"Hermione, I have something more to tell you…"
She lifted her head from Draco's shoulder, raising herself up on one elbow where they lay on the rug in the Room of Hidden Things at the foot of the vanishing cabinet. She covered his mouth with her palm, and when his voice trailed off, she lifted her hand and kissed him for the first time since they'd parted at Grimmauld Place during the holidays. For a moment, his resolve to tell her something awful was derailed.
They'd been kissing each other since she was fifteen years old, long enough that Hermione's mouth tasted like his own. Beside him, she stretched as if yawning, curving her spine into an s shape, rising up slightly from the rug to press her body against his. Kissing and holding her was a rush of home after a holiday spent without a home, and he was at once filled with relief in what he found in her and grief in what was lost, all but ruined - the manor, his parents, his family. Lonely, heartbroken Draco knew that all the proposals he would make from now on, every time he asked her to let him be her husband, wouldn't be about bolstering an ancient magic spell. They would be about the future, a second chance at a family - one that began with himself and Hermione.
Did she have any sense of how deeply he had fallen for her, as she moved her lips against his, letting their bodies meld at their mouths? Her hand slid over his chest, beneath his arm, pressing against his shoulder blade. He was thinner this year. Too tense to have much of an appetite for food, no more quidditch to build up his muscle mass. But he was still far bigger than her. With her hand on his back, she tipped him up and toward herself, not forcefully enough to move him very far, but to signal that she wanted him to turn and kiss her from above.
He acquiesced, rolling toward her, propping himself on one arm, bearing some of his weight on it so she wouldn't be crushed between himself and the stone floor, yet still letting her have what she wanted - the warmth and comfort of bearing most of his torso on top of hers. She reached out for more, hooking her heel into the hollow at the back of his knee to pull his legs over her as well.
He let her get as close to him as she wanted, not worrying about the monks and their purity clause for the first time in months. No doubt Hermione would remember it, conscientious witch that she was, even as she walked her fingers beneath his jumper, tugging his shirt free of his trousers and touching the bare skin of his abdomen with her fingertips.
He shivered and sighed, his mind drifting away, letting his desire for her build. Let her tell him when they needed to stop for a change. Of course she would. When she did, he would tell her the reason he was still alive - the vanishing cabinet. And after that, they would figure out how to get past it - either that or she would leave him, making this the last time he would come home to her.
The thought had him falling farther, throwing himself into her gravity, rolling fully on top of her, most of his weight held on his knees and elbows but the rest of him in full contact with her. Her shirt had ridden up with his motion and their stomachs were touching, skin to skin.
Right there - that was her line. She gasped, pulling her mouth away from his, her lips glistening, breath fast and heavy. He stopped kissing her but didn't move away, keeping his face over hers, their eyes locked on each other's, breathing the air between them, its taste like that of their kiss.
She smiled at him. "When we get this far, you usually ask me to marry you."
He shook his head. "Maybe I would ask again right now if I wanted marriage mostly to dodge the purity clause, but that's not the most important reason why - not anymore. Don't mistake me asking you to marry me for me asking you for sex. It's beyond that. I want you because nothing makes me happier than you do. I just want to be with you. I'd want you as my family even if the monks said we had to stay virgins forever."
She started to laugh, stopping when he didn't smile back, looking down at her with a grave but beautiful intensity.
"That is darling of you," she said, her fingers in his hair, "but that's not what the monks asked of us, thank the stars."
She reached between them to right her shirt. He gave her room to work, rolling onto his back again.
"I interrupted you," she said as she smoothed her clothes. "Sorry, I do want to hear what you have to say. It's just that I - needed you like this, for a bit. It wasn't easy, supervising you on the train after not seeing you for days, standing there like a stranger."
He sat up, taking her hand but not looking at her as he spoke. "Was that all it was? Or were you keeping me quiet because you're afraid I was about to tell you something that would make it impossible for you to stay with me?"
She sat up, kneeling beside him. "What's left for you to say, Draco? How bad would it have to get? Would you have to, oh, I don't know, make a violent raid on the student group I co-founded? Then turn us over to Umbridge for torture? Or maybe break my best friend's nose on purpose? Or hex my housemate? Or take the bleeding Dark Mark?"
"Stop. I get it."
She leaned her forehead against his temple. "Trust me, Draco. And tell me what it is."
He sucked in a huge breath, waved his arm to the mass of furniture beside them. "It's that. The big black cabinet standing with its door ajar. Think, Hermione. Have you ever seen anything like it before?"
She blinked at it, squinted, then her eyes went wide. "Borgin and Burkes. The vanishing cabinet they have there. I saw it when I followed you. This - this is its mate?"
He let out his breath. "Yes."
She stood up, approaching the cabinet. "Does anyone else know it's here?"
He nodded, rising to stand beside her. "Yes. The very worst people know. They know it's here and that's why they've kept me and my mother alive this long, so they can make use of it."
Her hand was outstretched, inching toward the handle of the open door. "But this cabinet, it's the same one Fred and George shoved Graham Montague into last year, isn't it? Someone's moved it up here."
"Yes, I did."
She was nodding, hopeful. "So if it's that cabinet, then it's broken. They can't use it. Montague didn't end up in Borgin and Burkes. It didn't work. He was lost instead, wound up in the school's plumbing. And then he was sick for weeks."
"Nearly died," Draco finished.
Her voice was pitching higher, brighter. "Right. So - the very worst people - they'd just get lost and hurt in the passage between the cabinets too. This one is no threat. As long as it's broken, there's no threat to Hogwarts."
He said nothing.
"It's broken. Draco, tell me it's broken."
