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"No, don't touch her! I will fucking kill you! Don't you dare lay as much as a finger on her—" muffled cries stopped him dead in his tracks. He forced himself to remain silent so he could follow the sound and find out where it was coming from but it wasn't that easy, was it?

"Look at you, you're so pathetic." his aunt snarled at him, showing off her hideous yellow teeth. "In love? With a mudblood?" she pouted, feigning innocence. "Oooo, this is interesting, very interesting! You love her! You love her! You love her!" she kept on shouting, a voice so sharp, it pierced his ears. He had to cover his ears to block it out but to no avail was he successful.

"Let her go!" He was sobbing mess by now, tears streaming down his face and shoulders shaking violently. He covered his face in his hands, a futile attempt to rinse off the tears. "LET HER GO!" He kept on screaming and the crazy woman before him kept on laughing like a maniac. "I SAID LET HER GO, YOU BITCH!" he was advancing towards her laughing future now, wand forgotten and fists clenched.

That was his second mistake before falling in love with her.

"LET HER—"

"Oh! But I quite like her!" Bellatrix sang in her playful voice. "I like the way she screams," the glint on her eyes was sadistic and raw. He felt his heart stop. "I like how she has more scars than you can count. I like how she yells your name every single time I hit her with a crucio." She stopped to admire his pathetic self crouched down on the floor, unable to breathe. "I like how she is going to die any moment now."

Bellatrix smiled viciously at the boy who cried wolf.

"You're so pathetic, I wonder why my dear Cissy didn't kill you the moment she had you." he felt the air leave his lungs at her every word. Not only did he still hear her screaming but the thought of what she was going through added insult to the injury. "You're so pathetic." repeated Bellatrix as she dragged her wand across his jaw and then his throat. "So," she bent down, her wild curls brushing his face as she grazed her lips along his ear shell. "Pathetic."

Another scream.

And then, he was pushing his way up, leaving behind a laughing Beatrix who watched her nephew with utter amusement, the sadistc spark in her eyes never vanished.

It made him sick.

"Oh dear nephew," she called out, voice so high-pitched, it made him cringe. "I do hope you find her in time, we don't have much of it anyway. Oh, but I really hope you don't because then, I get to kill her right in front of you." But he wasn't paying any attention to her, all he had on his mind was the girl he loved and she was here, somewhere trapped in between all these doors. He looked around to see a maze of doors, all iron and dark. With one huge corridor, hundreds of doors aligned in a symmetrical manner that made his skin itch, all of them the same with a brass serpent encarved into the middle. His panic rose when he heard Bellatrix say, "Time's ticking! Tick, tock, tick, tock, times running out! Tick, tock, tick, tock! All you have to do is knock! The mudblood is going to be die if you can't you can't recover from your shock, tick, tock, tick, tock, if I were you, I'd hurry like the hawk!" she sing-song.

"Hermione!" blood rushed to his ears as she screamed her name, trying his utter best to block out the maniacal laughter of his aunt behind him. "Hermione!" she yelled again, pushing door after door from his left to right and being welcomed by nothing but darkness.

"HERMIONE!" tears blurred his vision as he kept on pushing open door after door in hopes of finding tye girl he loved, and then, he heard her scream his name.

His hands shaking didn't stop him from continuing what he was.

Door after door was pushed open to reveal utter nothingness, by now, he had roughly pushed open a hundred doors. One look ahead and he realised that there were still hundreds more left. He ran forward, looking for anything that would tell him where she was, anything at all. One particular door caught his attention— instead of a brass serpent, the iron door had a red one. He urged himself forward, almost throwing up at the sight.

It was blood.

And something told him that it was hers

"No." he softly said, and then shouted his lungs out. "No, no, no, no, NO! NO! NO!" he pulled at the roots of his hair, "NO!" he turned around to see his aunt dancing around to a silent lullaby, her arms in the air and her feet swaying her away. "MAKE IT STOP!" He tired to push open the door but it didn't even budge. He could see the streaks of yellow light from under the little space between the ground and the door.

This was the door.

She was here, she was inside and she was screaming his name in utter agony.

"I BEG YOU! STOP THIS! DON'T HURT HER!" he was on his knees now, trying to push open the door with all his might, futile. "MAKE IT STOP!" He cried when she screamed again, the sound making his lungs give out. "PLEASE!"

"JUST TAKE ME INSTEAD! LEAVE HER!"

But Bellatrix only pouted like a little child at his sobbing self. "Time's up, over now!"

