Chapter 42

Hermione arrived home shortly after her frantic escape from Malfoy Manor. She had to pull herself together, go back into the Manor and clean the dress. She felt a little better once she had Narcissa Malfoy's dress off. She went home straight after returning it. Narcissa Malfoy was giving her looks, but Hermione didn't care. She didn't bother trying to disseminate whatever opinion the older woman was trying to communicate. Truth was that she didn't give a stuff what Narcissa Malfoy thought.

She wasn't home long before Draco appeared. She had a deep and persistent headache that she tried in vain to massage away. She was sitting on the sofa waiting for him, knowing it wouldn't be long and they were in for a talk.

"What's going on? Mother told me you lost the plot and melodramatically ran away in her wedding dress."

The idea that Narcissa Malfoy referred to her escape as melodramatic annoyed Hermione. Narcissa might think that girls behave that way, but there was nothing melodramatic about it, it was pure dramatic. A crisis of conscience perhaps.

"I.." she started, but didn't quite know how to express it. "I got a bit overwhelmed."

Draco paced around the room.

"About the dress?"

"No," Hermione said with exasperation. "I don't care about the wedding, it's what happens afterwards. Not that I am saying I am particularly enthused about some massive society wedding either."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to think. You say you love me, but you don't want to be married to me."

"It isn't like that," Hermione defended herself.

"I love you, I have never loved anyone, but you, what, don't trust that?"

"It's not you, it's everyone else. I'm not part of your society and it so restrictive I feel suffocated. I didn't grow up with all these rules and I didn't grow up with the complete absence of expectations to be anything more than someone's wife."

Draco was silence; he was looking down at the floor.

"You say that like there is something wrong with it. You think being a wife and a mother represents a complete lack of ambition? What have your parents been telling you? Something seems to have gone completely awry with the expectations you've been raised with. I don't understand how you can say that, family is the only thing that matters."

"That's not what I am saying, you're twisting my words."

"I hope so, because all I am hearing is that you don't trust me enough to take care of you."

She knew that he didn't understand her qualms.

"I'm not Theo, if that is what you think."

"I don't," she said. She wasn't getting across what she wanted to. She didn't think he was like Theo. She wouldn't be here is she'd thought that.

"I don't doubt you or that you love me," she said. "I am just struggling with the idea of fitting into pureblood society. I don't know if I can handle all these expectations. I don't know if I want to live like that."

"We can't live in a cocoon," he said. He was silent for a while.

"When I marry you," she said carefully, "I marry all of them as well. I marry your family and the whole pureblood society."

Draco snorted and looked away. "I'm a wizard and I'm a pureblood; you've always known what I am. I can't live as anything but. I can't be a muggle. My family are purebloods and it's the way of life for wizarding kind as far back as recorded time. I don't understand what it is you want from me?"

She rubbed her aching head some more. The truth was that she didn't exactly know. All she had demanded in a partner was someone who loved her and she had that. It was just all the baggage that came with him. She didn't expect her partner to live in muggle society, because that was probably too much for even the most accommodating wizard. Maybe she wanted someone more on the periphery of wizard society like the Weasleys. Or someone with more Gryffindor values, maybe even Ravenclaw values, even though they were more aligned to the Slytherin high society than any of the other houses. Draco was a Slytherin and he always would be.

"We have some chasms of differences. We come from completely different backgrounds."

"You keep saying that, you fought so hard to convince everyone that you are a witch, but when it really matters you baulk at our society. Things that don't mean anything. The only thing that is important is you and me. Why can't you just focus on me? I realise that we come from different places, but if we focus on each other, nothing else matter, but you keep on getting distracted."

"It does matter; these things will impact on how we live."

"Then it is your lifestyle that matters more than the person you are with."

"No!" she said.

"You need to decide what you want," he said. "Let me know when you do." He turned and walked out the door. Hermione growled in frustration as she watched him leave. She tried to think that it wasn't about him, but some of it was. He was a Slytherin and he had profoundly different values. Maybe not at the core, but the other stuff. She knew he expected her to stop working and she knew that he felt that you cannot be a good mother and work at the same time. She might try to argue, but all the mothers he knew were at home raising their children. Any mother who worked did so out of desperation and poverty at the expense of their children's well being. She knew that she could always push the issue, but he would probably grow resentful before long, baulking at the idea when the first sniffle came along. Not to mention that she would be labelled as a bad mother by the whole wizard society.

