Author's note:

( Sighs loudly) i know it's slow going loves, but bear with me, yeah? My brain train is starting to chug along again. .,.,.?.;.;.° °

- Mama Punx

:Draco:

He strolled out of his bedroom, slamming the door loudly. He had decided that to avoid further horrifying encounters with his fragile roommate, he would start announcing his position in the dorm. Whether it be stomping on the stairs or slamming doors or draging the freaking coffee table or an armchair around the living room. And knocking. ALWAYS knocking. So having slammed his door to alert her of his presence, he was definitely not expecting to get smashed into at the end of the balconied hallway separating their rooms. His quick reflexes had him grabbing Hermione by the shoulders to stop her from falling, only to have her drop to the floor and start scooting backwards away from him. He stared down at her completely bewildered, unable to comprehend this sort of behavior coming from a grown witch. But the IMAGE of it...the horrifying way in which she backed away, the violent tremor now racking her body as she sat with her back pressed against the bed, the raw and savage terror in her previously lifeless eyes...that image seared itself into his retinas. Her face triggered a deeply hidden memory of a small boy backing away from the rage of his violent father. Draco forced away the flashback and turned his face. So he couldn't see her. So he could think. So he could figure out what to DO. His fingers twitched slightly as he stood very still trying to calm his suddenly racing heart. A faint whispering was nudging itself into his concentration. He listened intently, scarcely allowing himself to breathe so that he could make out her frantic whispers. The same thing, over and over, "don't touch me don't touch me don't touch me"

Draco wanted to go to her. He wanted to comfort her. But he didn't know how. And he just knew that he would make things worse if he did in fact touch her in any way or even go near.

He sat on the floor of the hallway, to the side of her door but still in her line of sight, with his back facing the witch's room. She had allowed him to help her already, so he thought he'd sit quietly and wait it out with her. He heard the whispering stop. Then the bedframe stopped it's faint creaking from her rocking against it. He heard a sniffle and a wretched intake of breath and then silence.

"Why didn't you run off to fetch a professor?" he heard Hermione whisper in a rough and broken voice.

He didn't quite have an answer to that yet, surely that's exactly what he SHOULD have done. But instead of answering that question, he found himself telling her about his flashback, hoping to buy himself time to think so he could give her the answer she was asking for, or maybe it was to make her forget that she had asked a question to begin with. Either way, he quietly told her something he had never shared with another living soul...

"The summer after fifth year when Lucius was in Azkaban, i snuck into his study and was snooping around in his pensieve. I stumbled into a handful of memories involving myself over the years. And in all of the memories i looked as if i was literally dying of terror. I remember thinking that i had never seen myself wearing a face like. before, and that it looked like the faces in the scary short story books i would smuggle home from boarding school when i was a boy. I would sneak them into the manor under my pressed button up shirts tucked into the waistband of an elf ironed pair of slacks. My father didn't approve of such rubbish, and yet the face i saw in his memories looked like it belonged on the cover page of its own scary short story. I couldn't figure out why he would've removed such memories and hiddem them away in a pensieve. Were they images that he wanted to forget? Moments of regret? Or were they images that he wanted to remember, to revisit, to see every detail in perfect clarity, enjoying his victories, his superiority over his own flesh and blood. I could just feel in my blood that it was the latter. That was when i realized he was a madman. And when he realized that i knew that, after He was broken out of prison, he made things even worse. For myself, and for the entire wizarding country. When he died during the battle i was furious. I was just .MAD. I hated him more than ever. I wished him alive again but only so i could make him confirm (by way of cruciatus if necessary) what i already knew in my heart. That i was only a pawn in his grand chess match. And that when i refused to participate he threw me at his master, wanting for the Lord to take care of his problem so that he didn't have to do it himself. And then after I got a sufficient confession out of him, I wanted Lucius slain by my own wand."

There was more silence when he finished speaking, and endured it. Giving her time to process.

"So why did you stay?" she asked, slightly louder.

He but his tongue, not knowing if he could say the words. He knew it could make an impact, but he wasn't if it would be positive or damaging. Draco sighed, long and loud.

"Because the face i saw on myself in his memories is the exact face i just saw on you..."