Ahhh sorry for the delay on this chapter, major writers block and just a very busy schedule! I hope the length makes up for it. Please please review, I can't explain how much they make my day!
A week passed. What had once been the door to the library was now a blank stretch of wall, mocking him from his place in bed. He had never been the sulking type and despised pity, but fuck all if he hadn't earned a week of staying in bed. As long as he lay, sleep rarely came. Every time he closed his eyes, his mother's cold, unseeing face was brandished across his mind. He couldn't escape it, he wasn't sure he deserved to. His mother was dead, because of him. Because he hadn't been able to follow simple goddamn orders.
Hermione hadn't said a word to him since they'd returned to headquarters. She silently placed his meals on his bedside table, and took every untouched plate back down with her. He had a feeling she was angry with him, but she could get in fucking line. After himself, his father, his aunt, and the entire damn Order. He'd heard the arguments drifting up from the ground floor. In fact, 'argument' was a nice way of putting it. All out brawls seemed like a better definition.
As mad as she likely was with him, he found an emotion in the emptiness of his gut that resembled gratitude towards the brilliant witch. He'd learned from a particularly loud argument yesterday that she'd put a charm on his door that only allowed her inside the room, and from the screaming matches he'd unwillingly eavesdropped on, he suspected it was more for his safety than anything else. As if he deserved any sort of protection. He still was struggling to understand why he'd even agreed to come back here, why he hadn't stayed in that alley, allowed himself to rot.
The door creaked open signaling her arrival with breakfast. He didn't bother to turn to face her as she set down the plate next to his cold dinner from the night before. He waited for the sound of her retreating footsteps, but they never came.
"This is getting ridiculous." Her arms were crossed and she was tapping her foot. Every bit playing into her clear lack of patience. "It's been a week Draco, at least get off your arse and shower, you smell." She whipped the blanket off of him and as he looked down at his shirtless torso it hit him just how much weight he'd lost in such a short span of time. She seemed to have realized this at the same time as him, because pity pooled in the brown depths of her eyes. He was too tired to comment on it, any of it.
"Leave, Granger."
"Take a shower, and maybe I will."
"You're more than welcome to join." He expected her to scowl, but instead hope flitted across her face at his retort. At the hint of his personality, breaking through the ice of his grief.
"Just do something about the smell, you look shit."
He attempted to wave his hand and perform a quick cleaning spell but found he did not have the energy to perform enough wandless magic to even summon his blanket from her hands. She raised a brow, "yeah you have to eat for that whole 'magic' thing to work." Her voice dripped with impatience, "until you decide to enlighten me – or anyone really – on what happened when you had your lovely little getaway, there isn't much any of us can do." She threw the blanket back down on him, "I've put a charm on your door to keep the rest of the Order from pouring potion down your throat and forcing the truth out of you. Which, in case you were wondering, people would usually say 'thank you' to that."
He swallowed, the reality of how deep his betrayal had scarred her beginning to sink in, "Thank you."
She rolled her eyes, "please just eat, and bathe. I'm not your counselor, Draco. It's not my job to fix whatever mess you seem to have found yourself in, only you can do that."
With that, she left him again in his silence, realizing that she had placed a book next to his breakfast. Its title read 'Grief: The Stages.' How that bloody Gryffindor knew things before anyone spoke them was beyond him. If he weren't so sure of his mental walls he'd be sure she had wormed her way into his memories. No, it seemed that having a heart so big you even take in the broken, sarcastic Death Eater, came with intuition as well. Despite his internal grumblings, he reached for a fork and took a bite of fluffy pancake.
Another week passed before his routine once again shifted. He had begrudgingly eaten every meal she'd brought, and showered every morning. The book however remained untouched, beginning to gather a thin film of dust. Behind his eyelids, his mother's face still haunted him. Emotion was beginning to flood the emptiness that had taken up residency in his body. With this emotion, came realization at the pain of a pang of hunger, the burning of his arm, the ache in his chest at the memories he wished he'd never seen, never known.
He turned his head towards sudden shouting outside his door. Hermione's voice could be clearly heard over two angry males, he had a few guesses as to who she was fighting with and what about. Although if he was being honest with himself, just about every male in the house would probably be fighting to burst into his room and beat him senseless as this point. He wasn't sure he'd protest.
"Why the fuck are you protecting him?" Theo's enraged voice flowed under the door.
"Hermione this is getting to be a bit much, he's a traitor." Harry's more reasonable plea, not as overrun with emotions as his former friend.
"I am not defending his actions." He could nearly picture her nose turned up with her words, "but what makes us any better if we shove that potion back down his throat? After what he's been through?"
"And just what has he been through love? Since you've been so god damn secretive the past two weeks, please, enlighten us." Theo's Slytherin attitude shining full force.