The core problem was that she didn't want to be the kind of wife that he wanted. She could make him compromise, but there was only so much he could probably compromise on. If he'd chosen anyone but her, he wouldn't have to. Muggle society told her she had the right to expect a compromise, she had the right not to either if she so chose. Wizard society didn't compromise. Not even the Weasleys would accept the kind of life she was used to if she married into the family. She would still be expected to stay home with the children.

Work wasn't really the issue, it was more the prescribed role of women, not working was just a part of that role. Draco might think that the relationship between the two of them overcame everything, and he was right in some sense, but he came part and parcel with him family and his friends. If she married him, they would be there, a part of her life, day in and day out. Cutting him out of that and taking him away to live a different kind of life without everything he knew and loved, was unrealistic. She loved him and hated everything around him.

He was right on another point as well. She had been adamant that she was a witch and that she belonged in this society. Now she was saying the opposite. She was the newcomer, and he was of the established order. Wizard society had always expected her to conform, and it was no different now.

She didn't know what to do. She saw no solution here. She ran every scenario though her head, but there was no solution. Draco might be the more extreme version, but it was pretty much the same no matter what wizard she married.

She sent a message to Harry to come over. Her mind was running around in circles and she wasn't getting anywhere. If anyone would understand, it would be Harry. He understood where she came from and maybe what her qualms were even if no one else did.

He came over straight away and Hermione led him to the kitchen where she made them a cup of tea.

"What's up Mione, your note said you're in a bit of a state."

Not the words she'd used, but close enough.

"Is it Malfoy, what did he do?"

Hermione sighed. She hated that the first thing Harry assumed was that Draco had done something to her. Harry did accept Draco more than Ron did, but if something was up, he would quickly revert to his old thinking.

"He asked me to marry him," Hermione said.

"I know, you told me."

"I'm struggling a little with it. He's a pureblood and I mean a true blue pureblood down to his bones."

"He always was," Harry said, not making her feel any better.

"If I marry him, I need to fit into him life."

Harry took a sip of his tea.

"Yes," he finally said. Hermione had hoped he'd say something else, but he'd just confirmed her own fear. She wanted him to have some compromise to tell her, something that made this impossible thing a little more feasible.

"I don't know if I can live like that."

Harry only watched her. Then he raised his hand and rubbed her back.

"Then you have to do what you have to do." She flinched at the idea. Breaking up with him seemed to extreme and she didn't want to lose him.

"I love him," she said with exasperation. As much as she hated the society around him, the thought of living without him was horrible.

"I don't envy you the position your in," he said. "Why did you have to choose a Slytherin?"

"I didn't, it just happened."

"Sorry Mione, you're in a real pickle," he said with a sympathetic smile. "You're going to have to choose. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't."

She was impressed that Harry accepted her love for Draco without questioning it or her sanity. Ron would deny the truth of both of those things. Harry just took it in his stride. He could just flow with it and he was much better at doing so than her. He just went with whatever Ginny needed from him, not questioning any of it.

"If I'm with Draco, I will live a life full of compromises. More on my part than his, most likely. And you will have to hang out with him too." She was kind of pushing him to baulk at the idea, maybe so he would give her another reason for why she should walk away from this relationship.

"I know."

It would completely break her heart to walk away from him and more so with regards to the pain it would cause him. He hadn't done anything wrong in terms of how he was supposed to be. She just wasn't sure if love was enough. She would hate to envision a future where they both had grown to resent each other. On the other hand, she would be in for misery if she walked away. Perhaps she'd never get over him, end up living with always regretting walking away.

"This sucks," she said. He rubbed her back some more and she put her face in her hands on the kitchen bench.

"I wish there was something I could say to make this easier but there isn't."

"It's a huge compromise for me either way. And a huge risk as well."

"Relationships are always a risk. You're deluding yourself if you're looking for a guarantee."

"What am I going to do?" She needed to think, but she wasn't getting anywhere. She was still hoping some solution would present itself, just pop into her mind that would make everything ok.