His voice came slowly, low over her shoulder. "I've been going as slowly as I can, Hermione. I tried to satisfy them with the necklace plot. But they're so impatient, so single-minded - so wickedly dangerous. They're holding my mother. She just sits on the piano bench by the front door, waiting to run for her life, or for Snape to show up and drug her to sleep. They're forcing me. I had to mend this cabinet just enough to show them I was in earnest, able, making progress. Watch."
He reached into the pocket of the robe he'd set aside on the rug, and produced another experimental apple. Brushing past her, he set the apple inside the cabinet, and closed the door.
"Draco, no."
"Harmonia nectere passus."
"No!" she lunged in front of him, wrenching the door open. The apple was gone.
She yelled, slammed the door shut, beat on the closed door with both of her fists.
Hating to see her touching the vile thing, Draco pulled Hermione away from the cabinet, holding her by both of her upper arms. She let herself be led away but ranted her disapproval. "We have to smash it - throw it down the stairs so it shatters into kindling. It can't stay here."
He was shushing her. "Listen to me, Hermione. If I went home for Christmas having accomplished nothing, he would have slaughtered my family on the spot. I had to use this as something to barter for our lives. I had to finish some of the mending of it. But I got it to stop here. It's still not a threat. It can transfer inanimate objects but nothing alive - no Death Eaters. They're still well outside the school. We tested it the night of Slughorn's party."
She let out a high, hurt cry. "The night of Slughorn's party? You danced with me, and kissed me goodbye, and then you stayed here and worked with Death Eaters to mend this?"
He tried to take her in his arms but her posture was stiff, unyielding. He kept talking. "It's just like the Dark Mark, just like the cursed necklace, Hermione. I had only two choices: either work with them on a plan to get Death Eaters in here, or die, along with both of my parents."
She sniffed, in tears. "Don't die, Draco." Her arms were around his neck. "Don't die."
She cried against his chest as he held her, as he told her, "I haven't. It's still alright."
After a moment she sniffed again, wiping her eyes. "This is why Crookshanks treats you as untrustworthy now. Because you are - "
"Hermione - "
She batted his arm. "Why didn't you tell me before now? All these months - we could have dealt with this together."
He bent his face into her hair. "I'm sorry. I was scared. I wanted to keep you safe from all this. And then there's Potter. How would you answer him and his constant monologue about me being up to something on behalf of the Death Eaters once you knew how right he was?"
She shook her head. "You honestly think you made the right choice? Keeping it secret? Asking me to marry you every day even as you chose to keep such a big part of your life hidden from me?"
He hung his head. "No. No, it was wrong. I'm sorry. This is me repenting. I need you in my life in every way. In fact, I think my only chance of getting myself and my mother out of this disaster might be through the charm you left on my arm. It's the most powerful magic affecting me right now - stronger than the Dark Mark itself."
She stopped sniffing, turning to look up at him. "What?"
He nodded. "Yes. And the Dark Lord knows it too. It's tearing him up like nothing has since Harry's mother's magic sent him underground for ten years."
She frowned. "What does that mean?"
He kissed the top of her head. "It means we might have something more here than just a plan to save the worthless, filthy Malfoy line. This charm, Hermione, it might be something to set the whole war back a few years, long enough for the new Ministry, or the headmaster, or - hell - even Potter to figure out how to end it for good."
She stood speechless, her hand gripping his left forearm, where the marks warred in his flesh.
He released her from his embrace and extended a hand to her. "There's a lot more to explain. The monks - well, just come with me to find Snape. He's been working on this all along. You can hear it from him, and it's time that he heard about this cabinet," he used his wand to drape the velvet cover over the it, "from me."
Ron had barely stepped into the bedroom when he realized Harry was already talking to him from behind a large, creased sheet of parchment. "They're off the Map again. Both of them, Hermione and Malfoy, together. Off in the Room of Requirement, no doubt."
Ron sloughed his robe onto the floor. "Of course they are. And if some secret unplottable room was the only place I could be with Pansy after not seeing her all during the holidays, I'd be camped out in it for days myself."
Harry sat up, refolding the Map with angry force. "I've had enough of politely letting them carry on," he said. "When she comes back, I'm going to demand she tell me what they're up to in there."
Ron pulled off his jumper and tossed it over Harry's head. "Snogging, Harry. They're in there snogging, making up for lost time, getting reacquainted. And don't you dare ask her about it in front of me. The last thing I want to hear is all the details of it."
Harry threw the jumper back at him. "Just because you're obsessed with snogging doesn't mean everyone is."
"Aren't they?" Ron demanded. "Shouldn't they be? In fact, I think you'd be dealing with every little thing in your life much better if you got yourself a girlfriend."
"The girl I like isn't available," Harry snapped, colour rising in his cheeks.
"So find someone else," was Ron's glib response. "Whoever you like, she can't be so great the only alternative is nothing. What about that Romilda Vane - the one Hermione warned you might be trying to slip you a love potion - chat her up. Easy as that. Romance managed."
"Shut up, Ron."
"Fine, but someone has to say this to you first: you were right out of order on the train today, with Malfoy. I hate him as much as anyone but you can't grab a man and start tearing at his clothes to satisfy your own suspicions."
Harry was on his feet, shouting. "Why did he fight me? Why didn't he just show me he's clean and be done with it?"
"I don't know," Ron answered just as loudly. "Maybe because it's embarrassing and inappropriate and, frankly mate, none of your business. The Order has a plan here. Dumbledore told you to focus on Slughorn and all those memories of Riddle he's showing you, and you're not doing it. But take it from a sixth born child, there comes a time when we all have to be good soldiers and play our part, even the Chosen One."
Harry stood silently for a moment before sitting down hard on his bed.
Ron sighed. "Romilda is down in the common room. Go say hello. I'm taking a shower."