Chapter 4: Fighting Old Demons

You know the lies they always told you

And the love you never knew

What's the things they never showed you

That swallowed the light from the sun

Inside your room

Draco allowed Hermione to lead him into the Western Wing of Malfoy Manor. Her hand remained on his arm as they crossed the threshold.

"It looks like a tornado hit this place." Hermione commented as she looked down the hall to see all the doors open and things strewn about the place.

"I told you the Aurors tore the house up completely. The whole Manor looked this way when I got home from graduation." Draco affirmed. And swallowed thickly.

"Well, no time like the present." Hermione sighed and stepped forward, over a shattered vase. "Are you coming?"

Draco hesitated. "…Yeah." He said, shrugging off the feelings of dread and the cold chills that ran up and down his spine.

--

When Hermione reached the doorway to the first room she discovered that it was an office or study of some kind. There were bookshelves all along the walls, much like the study downstairs, but this one was missing a vast number of books—in some areas, there were no books at all. The desk had been cleared of any knick-knacks that might have inhabited the surface, and the drawers had been pulled from their sheaves. Hermione walked over the gigantic antique desk and picked up the discarded drawer from the floor. She slipped it back into its cradle and then looked up to see Draco watching her from the doorway.

"What room was this?" She asked.

"My mother's office." Draco said, looking at the floor. It was littered with papers and glass.

"Did anything…bad… happen to you here?"

Draco didn't answer. Instead he fingered an imperfection in the doorjamb.

"Draco?" Hermione called his name—and she wasn't sure when she'd started calling him that.

"My father used to beat my mother a lot in this room." Draco said. Finally meeting her eyes with his own.

Hermione looked around the room and tried to imagine it in pristine condition. She looked over to one of the windows and saw that one of the bookshelves had fallen over and was leaning against a couch. There were several books laying helter-skelter on the floor beneath it. She moved around the desk and tried to push the bookshelf upright again. After grunting a few times, she turned back to Draco, who hadn't budged from the threshold.

"Will you come help me?" she asked, gently.

Draco hesitated momentarily, but stepped into the room and rounded the couch to the other side of the bookcase and began to help Hermione push it upright again.

Hermione positioned herself in the middle of the bookshelf and put her back to the shelves in order to brace its weight. She and Draco got it upright again, and Hermione placed a few of the heavier books back on its shelves. Draco chuckled at her love for literature and shook his head.

"Come on. There's a lot more to see." He said, suddenly feeling a little more courageous.

Hermione smiled and followed him out of the room and across the hall.

--

In this room, there was a large ornate table surrounded by several chairs all cut in the same design. There was a fireplace at one end, and a door leading into the room next door, Hermione presumed, at the other. The walls were bare, but there were hooks where paintings had once hung.

"This looks like a meeting room of some kind." Hermione guessed, looking at Draco for confirmation.

Draco nodded. "The Death Eaters met here often. I met the Dark Lord for the first time here." He walked around the table and paused behind a chair about halfway down. "I was sitting right here. He told me I was to be his next right hand man. I was going to follow my father's footsteps." Draco shuddered.

Hermione shuddered as well, looking at the chair Draco had indicated, and then at the one at the head of the table. "I can't imagine what went on in this room. Though it does look relatively untouched." She looked around, and it was true, though the paintings had been removed and some of the chairs had been overturned, there was mostly nothing wrong with the room itself. Hermione righted a chair that lay on its side and looked back at Draco. "Shall we move on?"

Draco nodded.

--

The next room looked to be a bedroom of some sort. Hermione pushed the door completely open and looked around. Immediately she recognized this room as the room Draco had spent time in as a schoolboy. She looked back up at him and his face had grown dark. "We don't have to go in here." Hermione said softly.

Draco shook his head, he wanted her to see. He needed her to know that he was just as human as anyone else. "Go on."

Hermione slowly walked in and gasped at the disorder of the room. She could tell that it was once opulent for a boy's bedroom with its king-sized four-poster and the silk sheets that still covered the mattresses. She noted the dark rich woods and ornate engravings on the wardrobe and desk. She also noted that his favorite Quittich team had at one time been Puddlemere. "Your room was nice." She whispered, turning around and looking at him.

Draco shrugged. "You just aren't looking hard enough." He said, and led her over to the window. Through it, she saw what looked to be a private Quittich pitch, and noted to herself that that must have been how he kept in shape, before Draco took her hand and pointed to a spot on the wall just below the window frame.

There was a slight indention in the pale gray wall and what looked like a stain that ran down onto the carpet. Hermione reached out hesitant fingers to touch the discoloration. "Is this what I think it is?" she asked.

Draco struggled not to snarl. "My father. I was ten. During breakfast I sent a glass of pumpkin juice flying across the room and it smashed through a window. I was sick and upset that my mother wanted me to go shopping with her. He taught me not to talk back."

Hermione turned from the stain to look at Draco in astonishment. She had an almost insatiable urge to run her fingers through his hair to be sure the gash wasn't still there. She refrained.

Draco didn't let go of her arm, but pulled her across the room to the wardrobe, where the outline of a small hand was imprinted against the wood about halfway down. "For letting the peacocks out of the yard." He said, his voice soft and angry.

Hermione didn't have a chance to respond before he took her to a spot by the bed, there was a burn mark in the carpet, and another discoloration, larger, and darker. "When I refused the dark mark the first time."

"Draco…."

But Draco wasn't finished. He led her to the adjoining bathroom, which was also done in silvers and greens, and pointed to an edge of the mirror, which had been shattered and was missing. He then lifted up his shirt and exposed a jagged scar right above his right hip. When I told him I wouldn't marry Pansy." Draco sighed deeply and sank onto the closed lid of the toilet. "My father never told me he loved me. He only told me I wasn't good enough. He only told me that I was a failure. I was a disgrace to the Malfoy bloodline. And he blamed my mother for it." He finally admitted.

