jaw and his lips trace senseless patterns upon her skin.
She holds on to him, nails digging into the supple leather of his coat.
Every embrace is a treasure now. Every moment its own miracle.
"Come inside," she beseeches softly.
Hermione leads him through the house and along the hall to their room. She hears the distant crackle of the fire and the familiar clink of a teacup. At least Draco has found a way to distract himself. Or perhaps he's waiting with bated breath for the blow out that will never come.
Tom pauses just inside the door of their room, jaw twitching and eyes wild. He doesn't trust this sudden calm and she can't blame him. But she's understood something fundamental, something that makes it impossible to rail against him, no matter how aghast she is at what he did.
She reaches a hand out and soothes his clenching jaw. He leans into her touch, the barest hint of pressure.
"I've failed you."
He blinks at her, impossible sapphire eyes ablaze. "What?"
She hears the day of chain smoking in his rough voice. She smells it in his hair and on his skin. For once the scent is not a comfort. Is proof of just how far he has crumbled.
"For you to be able to make this choice," she says, holding his gaze, forcing his chin up when he tries to look away. "It means I've failed you. I've let you believe you were expendable. That my life is worth something without you."
"It is," he insists, nearly growling. "Your life is worth so much more without me."
"That rubbish and you know it," she snaps. "Without you I'd still be rotting in that cell and Draco would be a spineless twat watching from the other side of the bars."
Tom lets out a low, bitter laugh that makes her want to scream in frustration. She knows what comes next. And this is where she's always gotten it wrong.
"You're wrong. Without me, you would never have been in a cell. You would never have lost your body to begin with."
And it all hinges on the belief that Tom is Voldemort. That they are simple bifurcations of each other. That one has taken the high road while the other took the low.
But that's where they're wrong.
Tom Riddle—sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle—was never Voldemort. He was lost. He was abused—physically, sexually, emotionally. He killed. He even split his soul. But he was never an abomination of pure evil. That took time and circumstance and darker magic still.
They have allowed Tom to bear the burden of choices he never made. No matter how often she has told him he isn't like Voldemort, she has never truly understood that he is entirely separate from that despoliation of his soul.
Tom is his own person in his own right. With all the fears and hopes and dreams that come with the human condition. Just because his origin is steeped in darkness doesn't mean he is. Just because Voldemort sought power above all else does not mean Tom will.
As he has proved time and again.
With his magic.
With his life.
She has to let go of the notion of him as anyone but the battered, resilient boy who stands before her. Whose hypotonic sapphire eyes draw her in like a siren at sea. Whose lips are the softest satin. Whose love is a force all its own.
"I have let you believe you are not essential to me," she whispers. "I have allowed you to think sacrificing yourself for me is noble or something rubbish like that."
Her hand falls to the curve of her stomach. "This is beyond a dream come true, but only if you are here to share it with us."
The pain that fractures his face is a vivid echo of her own anguish. "There was no other way."
"And it's my fault you thought you had to do this." She cannot say she wishes he hadn't. She cannot wish the child who grows inside her away. Now that she knows this feeling, has felt the faintest stirrings of life—a butterfly flitting within her womb—erasing this child is impossible. No matter how much she craves Tom's survival.
If only she stopped him before it began. Before she reaped the benefits of his sacrifice.
"This possibility was taken from you," he argues, voice soft and rasping. "I could think of nothing else but returning what was taken. What I had taken."
"No!" It comes out louder than she intends, a shout that splits the air between them.
He cocks his head, wary. She surges onward. "No. You had nothing to do with what happened to me. Besides healing me when you could and sharing the burden of my suffering. You are not him. You never have been. Not even before you ended up in that diary."
It's the first time she's made such a poignant statement. Now she just needs him to believe her. He shakes his head, ebony curls falling over shuttering eyes. She doesn't need to see him to recognize the doubt and recrimination simmering within.
How has she missed this? How has she not seen how truly fragile he is?
She knows what he endured at the orphanage and then again at Hogwarts. The adults who took advantage of his strangeness and his beauty. The abuse that whittled away his self-worth.
That Draco recognized the truth of Tom long before Hermione is hardly surprising. In so many ways the two of them are far better suited to one another.
Hermione had no such shattered childhood. She never thought to doubt her trust in her parents. She never had reason to. Her childhood was full of light and kindness and dreams that came true.
She only learned the art of self-loathing after being trapped in a cell without her mind, feeling her body fall apart at the seams with every breath she took.
She cannot imagine an entire childhood of such horrors.
"I only ever wanted you," she implores as she frames his face in her hands. "You are more than enough for me."
He tries to remain stoic, but she sees the ripple of emotion tear through him. It fractures his eyes from deep sapphire to brilliant aqua and back again. His lips tremble and press, a speechless supplication that repeats until she brushes her thumb over his bottom lip.
She will rail and pound her fists into the empty air later. Curse the power that allowed him to do this. But right now, she has to make him understand.
"You. All I ever wanted is you." Her hands are damp now. His long lashes clot with heavy drops like morning dew upon the heather. "But we can't change the past. You and I know that better than anyone. So every moment, for as long as we have, I want to spend with you. I want to live a thousand lifetimes in a single day."
He chokes, hiccupping around a sob. "I don't deserve you."
"That's where you're wrong. You absolutely do."
She kisses him then and it tastes like an ending, so she opens her mouth to him and ties to mold it into a beginning instead.