A Hundred Storms

Chapter Nine: Adjust to this Disgust

I wish I could lay your arms down and let you rest at last
wish I could slay your demons, but now that time has passed
-Standing in the Way, Buffy the Musical Episode

Hermione spent the next few days immersed entirely in her studies. Besides her classes, she studiously avoided Draco in the eighth year common room, the Great Hall, class, and the many Hogwarts corridors.

She felt as though whatever had transpired between them tipped the scales in some obscure way, throwing the universe as she had come to accept it off balance entirely. Hermione Granger was not a coward by nature, but she was a survivor. She didn't think her frail mental state of mind could handle another fallout with Draco Malfoy.

And yet what she told Neville was true. Everything that came to a head in the common room that night was part of some twisted sort of healing. Hermione felt less alone to know that her time under the knife and wand of Bellatrix Lestrange was remembered by someone other than herself. A twisted part of her mind felt connected to him, and that was what disturbed her more than anything.

And so Hermione studied the fine art of avoidance. Sometimes she caught sight of him in the corner of her eye. Sometimes he was smirking, other times he simply stared. It unnerved her that he didn't even try to hide it. Whenever her eyes met his, she was always the first to look away as quickly as possible while she felt his gaze bore into her skin.

Speaking of nerves, Neville was trying his damnedest to grate on Hermione's as much as possible. Since finding Hermione and Draco close to wands, Neville rarely let Hermione out of his sight. Hermione was sure her friend had owled both Harry and Ron first thing the morning after the altercation, as Hermione immediately began receiving twice daily owls from her two best friends asking about her day as well as not-so-thinly veiled threats for anyone who might be bothering her.

While it annoyed Hermione to no end to be coddled like a child, she couldn't deny she felt comforted as well. With her parents currently estranged, Harry and Ron were the only family she had left.

"Hermione, are you okay?" Neville's voice broke into Hermione's thoughts.

"Fine, Neville," Hermione said tersely.

"Ready for the weekend?" he babbled on, ignoring her annoyed tone of voice.

"Yes," Hermione replied. "I'm meeting Harry and Ron at the Three Broomsticks for lunch tomorrow. Would you like to come?"

"Oh, no thank you," Neville said quickly. "I'll give you three some time to catch up." Neville seemed to grow a little paler at the thought of meeting with them. He survived the second wizard war and chopped off the head of one of the most dangerous snakes in wizard history, but he knew better than to be anywhere near Hermione when she finally has the opportunity to give Harry and Ron a piece of her mind in person.

Hermione managed to smile to herself at Neville's discomfort and then immediately admonished herself for thinking it was funny.

Owl post descended on the breakfasting students early Friday morning. The Great Hall was buzzing with the sort of excitement that could only be an indication that the weekend was nearly upon them. The Hall's ceiling reflected a clear blue sky, and Hermione hoped the nice weather would continue into the weekend for her trip into the village.

The happy mood in the hall was contagious, so when Hermione got the duo of familiar (and increasingly annoying) letters from Harry and Ron, she smiled indulgently and began to open them, starting with Harry's. To her surprise, another letter was dropped just to the left of her pumpkin juice. Hermione's throat immediately tightened when she recognized the familiar neat penmanship of her mother.

She stared at the letter for a few minutes, not quite comprehending its existence. Of course her parents had used owl post in the past as it was the only means of communication for a Hogwarts student. Most Muggle post offices had a witch or wizard working there who could arrange a delivery for you if you knew where to look, but Hermione hadn't expected to hear from her parents so soon.

Eagerly, she abandoned Harry's letter in favor of her mother's and slit the letter open with a butter knife.

Hermione began to read, and it wasn't long before her face went blank. Hermione carefully gathered up her belongings and silently exited the breakfast hall. Head held high, she willed her heart to keep from breaking into a thousand pieces in front of the entire school. She didn't hear Ginny or Neville asking where she was going, nor did she feel the gray eyes on her back that followed her out of the room.

Draco wouldn't admit it under pain of Crucio, but he had irrationally taken to watching Hermione Granger whenever she was nearby. Throughout the last three years, Draco had become an expert observer. He was able to determine which Death Eater was hiding behind a specific mask (a skill that proved invaluable on more than one occasion) simply by reading body language. He found Hermione to have the most fascinating body language of anyone he had ever observed. Most people were fidgety by nature. Draco, like his father, always maintained a still, calm demeanor, years of aristocratic breeding manifesting itself in his posture. His mother, Narcissa, had a fluid, graceful posture. Every move she made was done with purpose. Harry Potter had a defensive body language, as though his body was always ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.

