A/N: Sorry that I missed last week's update, but I went on vacation with family, and some how the laptop was left behind. So to make up for it, this week you're getting two chapters! YAY! Sorry I suck! As for some of the comments, please know that I have read them and I really am doing my best to find a beta, but I keep coming up short. So if you have any suggestions or recommendations for a beta please PM me. For now, know that my husband and I are doing the best we can to make it the best story possible. We go over each chapter at least three times each to try and catch everything, but it's been a while since either of us took our college level writing courses so we may miss some things. I'm very thankful that you guys are being so kind and lenient with me, and thank you so much for you reviews, I very much appreciate them!
Chapter 11
Draco ran his hand through his hair as the whoosh of green fire that was Hermione faded into an empty fireplace. He sighed deeply. After agreeing to go out with him, Hermione had made an excuse to leave and once she thanked his mother for tea, Draco had escorted Hermione to the floo.
"Well, that went much better than it did last time."
Draco looked over his shoulder to find his mother in the archway, sipping on some tea. "And what would you mean by that, Mother?" Draco slipped his hands into his pockets and shifted to look at her.
"Well, last time you two were in this house alone, both of you stomped off and one left without so much as a goodbye." She sipped her tea again with a nonchalance.
"Mother, she specifically came to apologize for that," Draco stated with a calm tone with a hint of edge to it.
"I'm well aware, and I have forgiven her. I'm merely stating that this visit went superb in comparison to her last visit." Naricissa smiled softly.
"Mother, just say it. My brain is shot from playing games with Granger, I can't think straight right now." The hint of frustration now growing in his voice.
Narcissa smiled at her son, she loved him with everything she was, he was possibly the only thing she truly loved in her life. "I knew perfectly well why her skin kept flushing. It's no secret she finds you attractive."
Draco peaked an eyebrow. "Oh, and am I to believe you orchestrated our last encounter too?"
Naricissa gave coy smile and sipped her tea again. "I may hinted that you two had issues yet to be resolved, and Mr. McHale is such old friend to the Malfoy family. I knew he would try to convince you to talk. The dancing was a bit of a surprise, the bigger shock was when she followed you when you stormed off. After that I truly have no idea what happened, but by the way she left I was to assume it did not end well. That did give me a good reason to owl her my regrets for not seeing her before she left, she was the one who asked to come to tea. I did not intend for you to come in filthy and half dressed, but it did seem to work in your favor."
Draco eyed his mother carefully. "Why would you go to the trouble of any of this? She was always below our blood status growing up."
Naricissa's smile faded, her face etched with regret. "She was below your father." She moved in closer to him. "Your father tried to beat it out of you, but I feared your affections would only deepen." She placed a delicate hand on his cheek, a weak smile crossing her lips. "When you stopped talking about her altogether, I thought perhaps your father was successful. A few years later, at the world cup, when you went out of your way to find them in the woods, I was suspicious. During the war when she was brought here, the look of horror on you face, paired with the fact that you didn't fully admit it was them, I knew. I knew that you had just suppressed your feelings."
Draco raised his hand to his mother's and gave it a squeeze. "I don't deserve her, Mother. It is a fool's journey to try and pursue her." He looked down with a heavy heart.
"You deserve goodness Draco. Your life has been cruel, you have been forced into things that no one ever should be forced into. Your childhood was robbed of you and you spent all of your academic years in fear. You deserve, after everything you've been through, the sacrifices you have made, to be happy. She is goodness, Draco, she makes you happy. You deserve at least a chance." Naricissa gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. "I failed to protect you, shield you from the horrors of evil, the least I could do is help you to happiness now." She stepped back and left the room, leaving her son to contemplate his worthiness.
Hermione stepped into her living room in a sort of dazed state. She had told Malfoy that she had work to catch up on, it wasn't necessarily true, she had completed everything she needed done by Monday already, but there was always still work to do. Mostly, she just need to get out of his stony stare to think. She plopped herself down on the couch, her head swimming. Then it occurred to her, she stood up and grabbed more floo powder, but this time she called out the address to Grimauld place. She stepped in to the sitting room to find James racing around he room with a towel tied around his neck on a play broom pretending to play Quidditch. "Auntie Hermeny!" He yelled at the top of his lungs.