And with that, the door swung open, the hard iron colliding with the wall behind it to emit a screeching sound.

Draco stopped crying, his feet stood frozen on the hard ground.

The girl he loved stood helpless in gve crowd of deatheaters, her hands tied behind her back and a blindfold covering her warm brown eyes. Her lips were trembling and she had tears leaking down her eyes that created seemless patterns on omher cheeks.

And she was at the mercy of a masked man, a tall man with a crooked leg and long hair, a sharp blade wedged between his hand and Hermione's neck.

"Pathetic." Bellatrix drawled from behind just when a masked man slashed the soft skin at her throat, her body fell in the pool of her own blood just when Draco felt himself screaming all at once. He crawled his way towards her body and touched the blood with his hands, as if making sure it was real and not just a fragment of his wild imagination.

The last thing he remembered was taking the blade from the ground and charging towards the man, ready to kill him just when he made the first move and hit him with a body binding curse, it was just then that Draco realised that Bellatrix had her own wand pointed at him.

"Avada Kedavra."

And then, everything went black.

A piercing scream.

"NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" Draco woke up to the sound of his own screaming, his throat wa closing up on him and it felt like the four walls of his room would collapse on him if he didn't move from his position on the bed.

Another scream.

His heart was beating at such an erratic pace, it was alarming. The beads of sweat framing his face did nothing more that to add to his panic. Draco's hands traveled around his surroundings, feeling the things around him as if to tell himself that this was reality and that that wasn't. His trembling fingers ran through his hair as he tried to calm his body and mind down.

And then, it struck him like lightning.

"Hermione," he whispered into thin air. His feet were already taking him towards her room as he fell down multiple times in an attempt to stay upright. Draco didn't know what he was doing, all he knew was that he had to break into her room like a madman and know that she was okay, that she hadn't been hurt or worse, taken away from him. He knocked off several items as he stumbled out of the room, colliding with at least three more things before she finally made his way out the room, past the living room and then finally, her room. His breathing became even more erratic as he registered his sight to another door, and even though it wasn't the same as the one in his nightmare, it still managed to give him anxiety. With a speed he didn't know he was capable of having, he pushed the door hard as it hit the stone wall behind it. Hermione was already up, from the looks of it, it seemed like she had heard him screaming and that she was just coming in to check up on him.

Seeing her before him with her eyes all worried and lips parted, Draco wanted to cry, and so he did. His tears leaking out before he could stop himself. Without wasting even a second longer, he charged toward her, his arms wrappings around her like clockwork, pressing her deep into his body. His heart calmed down at tye prospect of her being unhurt, and being right here, just next to him, safe and sound.

The dream had seemed so real, he was afraid that it might have just been the harsh reality.

"Are you okay? I heard you scream," she ran her fingers through his hair just as Draco started to calm down. He had won over his demons, little by little, he was getting that— and this was just one of the many tasks that lied in between the horrid start and the beautiful destination.

He didn't let her go.

Draco's mouth came over hers, pressing harsh open mouthed kisses to her lips and then down her throat, as if he was relishing the reality of her being here with him, right now in this moment. Hermione felt the urgency, the impatience in his kisses and she wanted nothing more than to question him. Still, she allowed herself to let him calm down before any interrogating. This was so odd, he had never done this before, not once had he barged into his room with such urgency. Sure, there was the time when he told her that he was sorry for tormenting her all those years but this, dear god this, was on a whole new level of rawness and emotion.

"Draco—" but he wasn't listening. All his focus had been trained on her warm eyes that he forced himself to look into after brushing her wild curls from hee face, as if it was another protective measure he had to take to make sure that she was really alright.

Seeing her like that in his nightmare had inky confirmed his suspicions of what he felt towards the brightest witch of their age. Seeing her die right before his eyes had made his life lose the little purpose it had after the war— to seek love of someone who would be willing to give it to him, someone who would look past his exterior and reach into the pits of hell to extract the remains of his broken soul underneath, of the little scared boy hiding away in a dark chamber as his most trusted friends and family members walk away from him. The little boy who had been deprived of a mother's love, a father's guidance, a friend's companionship and a lover's affection.

He didn't know when Hermione Granger had extended her hand and plucked him out of the darkness that had circled him all his life like second skin.

He didn't know how, but she had.

He probably would have never admitted it to himself but seeing her fall in her own pool of blood just minutes ago had been the most frightening thing he had ever witnessed— it came first to Voldemort's torturing, to his parents leading his astray even when he trusted them with his life, his so called friends always being absent when he had needed them the most.