Hermione was none of these and yet all of these. In their shared class of Potions with Slughorn, Draco noticed Hermione sat with an alertness bordering on slight mania, as though if you were to touch her, she would vibrate like a tightened violin string. At mealtimes she was rigid as a board, ready to whip out her wand if any of the hundred or so students dared to threaten her. When she thought no one was looking, or when her attention was not required for anything pressing, her body told a different story altogether. Her shoulders sagged just ever so slightly. It was such a small difference that Draco was sure no one else could possibly notice, but he did. To him, this was when Hermione looked as though the fate of the world had found a resting place on her slender shoulders, a weight the small girl could hardly support. Draco often wondered how long she had before she broke entirely under the strain of it all.

And so Draco often watched her openly and unabashedly, and when he saw her posture change at an alarming rate at breakfast Friday morning, he was probably the only one in the entire room who saw the dangerous transformation in the young witch. Her body went from her usual alert, rigid state to almost shaking to stillness that could rival his own, to finally a slow, deflating sadness that radiated from her place across the Great Hall. The sadness was so overwhelming that Draco could almost feel it himself. He looked from side to side at the other students near her and wondered why no one was noticing her pain, as it was practically screaming at him. Just as he was beginning to seriously consider...something, Hermione seemed to kind of build herself back up and promptly left the Great Hall.

It took Draco only a couple blinks before he discreetly followed Hermione out. To say his curiosity got the better of him would be a vast understatement. He physically burned with the thirst for information as to what he had just witnessed.

Draco followed Hermione silently down the corridor outside the Great Hall. Her head had been held high while she exited the room, but now her arms were wrapped around the books she clutched tightly to her chest, reminiscent of the unsure and awkward child she had once been. Her chin was tucked in, eyes on her feet, and she was trying to look as small and insignificant as possible. Draco remembered this posture well from their younger years. At one point in his life he had thoroughly enjoyed being the cause of it.

Draco continued to watch as she scrambled through the portrait hole that led to the dorms the eighth years shared. He gave her a few moments and then followed. All of the other dorm mates would be at breakfast and then straight off to class, and he knew they would have the place to themselves.

The common area was empty, so he crossed the room to Hermione's closed door. He put his ear up to the heavy wood but only heard silence. Of course Hermione would have warded her room not only from physical intruders but against the ones that simply invaded privacy. The bright witch had come out of the war a very paranoid individual, and Draco couldn't fault her. That didn't, however, stop him from doing everything he could to intrude on her personal space now. He knocked on the door. When there was no answer or acknowledgment he began pounding on the offending barrier as loud as he could. Finally the lock clicked and the door opened, displaying a red-eyed and tearstained Hermione Granger.

"Who died?" Draco asked without preamble.

Hermione stared at him, not quite seeing. "No one died," she said softly.

"Then it's not the end of the world," Draco said flatly. "Go do your do-goody duties and change whatever it is that happened."

Hermione lowered her eyes and glanced at her bed where the crumpled letter from her parents lay. She was so hurt and so damn tired, she just blurted out exactly what she was thinking.

"I think I finally understand why purebloods hate Muggles," she said all in a rush, then immediately clapped her hand over her mouth as if she had just uttered an unforgivably dirty word.

Whatever terrible thing Draco has expected, this was certainly not it. He simply raised an eyebrow and waited for Hermione to continue. It took a few deep breaths, but soon Hermione began to speak. She settled herself onto her large bed, leaned against the headboard and drew her knees to her chest like a child awaiting scolding. Or a young girl trying to physically hold herself together.

Hermione had a hard time talking to both Ron and Harry about her parents, Harry because it seemed rather insensitive that she should have parents and be estranged to them while he did not, and Ron because there was nothing separating him from his parents in any form. Hermione and her parentsdidn't belong to the same world anymore, and now they had told her, under no uncertain terms, that it was either them or the magical community.

She couldn't fathom why she had told Draco Malfoy the entire story. She told him everything from the beginning, when she knew she had to leave them to help Harry, and in doing so cast a charm that would erase their memories of their lives and of their only daughter in order to protect them, to the climactic fallout that ensued when she restored the doctored memories. She didn't know why she was telling this man, who was worse than a stranger, that she had to go live with Harry because her own parents couldn't stomach the sight of her. Finally she smoothed out the crumpled and slightly damp letter.

The letter informed Hermione that her parents had decided to pull their financial support entirely as long as Hermione remained in the wizarding community. With that, her Hogwarts tuition money and any spending money that was in her Gringotts account and linked with her parent's Muggle bank account was gone. She would have to leave Hogwarts at the end of the term when her tuition ran out.

"McGonagall would never just kick you out," Draco pointed out with an air of finality. "You're a bit famous, you know."

