Ok, so this story is like a year old now, but I've decided to finish it. I've reread it and think it's a pretty good start so.. hopefully this next chapter's up to code!
Hermione sat in her room, wrapping herself up in the big bed. Her mind couldn't wrap itself around the event of that morning. The boy.. No, the man who had raped her less than a year ago was now saying that he was in love with her.
Somehow, someway, that wasn't scaring her the way that it should. She wasn't frightened of him anymore, at least now more than necessary. Still, she shivered thinking about that night that he had violated her so horribly. The night that haunted her dreams.
She had forgiven him, yes, but there was no way she could forget. She couldn't forget crying herself to sleep in Harry and Ron's arms, or the way that she wouldn't let them hug her sometimes because she couldn't be too close.
She couldn't forget the way her parents had pleaded with her to tell them what had happened to their little girl, and how she had told them she was fine but still couldn't sit in the room alone with her father.
Sitting there, with tears running down her cheeks, she made a decision. She couldn't be with him, not now. Not when she had so many other things to focus on. It was her last year and she just couldn't handle the emotional toll of a relationship with the man who had raped her.
Feeling satisfied, she heard a knock on her door. It was Draco. "Mione?" He called.
She opened the door, her eyes still bloodshot and still wearing the silky pajamas from that morning. "I can't," she said simply. "I just can't."
He nodded wearily, not surprised in the least. He reached up to wipe away a straggling tear from her cheek and was hurt when she flinched slightly.
She tried to prevent it, to save his feelings but in her very core that action caused her to shrink away. "I'm sorry," she said, ashamed. "It's not just you. It's… every guy, really."
"But it's because of me," he said.
"No. It's not. The Draco standing before me right now, who shared all those things with me this morning, he's a very different guy than the one from that night."
"Is he really? Is he really, Hermione? What's changed? It was still me who locked you in that classroom and…" He choked up, feeling the bile in his throat.
"You have shame. You have humility and guilt and for me, that makes all the difference in the world. But you have to understand, I'm still that girl. I'm still shaken and scared and hurt. I've forgiven you the act, but I haven't forgotten it and I never will."
He backed away from her, physically shrunken by her words. It wasn't that they were particularly harsh, but they were true and brutally honest and he hated that he had done that to her.
"You should go find Potter," he told her. "He has… you should just find him."