"Well. I'm not actually sure, I have my suspicions…"
"You charmed the door of a Death Eater who betrayed us shut because of a SUSPICION?" Ron had now joined the fray, his voice roaring above the others.
"She has a reason for doing what she is doing, can you all swallow some of your fucking testosterone down?" Ginny has just climbed the stairs. He imagined her face as red as her signature hair, face close to her similarly bad-tempered brother.
"Since when are you defending this? You're the one who nearly left France early in a huff over it." Harry, confusion seeping from the hallway. Draco reckoned this was the most entertainment he'd gotten since being captured by the Order last June. Screw the library, he just needed an insiders pass to the drama of the Order.
"I did not nearly leave France," Ginny grit out, "Hermione and I discussed it and she calmed me down." Someone snorted in response; he guessed it could have been all three men at once. The youngest Weasley was not known for calm discussion.
"How do you even know he hasn't sold us out, how do you know we aren't about to have Voldemort on our doorstep?" Harry had changed the subject, probably in the interest of maintaining the harmony of his relationship.
"Oh c'mon doesn't anyone else have common sense in this house?" He could picture Hermione rolling her eyes, "I charmed his cloth I gave him for Christmas. If he'd tried to speak about our secrets, it would have burned his skin the next time he used it and left a visible scar. He has no visible scar, and has been wearing it every day for the past week. Is it so hard for you all to imagine I actually thought things through and didn't let my feelings cloud my judgment?" He wasn't sure why, but he felt hurt at the thought she hadn't ever truly trusted him. Not that he'd ever deserved her trust, but he found himself wishing he had it, wishing he hadn't just burned his last chance to ashes.
"That was genius, Hermione." Ron had clear pride in his voice.
She coolly answered, "yes, I know. Now for the last time, I'm not letting anyone in there until he's had more time to adjust. I don't know what he went through, but it wasn't good. And trust me, I'm just as angry as the rest of you, but I also have a fucking soul." The last word was spit with venom, aimed directly at three of the people most important in her life. She wasn't sure why such malice had risen up in her gut, but she was struggling to squash it back down.
"Fine." Harry responded shortly, "But by the end of the month, I want to be able to question him. I don't care that your charm shows he didn't betray us, we still don't know where he went or why."
"You know why." She hissed, dangerously low.
"I'm not going off of suspicions. This war is too important to leave anything to chance." This seemed to settle the argument. No one made another sound as they descended the steps and Hermione turned to enter Draco's room.
He quickly lifted the blanket over his head, feigning sleep. After all she'd done for him since he'd returned, the least he could do was leave the snide comments to a minimum. For now. She must have bought his ruse because she didn't address him and stepped quietly over to his bedside table. There was a clatter of his dishes being sent away with magic and then her sniffles. His heart tore open at the sound. The image of her crying after telling him about Pansy was still stained into his brain, the pain that had swam through her eyes and down her cheeks as he'd uttered words he vowed never to speak again. He considered rolling over, asking her what was wrong, trying to pull her into his arms, anything to stop the tears. But he was a coward, a broken coward who knew that sometimes it felt better to cry things out all on your own.
"Hermione?" Ginny knocked softly at her bedroom door as she hastily wiped tears from her cheeks and tried to fix her hair.
"What is it Gin?" Her voice cracked despite her best efforts and she felt embarrassment pool in her gut. To her surprise, Hannah and Luna walked in behind the youngest Weasley, all with slight looks of pity marring their features.
"How are you doing?" Hannah placed a warm hand on Hermione's shoulder. It took a painful swallow of her pride not to shrug it off. She knew they were all just trying to be comforting, to be supporting friends despite their inability to understand how she felt. And she appreciated it, she truly did. But some emotions felt better to process alone.
"I've been better." She answered truthfully. Ginny laughed slightly and sat next to Hermione on her bed, wiping away a stray tear she had missed.
"Has he told you what happened? Why he had to leave?" Luna asked.
Hermione shook her head, "No. But I have my suspicions…as I'm sure you all heard after mine and the boys' little disagreement this morning.
"Oh they can shove off," Ginny rolled her hazel eyes, "I love them all dearly but they truly do fail to understand emotions sometimes." The rest of the girls laughed in agreement.
"So what is your suspicion?" Hannah leaned closer, as though hungry for understanding.
She sighed, "I think his mother was killed. And I think he thinks it was his fault." The silent response could have choked her. "No one has heard from or seen Narcissa Malfoy in ages and Theo told me that Draco was asking about her. He'd mentioned his concerns about it to me as well, how he feared he'd been able to escape Voldemort and then become captured by the Order was because of her. He thought she may have been punished for her efforts…and I think he had to go back to find out."