Harry came into the room a few moments later with surprised look on his face. "Hey, Hermione." He walked over and gave her a hug. "Were we expecting you? Ginny didn't mention having anyone over for dinner."
On cue, Ginny walked in to the living room, drying her hands on an apron she was wearing. "Harry!" She admonished. "You didn't tell me that Hermione was coming for dinner." Ginny gave Hermione a look over. "You look wonderful in that dress, did we forget something special?"
"No." Hermione smiled nervously. "I actually just came from the Malfoy's and I just need to talk it through. And since both of you know it made sense to come here."
Harry swiped James up from what was his fourth lap around the room since Hermione had arrived, and gave Ginny a look. Sometimes Hermione swore that Harry and Ginny could communicate telepathically and just had not shared the secret with the rest of the world yet. "James," he looked at his small son, "why don't you go play in your room a bit?"
"No! I see Hermeny!" James angrily yelled.
"If you speak to an adult like that again, you won't see anyone." Harry scolded. The small three year old huffed but when he was put down again, he moped off to his room. Harry had really gotten a hang of this parenting thing. Harry looked up at Hermione and gestured. "Well, we're in the kitchen preparing dinner, come join us."
Hermione smiled and followed them to the kitchen. Ginny had done a lot to Grimauld Place, it felt like a warm cozy home that any family would love to raise kids in. Hermione sat at the counter and she watched Ginny stir something in a pot and Harry chop up some vegetables.
"So?" Ginny questioned turning around to look at Hermione, her voice expectant.
"So I went to talk to Naricissa to apologize for leaving the ball early, and then in walks Malfoy sweaty, muddy and half dressed in Quidditch gear, he must have been playing with some friends or something. Though I must have to admit in all my years watching you guys play, you have never come back that beat up. Yes, broken arms and stuff before, but Malfoy looked like he had been playing rugby he was so beat up."
Ginny looked confused, and Harry clarified for her. "It's a full contact muggle sport where they wear no padding. It gets pretty gruesome."
Hermione nodded in agreement. "So anyways, he comes in all beat up and muddy and was totally caught off guard by the fact that I was there. But he takes off to shower and I thought that was the last I would see of him." Hermione paused, she wasn't sure how she was going to say this next part. "However, Naricissa start saying that I flushed-looking and that I needed some air. So she called Malfoy back and asks him to take me out to the garden. We just walked in silence for a time but I finally asked him why he left the so suddenly the other day. Then we got into this conversation about how he has secretly had a crush on me for years, and how he did all these things to help me. Then he asked me out on a date!" Hermione looked up from the point on the counter that she had been staring at during her rant to find both Harry and Ginny looked dumbfounded.
Harry was first to break out of his vex. "How did he help you?"
Hermione looked at him with worried pleading eyes. "Harry, he knew about the Basilisk page and said he's the one that slipped it in my bag."
"You said you got that from a library book." His face contorted with confusion again.
"I lied. I didn't know what to tell you guys. Besides, if I had found it in a book, number one I would have never just ripped the page out, and number two I would have just signed the book out and taken the whole thing."
Ginny sputtered in this time. "W..w..wait what page?"
Hermione turned to Ginny. "Just before I was petrified, instead of going to the Quidditch game, that day I decided to go to the library and do more research. I had found something interesting and wanted to write it down but I couldn't find my quill in my bag so I turned it over. Instead I found what looked like a note, I opened it up and it ended up being a page from some book about the basilisk. Reading over it I realized that this was the monster in the chamber."
"But she never made it to us. It wasn't until later that we found the crumpled up paper in her hand that that we figured out what it was," Harry finished for Hermione. "But we never told anyone how we figured it out, no one knew about the page, except us." Harry was back to looking dumbfounded again.
"But he was so, so cruel to you, Hermione," Ginny cut in this time.
"I know, but he said that year he was trying warn me or scare me off, that he didn't want me hurt." Hermione's voice was now trembling. "The rest of the time, he was afraid of being abused because he had feelings for me," Hermione reminded them. She looked between them, and they were speaking to each other non-verbally again.
