A/N: Dear Readers,
Thank you for such a wonderful response to Chapter One! Excited to share Part Two with you today. As always, much love and thanks to my betas and friends ketos, Constance and oftachancer for their encouragement and guidance with this work.
Your reviews and kudos are always deeply appreciated! Enjoy, sulis
. . .
The first time he saw Hermione Granger, Draco's first thought was how much she reminded him of his mudblood governess.
Like a ghost come back to haunt him. The mirror image in miniature, the very same appearance and temperament.
Every day she did something new that brought back some memory, something to cement the similarity.
By this age, Draco knew what he'd seen that night as a child. He knew what those looks at afternoon tea had been. He knew what his father and his mudblood governess had been doing.
"Don't lose count."
How many had it been, to count to? Had she lost count? When his father walked back in the room, had she forgotten the number? And if she had, how had his father punished her for it?
Draco wondered at the answer to that question for years.
What else had they done? How often had they done it?
His mudblood governess had stayed on for another full year. Though Draco never heard screaming again. And none of the three of them ever said a word about what he'd seen.
Did some witches really like that sort of thing as much as people said they did? Ropes and gags and… spanking? Or was it only mudbloods?
He wondered. There was still so little Draco knew about them. Or witches of any kind, for that matter.
Though he had learned one vital thing from witnessing his father's tryst: Mudbloods might very well be beneath them, but apparently you could still fuck them.
In second year, when they ran into Granger at Flourish and Blotts, Draco wondered if his father noticed the similarity between her and his old governess as well.
His father had spoken to her, had even embarrassed Draco by mentioning how much better she was doing in class than him. (Because, as he told his father absolutely everything, Draco had also told him all about the mudblood in his class who never shut up and had the answer to every question.)
That day in the bookshop, Hermione had of course, like his governess, talked back to his father.
And his father had stared at her. For far longer than Draco liked.
Granger kept out performing him. Kept annoying the bloody shit out of him. Kept getting smarter and prettier and more daring and perfect. Every bloody year.
She even punched him, the savage. Hard.
Muggle violence. Oh, his father's face when he'd heard about that.
Draco couldn't decide whether his expression had been appalled or impressed. Both, likely.
He made a note to himself not to mention things about Granger to his father again.
And so the school year continued, and Draco stored up every run in with her in his mind. Left every story unspoken, determined to keep them for himself.
Draco had been looking forward to the World Cup all summer. He knew his father would make sure they had the very best seats.
Then, astoundingly, there she was again. Surrounded by a hoard of disgusting, hollering Weasleys, no less.
And again, his father stared. And she stared back; at his father, not at him.
A fragrant memory of freshly poured tea had overwhelmed his senses.
Draco stewed over that traded look for over a year. Hating them both for it, for some reason. Adoring them both. Wanting attention from them both. Wanting them to never have met, to stay in their separate corners of his world.
Sometimes he wanted Granger to not even exist.
No, that wasn't true. He took it back.
At night, he dreamt of them.
Dreamt of his father whipping her. Fucking her. Of her moaning for it like a whore. Draco woke, morning after morning, covered in his own cum, disgusted with himself.
By his 5th year at Hogwarts, his relationship with his father was changing. There was a constant edge to his father at all times, a stress he was carrying but refused to talk to Draco about. Something was building, and no one would tell him what.
Granger was swottier than ever. And up to something.
Draco joined the Inquisitorial Squad, determined to catch her at whatever it was, and to make his father proud.
He didn't let himself give much thought to the fact that his fantasy of 'catching' Granger involved tying her up, gagging her and spanking her. Making her count them, flushed and screaming.
Don't lose count.
But even when he did catch her, nothing half so good as that came of it. In fact, the whole world fell to shit.
He knew she'd been there, with Potter, in the Department of Mysteries, when his father was arrested. They'd seen one another that night. Fought each other.
Draco could barely process the image that thought conjured for him. Spells flying. Adrenaline, danger. Granger and his father hurling hexes at one another, out of breath. It was incomprehensible.
And then his father was gone. He and his mother were left to fend for themselves. Draco was left to finally step into the role he'd been preparing for his entire life, to fill his father's shoes.
They were more uncomfortable than he'd anticipated.
That constant edge he'd seen hanging about his father now hung over him, and Draco soon realized it hadn't been 'stress' so much as mortal peril and the fight for survival.
He channeled all of his energy into succeeding, for he and his mother's sake. He would do what his father could not. He would make him proud. Further still, he would make the Dark Lord proud.
It would be like a great adventure. Full of accomplishment.
But he couldn't. In the end, he couldn't. He had failed. Again.
Even having his father back didn't keep the next hellscape from crashing in around them. Having his father back almost made it worse, actually. Watching him mope around the manor, wandless, drinking himself into oblivion.
Then those idiots had to go and get themselves captured.
He caught the moment his father saw her amongst them. Beneath the haze of whisky there was a brief flash of conflict, and laced with it, solemn disappointment. Then, in the swig of another glass, both were replaced with resignation, bitter and hollow.
Granger, still obnoxiously clever, had managed the stinging jinx to Potter's face in time.
So Draco found himself between them once again: His father at his side, urgently whispering in his ear, "Is it him?" And Granger, pleading at him from across the room with her big, weepy brown eyes.
He felt like he was choosing between their lives.
So he said: "I can't be sure."
Her safety cost him his own. What a sodding miserable excuse of a Slytherin he was.
Draco had found out he could endure many more castings of Crucio before dying than he'd previously assumed. Collectively as a family, they might very well have set some kind of a record.
He'd also thought shared pain brought people closer together. But Draco found this strongly not to be the case. He felt alone from every which way. And his mother and father seemed further apart than ever, barely even looking one another in the eye.
The fact that he and his parents managed to survive to the point of the final battle was a bleeding miracle. And that was before the fiendfyre.
She'd managed to survive too. Of course she had. And she shined even more brilliantly in the flame and destruction.
He'd hated it all more than ever then, everything they'd been made to be a part of, from either side.
And when the giant oaf came into the courtyard carrying Potter's lifeless body, Draco found himself watching only his father and Granger. His father looked relieved, though uneasy. Granger looked like she'd lost a limb.
When his father called to him to join them, Draco had wavered. Though he'd never understood more just how very much his father loved him.
He had seen him running through the castle, without a wand. Dodging the green flash of killing curses, calling out his name.
"Come, Draco." Holding out his waiting hand, looking the fool with the entire courtyard watching.
When his father had called to him, the Dark Lord standing by waiting, Draco had glanced across the rubble strewn with bodies and seen the look Granger was giving him.
All fear and hope. Both pleading and demanding. The same look as on his father's face.
They'd never seemed to him more clearly alike than in that moment. Both asking him to choose them.
And the realization came with absolute certainty, suffocating as the crowd that watched him:
They, they two, were the polar forces which had guided his entire life.
. . .