Luna shook her head angrily; "I am going to murder Theo once we're done in here." The rest of the girls looked up in surprise, violence was not the Ravenclaw's natural default. "He's been sulking about Draco since the moment he left, and he didn't even try to think of what his friend has been through. I swear men can be so thick."
"They just feel betrayed." Hermione defended, "And I honestly can't blame them. I'm still livid with him for leaving. But I can't exactly yell at the guy who just found out his mum was murdered now can I? I know…" She swallowed down a cry, "I know what it feels like to lose your parents. I just wish he hadn't royally pissed me off before he went through this, perhaps I'd have a smidge more empathy." She laughed darkly. The rest of the girls remained silent, pity pouring out of their eyes. Hermione so rarely spoke of her parents, of the loss she hadn't quite suffered but all the same had.
"I can speak to him about it, if you'd like?" Luna offered, "I know I went through losing my mother a long while ago, but I do remember the feeling."
Hermione smiled up at her friend and took her hand into her own, "Thank you, Luna. But I think anyone trying to relate with him will find themselves attacked with witty insults and sarcastic jabs. He's not exactly the kindest man to deal with."
"That seems like an understatement." Ginny mumbled. Hermione playfully hit her arm, but she couldn't find it in herself to disagree. So why did his betrayal still sting? Why did her heart still shatter every time she entered his room and saw the emptiness in his eyes, the weight that had fallen off his bones? She longed to reach out to him, to hold him like she had in that alley when he'd been too overcome with grief to push her away. As angry and hurt as she was, she still cared for him, still wanted to make sure he was okay. And that fact set her logic and her emotions up in a vicious civil war that had been raging for two weeks now.
"We know you still care for him." Ginny had softened her voice, as though she'd read her best friend's mind. "And I won't pretend to completely understand why, I think I made my feelings towards him quite clear in France." Her mouth lifted into a half grin, "But I also know emotions don't always make sense, and no one has really gotten to know him like you have. It's okay to still have feelings for him Hermione, you know that right?" Hannah and Luna nodded in agreement.
"But that's just the thing. Is it okay? He left us, he left me with a note with only three fucking words on it. I wasn't even worth a proper goodbye, a second thought, anything. He left us." The anger bubbled up in her stomach and through her chest once more, mixing with the pain, the longing for his touch, and the empathy at his plight. It was enough to make her heartache and nausea to swirl in her throat.
"Well we did keep him here as a prisoner." Luna reasoned, "Can we really blame him for trying to leave and save his family?"
Hannah chipped in, "and you did mention how he didn't actually betray us, never gave away any of our secrets, or else your charm would have burned him."
"Did he betray us?" Ginny spoke gently, "Or did he betray you?" Hermione felt like the weight of the world had shifted under her feet. He hadn't really done anything to hurt the Order, and he could have. He could have delivered Harry Potter to Voldemort's doorstep. All he really tried to do was rescue his mother, was that so terrible? But he'd lied to her, left her without even saying goodbye, without explaining anything, asking for forgiveness for a crime he never confessed to.
"I'm not sure." She answered honestly.
The cold weeks of February quickly shifted into misty and wet days of March. He wouldn't have noticed had it not been for the sudden pattering of rain against his window one morning. He wasn't sure what else had escaped his perceptions while under this never-ending fog of grief. He distantly remembered Potter making a promise to pursue him once more at the end of the month, but he couldn't find it in him to care.
He went through the motions, eat a few bites of each meal, shower each morning, count the cobwebs on his ceiling until sleep took him once more. It could only pursue him when he'd run from it for as long as physically possible, because once he was in its grip, the only thing he ever saw was his mother. Dead on the ground, no matter how loud he screamed, how fast he tried to run in front of her killing spell, he could never save her. And so dark circles had settled permanently beneath his silver eyes, stretching over his cheekbones that had grown in prominence with his lack of an appetite.
She broke his routine on a stormy morning by bursting through the door an hour earlier than she was meant to. "Alright Draco, it's been over a month." He did not offer her a response. "Do you know what that means? Soon the rest of the Order is going to come knocking down your door and to be quite frank, I'm tired of holding them off. And they won't be kind about it. I've been kind, I haven't pushed, and I've been patient. But I am tired of being your nurse and I am tired of crafting a basket of pity for you each morning to eat up. So you can tell me what happened, or you can wait for them to shove potion down your throat. Either way, I've given you as much time as I can. It's time to start talking about what happened."
His eyes drifted lazily to her. Her hands were on his hips, fire blazing in her eyes, a no-nonsense attitude streaming off of her in waves. It was clear, not from her words, but her posture as well, that she'd had enough. He'd had enough too, if he was being honest. He just didn't know how to stop this fog, how to pull himself back up. How to stop the nightmares, the grief, and the pain.
