Harmonia Nectere Passus Ch. 11
"Merlin, it's cold out here, Granger," Malfoy said, casting a warming charm over them. "Where are we even going?"
"I wanted to show you a place I go sometimes when I need to think," Hermione said, taking his hand between her gloved fingers.
Holding his hand made her feel comforted, safe even. He had pledged, on more than one occasion, that he would avenge her, that he would never hurt her. And Merlin help her, she believed him. Holding his hand felt like a proper show of solidarity between two friends. They made their way across the Quidditch pitch. "I'd love to show you how to fly sometime," he commented.
She shook her head vigorously. "No way. I get so motion sick!"
"I'll think of something to alleviate that," he countered, looking up at the looming empty stands and shivering.
They continued on and Hermione led him far beyond the outskirts of the property, past Hagrid's hut to where a bridge connected the rest of the property to the rest of the Scottish highlands. She walked over the bridge and when she felt the soft ward of magic protecting Hogwarts, she turned right. She led him a little further, to a rocky ledge that dangled over a deep canyon.
Malfoy stopped next to her and they both sat and looked up toward the sky. The snow clouds had moved out for the night and the sky above them was crisp and clear. "Whoa…the stars are even brighter here than in the Astronomy Tower!" he said from beside her.
"I like to come here sometimes, when the castle walls close in," she replied.
"You shouldn't be out alone," was all he said and she frowned.
They were silent for a few moments before Hermione sighed. "What are we going to do, Draco?"
He looked over at her at the sound of his given name and shrugged slightly. "I've been trying to figure that out for almost four months now," he whispered, a strained tone to his voice.
"You need to join the Order," she told him. "They can protect you."
"Like they protected James and Lily Potter?" he asked sarcastically, and when her eyes snapped to him, he had the decency to look a little remorseful.
"Dying doing the right thing for the right reasons would beat dying do the wrong thing for the right reasons," she argued, her voice raising a little higher than necessary.
"And what of my mother?" he demanded quietly, his tone turning clipped and icy as he jerked his hand from hers. "You would have her just die?"
"No!" Hermione said quickly. "I would never—no! The Order can hide her, too. Until the War is over."
"And what if the War lasts ten years? Fifteen? What if Potter fails and the Dark Lord reigns? What then?" he forced out, his teeth clenched.
She had angered him, and she instantly regretted it. She should have just kept her mouth shut until after the holidays. But Hermione was not the kind of person to sit back and let a problem loom over her for days on end. She wanted instant gratification. And suddenly, they had so many varying things clouding their near future.
"That's what I thought," he said after a long pause. "Granger, don't you think I have run through every possible scenario in my head? I have done nothing but fret over this for months on end."
"Please don't be angry," she said quietly and his eyes warmed some.
"I'm not angry…I'm frustrated."
They were silent for a long moment before Malfoy shifted slightly. "Granger, can I ask you a question?" he asked quietly.
She shrugged, still thinking of how she'd angered him and still worrying over how they were going to slither their way out of this slippery predicament they'd found themselves in. "Would you be with Weasley if he knew what happened? If he accepted it and loved you anyway?"
Hermione looked over at him and studied his face. Malfoy was looking out over the highlands, dark crevices and shadows dancing in the deep valley. His jaw was tight and his eyes guarded. He was not comfortable discussing this, but for some reason, he needed to know the answer. Her heart began to pound as she once again pondered her possible relationship with Ron and her newfound friendship with Malfoy.
He glanced over at her with a look on his face that she didn't recognize and she bit her lip, looking at the way his eyes sparkled in the moonlight. "I used to think I would love nothing more than to marry Ron and have a family with him. I've envisioned our wedding at the Burrow more than once."
She accidentally paused and Malfoy took that as her answer and nodded. "I see."
"But," she continued, "since my attack, I've spent my time with you. And you're…"
Malfoy's face turned up toward her so quickly that she wondered if he got a crick in his neck. "I'm what?" he prodded.
"You've mentioned that you consider me an equal. We are equals. I find it easier to talk to you nowadays than it has ever been with Ron or Harry. Don't get me wrong, I love them both as brothers. But, sometimes I just need someone who can keep up with me," she said, picking at a loose thread in her cloak and avoiding his gaze.