"Humiliating," Hermione mumbled. "When word gets out that my own parents, Muggles, want nothing to do with me..." She trailed off and rested her forehead against her knees. "I don't belong anywhere. Hogwarts is my last home."

"How do Muggle-borns usually pay tuition if their parents can't?" Draco asked, not unkindly.

"The same way a half-blood or a pureblood does," Hermione replied. "There's a scholarship of sorts. For orphans, those financially distraught, and those who have Muggle parents that want nothing to do with magic. The latter is rare though. It doesn't matter though, the deadline for that is long past, and I wouldn't feel right using money that should go to someone who belongs here, not someone whose time at Hogwarts expired a year ago."

Hermione looked so miserable that Draco was at a loss for words, mean or otherwise. Money had little meaning to him and with his father incarcerated for life, all of the Malfoy fortune was at his disposal.

"Well," he finally said, "what will you do?" Draco assumed that, if anything, coming up with a plan should appeal to Hermione's logical nature.

Hermione's eyes unfocused for a moment. "I'll have to leave," she said miserably, staring at the wall behind Draco, who was now tentatively perched at the foot of the bed. "I would be able to stay with Harry, at least I wouldn't be homeless. Find a job at the Ministry. Maybe apply to Auror training. But I so wanted to finish school."

Draco's throat tightened ever so peculiarly at the thought of the woman in front of him and Harry Potter playing house together.

Draco asked ever so casually, "Isn't that a bit sordid for the virginal Hermione Granger? Living with a man one is not married to?"

Hermione managed a sardonic grin despite herself at Draco's baffling comment.

"Well," she said slowly, "if my virginal honor was really any of your concern, you would think it must be torn to shreds after sharing a tent with two men while on the run all summer, not to mention that I already lived with him when things settled down. My room is very nice at Grimmauld Place.

"I forgot Potter lived there," Draco said with some amusement. "Has he managed to remove that tasteful portrait of Aunty Black yet?"

"You've been there?" Hermione asked with some surprise.

"Of course, when I was very young," Draco replied. "It's a family home of sorts, you know that." Draco's tone turned almost hostile at the end, as though accusing her of being ignorant on purpose.

"I knew you were related to the Blacks," Hermione said mildly. "I just never associated Sirius with any of them."

"What do you mean by that?" Draco asked evenly.

"Bellatrix," Hermione looked at him thoughtfully. "I read all about her before I had the pleasure of a personal meeting. Even though she no longer carried the family name, she was the most famous of the Blacks for this age, besides Sirius. Your family has quite a legacy on all sides, Malfoy."

Any anger that flared inside Draco was immediately extinguished. Hermione had not meant any malice towards his family or to his mother, she was simply making an observation. That was odd, he was used to rising to the defense whenever the conversation turned to his family.

"Alright." Draco took a breath and reevaluated what he was going to say. "We have established that my family history leaves a great deal to be desired. As for the portrait, you can tell Potter that Agero should remove anything in the house that hasn't been dispatched via normal spells."

Hermione brightened. "Agero? But I've never heard of that spell before."

Draco smirked. "There are many spells even you haven't been privy to, Granger. With old families especially, we're very proud of our lesser known incantations."

Hermione lapsed into a thoughtful silence, which Draco found to be relaxing. That didn't mean he wanted it to last for a significant amount of time however.

"What did you mean when you said you understood why we hate Mud-er, Muggle-borns?" Draco caught himself and wasn't really sure why he bothered.

Hermione stiffened from her reflection on the new spell Draco had told her about. She bit the inside of her cheek a little before answering his question.

"I think because now I understand, from the other side, what it's like to be feared," she said with some surprise of her own. "My own parents are afraid of me, and it's because they don't understand magic, and I have no hope of explaining it to them. Fear breeds resentment, and resentment is just a skip away from hatred. I can't hate my parents, but I resent them for fearing who I am and what I've done, especially what I had to do to protect them."

Draco only took a minute to think before he swiftly rose from the foot of the bed and quickly approached the bedside table close to Hermione. She flinched ever so slightly, but all Draco did was grab a loose piece of parchment and a self-inking quill from the nightstand. He stood towering over her while quickly scribbling something on the piece of parchment. Before Hermione could ask what he was doing, he silently handed the paper to her.

After a sharp intake of breath, Hermione's eyes snapped up at him. "This is my parents' address," she hissed. "Where did you get this?"

"I've been there," Draco said softly and sat on the side of the bed, much closer than where he had been previously.

Hermione fought the urge to slide away. "Explain," she demanded instead.

"You were not wrong to send your parents away, Granger." Draco held her eyes with a mix of pleading and anger. "They were to be made examples of, orders directly from the Dark Lord. I was supposed to verify their location and report back."