Harry turned to Hermione again. "Hermione, I'm sorry, but he's just bad news. He's always been bad news."
Hermione felt anxiety welling up in her. "You don't think I know that?" She took a shaky breath. "He was deplorable at Hogwarts, and now he's coming out of nowhere asking me to forgive him and go out on a date with him!" She felt a rogue tear spill from her eye. "I just don't know what to do. Part of me is terrified that this is just some big joke, that he is just trying to mentally torture me. Then the other part of me says that he was just caught on the wrong side of the war. He didn't have a choice in what side he was on, his father brainwashed him from a young age and then when Voldemort did come back, he had to choose the side his parents were on, else wise they would kill him. What was he supposed to do? Leave his mother at the hand of his abusive father and a mass murdering lunatic?" Hermione was breathing heavily now.
Harry walked around the counter and hugged Hermione, he felt her cry in to his shoulder for a few moments. Harry knew they were tears of frustration. "Hermione, I'm just worried for you."
Hermione leaned back and looked at Harry still between his arms her hands resting on his chest, "I know, thank you. I'm worried too. I just don't know what to do. I want to believe him, I do. I just don't know if I can."
Ginny cleared her throat and Hermione realized then that she and Harry were holding each other too intimately for Ginny's comfort. Harry let go of Hermione and stepped back. Harry and Hermione had become so close over the years that sometimes they didn't realize that some of the things they did were too familiar. They were so comfortable with each other that it slipped their minds that they need to have healthy boundaries so they wouldn't violate their romantic partners. It was just so easy for them to slip in to the intimate space that they had built together during the war.
Ginny handled it well most of the time, clearing her throat when she saw Harry and Hermione slipping into their world. The scars that Harry and Hermione bore, Ginny would never truly understand, and the trust Ron would never be able to gain back hung heavily over over their perspective relationships. Just after the war, Ginny was uncomfortable with Harry and Hermione's closeness. Ginny and Harry would get into massive fights over Hermione, and Harry would need to take breaks from Hermione to give Ginny sometime to cool down. Hermione didn't blame Ginny at all, she could only imagine what it was like to have a husband who at times seemed emotionally more in tune with his best friend than his wife.
However poorly Ginny handled it, she was still miles and miles ahead of Ron. When Ron and Hermione were together, Ron would become unreasonably jealous at the drop of a hat. Not without good reason however. Immediately after the war, Hermione and Harry would both have night terrors, and neither of them sought Ron for comfort. Frequently Ron would wake up in the middle of the night to find Harry and Hermione calming each other, sometimes it was as simple as hot coca until the the panic subsided, other times it was long walks, but most of the time it was close contact and cuddling that would ground them back to reality. Ron would become so jealous, saying that even when it came to his girlfriend he took a back seat to the Boy That Lived. Their rows over the subject would last hours and hours and inevitably Hermione would end up crying and Ron would stomp out of the room until he cooled off.
Harry smiled softly at Hermione, realizing that she was lost in her own world again. "So," he waited patiently for snap back to this reality, which she did, "he asked you to dinner?
It took Hermione a moment to remember that he was Malfoy, she chuckled a little. "I wouldn't say asked so much, more of a demand." She watched the anger slowly creep up Harry's face. "Not like that." She sighed at him. "It was more like a Let me take you out." Though that may have been exactly what he said but it really didn't matter.
Harry's look was skeptical. "Are you going to let him take you out?"
Hermione's face went blank. That was the problem, she had already said yes, but she was scared it was the wrong choice. "I said I would," she admitted, "but I don't know if I should."
"I think so." Ginny was stirring the pot again, both Harry and Hermione watched Ginny, waiting for her to elaborate. Ginny turned to look at them, glad to see they had stepped back form each other and she leaned against the counter. "Look, a lot of things have changed since the war. Consider Naricissa for instance, you gave her a chance and now you guys have tea together. How will we ever know if he's changed or not if we don't give him at least a chance?"
Harry gave his wife a wary look and then looked back to Hermione. "As much as I hate to say it, and believe me, after all the shit he pulled I hate to say it, but she has a point."
Hermione looked at the both of them. I'm going on a date with Draco Malfoy. Merlin's Beard.