"I feel the same way…I've had Crabbe and Goyle at my back for the last six years," he let out a laugh, seemingly pleased with her answer.
After a moment of silence, she whispered. "Draco?"
"Hmm?" he hummed, glancing up at the sky and trying to hunt out the constellation Draco.
"I'm glad it was you who found me," she said, her voice a ghost in the night.
He threaded his hand into hers once more and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Me too."
"I mean it," she said earnestly. "If anyone else had found me, I would have been taken to Madam Pomfrey and then my parents would have yanked me from school. Or worse—whoever found me could have taken further advantage of me."
His jaw tightened at the thought. "I'm sorry that it happened to you. I can't get the sight of you, broken and bleeding as I prepared a bath for you, from my head sometimes. But I am grateful that it allowed us to see past the childhood rivalry and see each other for who we truly are. Though," he turned to look at her, a smirk on his face, "I feel you may be getting the raw end of the deal here."
o-o-o
They were in the Room of Requirement on Christmas Eve. They had only broken from each other to shower that morning and to write their respective parents a Christmas wish. Without the others to hamper her, she found she wanted to spend every moment with Malfoy. He was fascinating—the way he spoke of ancient pureblood traditions, bantered with her wholeheartedly about dragon's rights, spoke of his childhood as an affluent little prick—his words.
They were currently sitting on opposite ends of a couch in front of a crackling fire. Malfoy had brought along a bottle of his father's bourbon and they shared it between the two of them as they spoke, punctuated with laughs here and there. "Tell, me Granger. What is one tradition your family always had on Christmas Eve."
Hermione felt a pang of sadness that she had forgone seeing her parents that year in favor of hiding her eating and sleeping disorder from them. She smiled as she spoke. "Every year, we all got brand new pajamas and a book for Christmas Eve. We'd all sit by the tree and read."
Malfoy smiled warmly at her. "How utterly…normal," he remarked.
She frowned at his choice of words. She felt her childhood was anything but ordinary—it had been exceptional. "That's a good thing," he said, noticing her indignance.
"Well, what about you?" she asked him, poking his shin with her toe. "How did the upper echelon spend their holiday?"
"Ah, a series of stuffy dinners and a large pompous gala filled with my parents' friends—coincidentally, also Voldemort's friends," he replied, sipping the bourbon straight from the decanter.
"And where do you fit into all of that?" she asked, noting the stark contrast between their two childhoods once more.
"I kept my nose clean, head down and politely nodded when required of me. Danced with Parkinson when our parents forced us to."
"Will no pureblooded man ever want her?" she asked curiously. "She could learn other methods of communication."
"No self-respecting pureblooded man would be with someone who had a deformity of any kind," he smirked. "Though, if a potential suitor had known Pansy with her voice, he may have wished for her voice to be permanently silenced."
"Do you think she will return after the holidays?" she suddenly felt nervous.
"Oh no…I think her father will try to get down to the bottom of things. She'll spend time in the hospital while Healers work over her tirelessly, Arlo Parkinson paying handsomely for their services. But they will never suspect the spell that I have used—it went out of style during the medieval era."
"What was it?" she asked curiously.
"It roughly translates to 'never shall you speak again.' I'd read it in a book in my father's library as a child and memorized it," he grinned.
"So, it's Dark Magic, then?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and his grin fell.
"She got what was coming to her," he said shortly.
"I couldn't agree more," Hermione said, grinning at him.
When had Hermione become so dark, so vengeful, so angry? She suspected something inside of her had snapped when her hymen did. That thought made her smile disappear and a fresh wave of fury course through her and the crystal decanter nearly shattered in her hands. Malfoy grabbed it from her and set it on the coffee table beside them.
"Well, I don't have a fresh pair of pajamas up here, but if you want to head back, we can always change and reconvene in the Slytherin Common Room?" he suggested.
She shook her head, feeling slightly warm with alcohol and the crackling fire before them. "No way am I going back to that cold dungeon tonight! It's too cozy here!"
Hermione stood and went to warm her hands in front of the fire and Malfoy moved to sit with his feet on the floor. "I think I'll stay here tonight. Beats going back to an empty dorm," she commented.