"What. Did. You. Do." Hermione's tone was enough to make Draco blink first before continuing.

"Exactly what I was supposed to do," he replied coolly, not taking his eyes off hers. "I verified we had the correct address, but their daughter, a Mudblood, already had the foresight to wipe their memories clean and send them to some remote village in Africa."

Now it was Hermione's turn to blink. "You lied?" she asked dumbly.

"I reported incorrect information," Draco said smoothly. "Australia, Africa, by the time I returned to the Dark Lord I simply could not for the life of me remember which continent you mentioned. Perhaps it was Antarctica? Or Argentina? I find Occlumency works particularly well when one isn't quite sure what they know. By the time I took detailed notes of the home and location it appears the inhabitants took off. Even the Dark Lord could find no fault in my attention to detail, however late it was in arriving."

Hermione's mouth gaped open in a very unladylike manner, and Draco had to fight himself to not lean over and close it for her. She sat unmoving on the bed for about a minute. Long enough for Draco's smirk to begin to falter while she tried to determine how much damage he was really capable of doing and how much damage he avoiding causing, whether due to some small scrap of human decency or laziness on his part. Hermione determined decency won out and she flung her arms around his neck and held on for dear life.

Draco stiffened at the physical contact and was overtaken by a horror so acute he lost all sense of what was happening. Hermione had her arms tightly around his neck and her head buried in his shoulder and was shaking all over. He couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying and was too immobilized by confusion to find out for himself. After a few moments he began to relax and tentatively placed one hand on her back. That small brush of contact was all Hermione seemed to need to remember where she was, who she was with, and what exactly she was doing. She flung back and bounced comically on the bed with her hand over her heart and tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Merlin!" she exclaimed. "I'm so, so sorry Malfoy, I just, you just..I'm sorry! That was incredibly rude of me!"

Draco was a little dumbfounded and still trying to catch up. "It's, er, okay, Granger. Mind telling me what that was all about?"

Hermione looked at him with watery eyes. "Thank you," she said with a heart so full it would have burst. "Don't you see what a wonderful thing you did?"

"I'm a prejudiced asshole, Granger," Draco said with about half of his usual bite. "But I do not like to get my hands dirty. The Dark Lord was completely mad if he thought I was going to run about exterminating Muggles for him."

Hermione shook her head at him, a small smile still playing on her lips. "It's Voldemort, Malfoy," she admonished him. "There was nothing lordly about him. Tom Riddle if you want to get technical, but he was still a man."

It was Draco's turn to shake his head. "You saw what you did, I won't deny it," he said. "But you did not live with him for months, watch what he did to the people around you day in and day out. You bloody do-gooders pride yourselves on being able to say his name, and that's all well and good, but he damn near destroyed my life, and there was nothing average or normal about it."

Hermione was quiet for a moment and then nodded. She figured it would be best to pick her battles with him rather than argue. If Malfoy wanted to latch some sort of awe to that monster, that was his own demon to face.

"Why are you so determined to be the bad guy?" she asked him with genuine curiosity. "Why not just say that killing people doesn't appeal to you, dirty hands or not?"

"Killing people doesn't appeal to me, Granger," Draco retorted. "But that doesn't mean I wouldn't kill someone else to survive."

Hermione swallowed. "Have you? Killed, I mean."

Draco seemed slightly unsure but indicated to his arm where his school robes covered the faded Dark Mark.

"How do you suppose you get one of these, Granger?" he asked softly. "You do not simply request one, it must be earned."

Hermione's eyes widened. "Truly? Who?"

"Some Muggle," Draco said with a forced shrug of the shoulders. "It was inconsequential."

"Not for the Muggle!" Hermione said sharply. "It's disgusting. Had I known that I-"

"What?" Draco asked, rising to his feet. "Wouldn't have worked so hard to get me pardoned? Grow up, Granger! It was a war, you above all others knew what was going on! Do you think we simply threw a body bind on an enemy and went on our merry little way?"

"Enemy?" Hermione's voice rose an octave. "Muggles are not the enemy, Malfoy, they're barely even playing the same game! How on earth are they to defend themselves when one of us has a wand raised against them?"

"I suppose that shows what side you are on, Granger," Malfoy said with a self-satisfied smirk. "Us versus them, is it? Apparently you do belong in the wizard world. Do not entertain any more thoughts of leaving it unless you're willing to throw away your entire life and legacy."

With that, Draco was finally able to throw the last word, leaving Hermione bewildered at what just transpired. Before joining the rest of the student body for class he made a small stop at the Headmistress's office. After a quick discussion and no small amount of suspicion on McGonagall's part, there was suddenly an extra and currently unclaimed scholarship available specifically for Muggle-born war heroines who happen to be of age.