Draco realised that all these things that he thought would end his world, would break him, never actually did anything except hurt him for some months; even though they would leave behind a permanent mark on his soul and mind, it would never actually matter because he had expected that at some point in his life. He had expected his parents to sell him off to an extremely dark force in the magical world, he had expected his friends to leave him once they had enjoyed the fame it came with being friends with him but he had never imagined this.

He had never imagined to lose someone he loved so adherently and maybe, just maybe, that's what made it hurt the most.

For some reason, not being able to predict this, made the throe unimaginably excruciating.

If he hadn't imagined losing someone so close before in his life, it was because he never expected someone to love him in the first place.

"Nightmare, I- you were- Bellatrix, I didn't know what to- lost you, I couldn't find- the doors, blood-" he was sputtering all the words at once clustering his mind. By now, his mind had lost the ability to form a single rational sentence. Sensing the trepidation behind his words, Hermione walked them over to her bed and pushed him down, not once did her hand leave his, it was like leading a child through a crowded funfair on a winter night— you had to keep them close to you at all times.

"It's okay, you're okay, I'm okay, I'm right here, see?" she attempted a half smile which Draco didn't return, his mind was too busy with the things plaguing his mind.

Hermione clutched his cold hand in her own and interlaced their fingers. The warmth of her skin complimented his icy one— it was beautiful.

With her other hand, she guided his hair sticking out behind his ear, "We're okay." she sighed, "We're okay Draco, we're okay."

None of them spoke anything for several minutes, until finally Draco gathered his shredded courage and began speaking which came out more like a croak from all the screaming earlier. "I want to tell you something, I want to tell you something before it's too late." his grey eyes fell on the silver key dangling around her neck, it calmed him down to a great extent knowing that she didn't take it off even when she was sleeping.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure you can tell me while we're under the warm covers, quite frankly, it's freezing." she chuckled. Truth was, she could've just muttered a warming charm to make the temperature of the room accommodating but she wanted to feel his body against her own, she wanted to be the reason he calmed down, not magic.

Nodding once, Draco secured her small hand in his and pulled her down on the soft surface, while his body had been evidently hot just a few minutes ago, this felt like a major relief.

"I- I lost you in my, little reverie." he sighed, burying his face in her neck. Hermione stoked his hair and inched her body closer to his. Slowly but surely, she felt his body ease under her touch. His muscles visibly relaxed just when she felt him exhale a sigh on the skin of her neck. "You were screaming and I-"

His eyes closed.

"You don't have to tell me, not right now, it's okay," but Draco was shaking his head.

"No," he whispered looking down at her, "I want to tell you."

"You must allow me to tell you how adherently I admire you."

Understandingly, Hermione blinked at him, a silent approval in the cold December air.

"You-" he gulped, his fingers coming up to stroke her soft skin on her cheeks. "You died." it had been a whisper, but she had heard him.

"And I— I felt so lost, so," she could see him struggle with his words. "Like I had lost that one thing on life that actually mattered. And I was so helpless, I can't remember one time in my life when I begged someone for something. Never. I remember begging to Bellatrix to spare you and just take me instead—" she stopped to look at her. Her eyes showed a different kind of emotion than all times before, it was something he couldn't quite put a finger on.

"Of course, she didn't listen to me but it was an eye opener, a big one." he didn't break eye contact with her as she spoke, "I have never once either begged for something nor have I ever asked to be killed instead of someone. I don't remember feeling so empty, ever before. Maybe I'm looking too much into it but I don't care, I know what I saw and I know what I felt. Maybe the nightmare hadn't been real but my—"

"Yes?" her voice was timid, it made Draco sigh.

"But my feelings for you were." he finally said after what felt like hours of menacing silence.

"Hermione," he gathered her hands in his, voice shaking, "I think— I think that I-"

"You what?" Hermione grew impatient. She was now sitting making Draco sit too, their hearts thumping.

He brushed a soft curl behind her face and hung his head before raising it again.

"No, I know that—" his voice broke and his heart pounder against his ribcage at the mere prospect of his next words.

"I'm in love with you, Hermione Granger."

Cliffhangers are a bitch, tell me about it. But eeek, this is what we've all been waiting for. I hope I was able to capture their feelings and emotions as good as you guys had hoped for! I'm kinda in love with this Draco, aren't you?

What are your thoughts on the book this far? Drop in a review and let me know what you think is going to happen next.

All the love, me.