Malfoy stood then, taking that as his cue to leave. Hermione put a hand out and grabbed his wrist. He turned to look at her, his eyebrow raised. "Don't go," she requested simply.
"You…you want to sleep together in here?" he croaked, looking at the Room and willing it not to conjure a bed as his thoughts shifted.
"I'd like to sit back down comfortably on the couch and continue talking, and if one or both of us should happen to fall asleep, so be it. I can conjure up a sheet to roll up between us, if that would soothe your Pureblooded mind?" she teased and he narrowed his eyes at her insinuation that he was a prude.
They sat back down on the couch, this time side by side instead of facing one another and Malfoy toed off his shoes. He conjured a blanket and laid it over her lap before he conjured one for himself. Hermione thought of how strange it was that Malfoy was doting over her, as a boyfriend would, as a suitor would. "Tell me about the first lucid memory you have," she said suddenly, putting her head on the back of the couch.
He frowned and put his head back beside hers. "I was five. My father took me to get ice cream."
"Your parents?"
"No—just my father. He said he wanted to show me off a little, show Mr. Fortescue how bright his little wizard was. I had just figured out how to summon cookies from the jar on my own—he thought my display of magic was clever."
"And was your mother okay with him taking you out to reward your naughty behavior?" Hermione asked, her mind growing thick with looming slumber.
Malfoy have a deep chortle next to her. "Not at all. She yelled at my father for spoiling me so incessantly. But my father was proud and wouldn't be deterred."
"I can't picture your father being kind for any reason."
"He wasn't always a prick. There was a time when we were truly happy, he, Mother and I."
"What happened?" she vaguely heard herself ask, also vaguely aware that she knew the answer already.
"The Dark Lord."
"Hmm…what a pity…"
o-o-o
Hermione awoke sometime a few hours later, the room barren and cold as the fire had extinguished itself. The only warmth she felt was coming from a solid body next to her. She relit the fire with a quick wave of her wand and looked over at Malfoy in the pale orange glow. She had managed to, not only keep all of her own blanket, but pull half of his from him as well.
She felt his arm and it was icy, so she sighed and untucked her own blanket from beneath her thighs where she'd begun to cocoon herself. She spread both blankets out over the two of them and she scooted closer to his warmth, leaning her head against his shoulder.
o-o-o
"He actually invited that stupid bint to Christmas at the Burrow!" Hermione shrieked, pacing the Slytherin Common Room after lunch.
Malfoy was sitting on the couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, eyeing her wearily. They'd awoken in a rather intimate position, close together with his arm around her shoulders, sharing blankets. He'd apologized profusely, but Hermione knew he was still watching her to make sure she didn't start directing her anger at him for that incident. In truth, it hadn't bothered her. In fact, she wanted an encore that night. Hermione hadn't slept so peacefully in four months. It didn't bother her that he was a man, that he had the potential to do to her what had already been done once—she knew he wouldn't.
"Well…they are dating," he said slowly.
She rounded on him. "Whose side are you on?" she demanded, throwing her hands out to her sides.
"Yours, of course. But I'm simply saying—they are dating and he has no idea she'd the spawn of Satan."
Hermione laughed bitterly at the Muggle phrase and reread the letter from Ron that had arrived with her gifts from the boys and Weasley parents. It was signed with, "Lavender is here and she wishes you the best too."
"She's dangerous! We don't even know why she attacked me, but she's clearly capable of quite a bit of Darkness. What if she hurts one of them?" she asked, panic rising in her throat.
"She wouldn't dare attack them in their home—she'd immediately be suspected as the outsider. I would say if she plans to hurt either Potter or Weasley, she would do it here, surrounded by a hundred other potential attackers so throw off the scent," Malfoy reasoned.
"We need to speed this revenge up! I want she and Ron split by Valentine's day," Hermione said with an underlying menace in her voice.
Malfoy raised his eyebrows at her as he watched in amazed fascination as this pure, Gryffindor witch slowly soaked up his Dark, Slytherin ways, like soup into bread. "What did you have in mind?" he asked amusedly, giving her a willing smirk.
o-o-o
THIS MARKS THE END OF WHAT I HAVE FOR HARMONIA NECTERE PASSUS!