"If I tell you, they'll leave me alone?"
"Well, they won't force you to take Veritaserum. Whether they'll leave you alone…well you haven't exactly earned everyone's trust after the little stunt you pulled."
"Even after your special little spell revealed my arm to be no more fucked up than it already was before I left?" He lifted a brow at her shock, momentarily forgetting he'd been 'asleep' during that fiasco. "And to think id' believed I'd earned a grain of Granger's trust."
"Well any seed of trust you may have thought you'd gotten has now been thoroughly squashed and destroyed, so please stop trying to play the victim here." Her words held more force than the emotions playing across her features did.
"Oh come now Granger, you grew to know me. You placed that spell on my gift and then you turned around and kissed me that night. You knew I would leave, you knew why I researched wards and wandless magic. You knew I'd try to save her, and you didn't stop me. You didn't tell a single person of my intentions, too full of your own ego to realize someone may be able to actually outsmart the famous Hermione Granger." He knew his words were cruel, and yet he could not stop himself from speaking them. The truth that had been boiling under his skin for weeks now, too tired to burst out until she was standing in front of him. She filled him with an energy he hadn't known he'd ever get back. With life. With truth. With purpose.
"Oh fuck you Draco."
"You'd like that wouldn't you?"
"YOU DIDN'T EVEN SAY GOODBYE." The scream ripped from her throat and sent daggers at his heart. He stared at her in silence for what felt like an eternity, unable to come up with an answer that dignified his departure.
"I…" in what felt like a whiplash, he decided on the truth, "I was too afraid to say goodbye to you. I couldn't say goodbye to you."
"You're a coward." She spat, stepping closer to where he had now stood from his bed.
"I never pretended not to be, Granger. I'm not some fucking hero, I'm not on your side of the war, and I'm not the good guy here."
"Then why didn't you sell us out? Why didn't you tell him where we were, how to attack us? If you're so evil, if you're so stubbornly playing for the dark side, why not sell us out to your precious master?"
"He is not my master. I have no side in this war any longer."
"Then why not just give him Harry Potter anyways? End the war as quickly as you can? Hmm?" She was standing dangerously close to him.
"Because they would have come for you. They would have hurt you." She stepped back in surprise. "I didn't say goodbye to you because I knew…I knew if I saw you, if I had to look into your eyes and tell you I was leaving, I would never go. I'd never leave you. And I needed to." He moved towards her as she continuously backed away until she was against the wall where the door to the library had once stood. He stopped a foot from her, afraid of frightening her, but also desperate to reach out and feel her skin under his own. It was the most alive he'd felt in weeks.
"Why did you need to go?" She whispered.
"You know why." He gestured his head towards the book on grief, the title now almost obscured by dust. "I had to try…I had to see if she was…" his voice broke off as he held back a sob. He'd already cried in front of her one time too many.
"She wasn't, was she?" He shook his head and before he could help it the tears had escaped. He tried to tighten his eyes, to push them away, but every time he closed his eyes she was staring up at the ceiling, dead once more. Dead at the hand of his own father. Dead at the price of saving her son. Her son who had done nothing to protect her.
In an instant, her arms were wrapped around him and they were both crumpling to the ancient wooden floor. Despite being nearly a foot shorter than him, she held him in her arms and stroked his hair as he let out his anguish. He wondered when this pain would stop, if it would ever stop. When the image of his mother wouldn't send him spiraling into a heap on the floor, in the arms of the only other person he genuinely cared for on this planet.
She hushed soothing words into his ear as he struggled to find reality once more, to escape the nightmare of his own father's memories, memories that he now carried like a weight in his mind. As the world stopped spinning behind his eyelids and he found himself solid in her arms, he was forcefully reminded of how he'd done the same for her all those months ago. He'd brought her back to Earth, and now she seemed to be all that tethered him to the ground.
He knew it wasn't healthy, and perhaps with time, he'd become his own anchor once more. But damn he couldn't deny it felt good to have one thing that still made his lungs fill with life, made his feet feel like they could hit the floor.
They remained there until he was too tired to continue to allow the emotions to overcome him. She helped him up from the ground and summoned a cup of tea for his bedside table. He pulled her hand back towards him before she could turn away, so that they were sharing breath. He could read the conflict in her eyes, what she wanted and what she knew she should do. The betrayal, agony, resentment, passion, they were all there. In the end, she held his cheek before turning away and silently closing the door. He found he was still leaning in towards the warmth of her touch long after the light from the hallway faded beneath the crack under his door.
Sorry for any typo's or anything, I honestly didn't proofread this much because I'm tired and it's late and I took way too long to write this chapter in the first place but yeah I hope everyone likes it! It was not the easiest thing to write to please leave feedback! Thanks!