Hermione felt her heart break all over again. She wanted to pull him to her and comfort him as if he were a small child. Part of her wanted to be able to give him the love that he'd never received from his family. But she wasn't the right person to do that—she wasn't even a complete woman—how could she love and expect to be loved by a man that had been through so much? Hermione put the thought out of her mind and knelt down before him.

Draco had put his elbows on his knees, and was holding his head in his hands. He sensed that she'd placed herself before him and he looked up at her miserably. She didn't say anything but he didn't need her to. As he sat there a mixture of relief and misery washed over him. The memories were terrible—but with Hermione there, he felt empowered to overcome them.

After a moment of stroking his head, Hermione leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on Draco's forehead. She didn't know why she did it—only that it felt right—and that she knew he needed it.

Draco felt the tender gesture and his heart quivered. Never had a woman made him feel the things he was feeling as he sat before Hermione No-Last-Name. When she pulled away, Draco felt an overwhelming feeling of loss, and without thinking about what he was doing, he reached forward and caught her chin and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was short and chaste.

Hermione's eyes shot wide open at Draco's reaction. Her hands were on his knees and her back was straight and she braced herself as shock washed over her. She could feel the magic that coursed through his veins as their lips touched. It was always that way—with magical customers—she could feel their energy coursing through their veins when they touched her intimately. She expected it was because she had no magic of her own anymore. But she'd never felt it so strong, through such a light touch, through her lips before.

When Draco pulled away, he prepared himself for the slap he knew would surely knock him off the toilet seat. But there was no slap. When he looked down at Hermione, he saw that she only stared at him, her eyes wide, her lips parted gently. "I'm sorry…" he whispered. He looked down at her hands on his knees and contemplated their delicateness.

Hermione was rendered momentarily speechless as the kiss ended. She jolt of electricity shot straight through her and seemed to settle in her chest around her heart. It was something she'd never felt before. She wanted to look up her symptoms—to understand if maybe Draco could somehow recharge her magic with his own. The ideas were floating around her head and it wasn't until he spoke that she came back down to earth. "Oh… oh it's alright." She whispered back. "The strangest thing happened." She mentioned that she had sensed Draco's magical energy, and Draco raised his eyebrows.

"We should look into this." He nodded in agreement, and motioned for her to stand. When she did so, he stood and took her hand and led her out of his old room and back down the hallway. "We can finish this later—right now, I think getting your magic back should be our top priority."

Hermione nodded, though she really did want to explore. She waited as Draco closed the doors behind him and they made their way back down the Grand Staircase to the first floor where they retired to the study. Hermione pulled several books from the shelves, and handed Draco approximately half of them. "See what you can find!" she encouraged, always excited to be learning.

--

Hours passed and it was several hours after dinner when they made a breakthrough. "I think I might have something." Draco said, pulling himself up from his reclining position across the easy chair.

Hermione yawned and set her book flat in her lap to listen to him.

"It says here… "'For a witch or wizard who had experienced a spontaneous loss of magical power there is only one sure fire way of gaining that power back en totale."

"Go on…" Hermione said when Draco stopped and looked up at her.

"The victim of this phenomena has most often experienced excessive emotional trauma and the only cure that has proven one hundred percent effective if for the affected witch or wizard to establish an intimate connection with another witch or wizard.'" Malfoy read.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Hermione's nose scrunched up in irritation. "I'm supposed to befriend every magical person I meet until I find the one who makes my power come back?"

"Hold on, there's a bit more." Draco added. "'The affected witch or wizard will know their intended magical counterpart if only they follow their heart.'"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I don't know who wrote that but I'm not in the mood for riddles!" with a frustrated noise Hermione fell back against the back of the chair and blew at the hair that had fallen in her face.

"Maybe it was nothing after all." Draco said, but his mind began spinning with ideas. 'Could it mean that Hermione had to fall in love with a magical person she felt a connection with?' Draco's stomach flipped and he swallowed against the feeling that rose in his chest. 'There's only one way to find out.' He thought, and vowed to try everything in his power to help the girl sitting across from him. And if it meant making her fall in love with him—the better for them both.

--

The house elves made them dinner that night and they took it to the study to continue their research. The moved from their chairs to onto the couch that said directly in front of the fire so that they could stretch out a bit more. They read until the sun went down and they read until the fire was nearly out.

Hermione read until she was cross-eyed. She felt herself drift off over a lengthy dissertation on the abilities of magical creatures to assist in rehabilitating the magically inept. She just couldn't hold her eyes open any longer. She dreamed that she was wrapped up in strong arms, arms that held her tight and protected her against her nightmares.

--

Draco was halfway through the most boring article he'd ever read on the healing properties of Grundle Juice when he felt a light pressure fall against his shoulder. He looked down to see that Hermione had drifted off in the middle of her own article. Smiling despite himself, Draco carefully lifted the text from his lap and placed it on the coffee table in front of him. Then he took the book from Hermione's lap and laid it atop his.

Unsure what else to do, and too tired to really care, Draco turned sideways on the couch and pulled Hermione into his arms. She hummed in sleep, and snuggled against him and he fought the urge to laugh with pure joy. It was impossible that she could make him so happy by doing nothing at all. He situated himself beside her on the couch, so that his back faced the back of the couch, and she was pressed up against him and he held her close to keep her from falling off and allowed himself to drift off as well—after all, it had been a long and trying day for them both.

Author's Notes:

Sooo… Chapter 4! Hooray!

I'll probably start doing this thing were I skip random segments of time in the upcoming chapters… because its just gonna drag if I have to write out every single day and every single minute detail… so I'll be moving things along.

Questions? Comments?