Note: Thanks for reading! It's incredible to see that people still care about this story after all this time! Love, love, love.
I know, it's been a few days since I posted 25—I am back to non-fanfiction-writing, but I can't get this story out of my head. It is my sincerest plan to see it to completion this time around.

Disclaimer: The ownership of Harry Potter does not belong-th to me.

I don't look up at Draco because I realized that I didn't need his pity or his hatred. I just needed me. And I knew how I felt about things, but maybe they weren't so black and white like I'd thought. Suffer in silence, put on a happy face. Focus on all of the frivolities of our society—the clothes, the food, the people to avoid focusing on what was lurking underneath it all: the war. The hatred. The ominous future I was planned to help lead.

"Hayley," Draco's voice has finally turned soft.

"What?"

Meeting his eyes turned out to be a mistake. They were sweet at the very first glance but after a moment or two passed they turned to stone.

"You made a choice." The edge was back.

"What I'm trying to prove is that neither of us got to choose for ourselves—we were born into this, Draco."

"You could have gotten up at any time, but you didn't. You set through tea with the Dark Lord, as ridiculous as that sounds and you emerged a servant to his cause."

"Did you hear anything I just said?" My voice raised to yell-volume and I didn't care. Anyone outside could hear me and I didn't care. The things I was saying could get me killed for treasonous affairs and I didn't care. "I don't remember anything other than sitting down and talking to him and then there I was—with a dark mark. Knowing that my Mother and Father have been condoning and participating in bewitching me to follow their arrangements, their plans makes me wonder how far they'd go to ensure I joined the cause."

"What are you saying, then?"

"The Imperius Curse."

Something flickered over Draco's face but he arranged his features back to the cool, calm mask he'd worn before. "It still doesn't change anything."

All the tethers in all the world, had strung me to the pale-haired boy in front of me. Over time those tethers had weakened, but the last few weeks they'd forged themselves into the strongest dragon stone there was.

And in that single look, Draco shook them all, threatened to unbolt them from their very foundations.

"I came to you because I want to fight this. I want to be with you," I said.

"The only way you want to be with me is if we run and I can't do that."

I felt the gloopiness of snot, products of the gross tears than ran down my cheeks, "I can't do any of this without you. I don't want to fight in this war, but I won't lose you."

Draco took a deep breath, his shoulders sunk an inch. He finally stepped off the entrance to the gazebo, cut the distance between us until he was standing right before me. I tipped my head back to look up at him. His left hand snaked up, fingers tangled in the back of my hair.

"I belong to you. You couldn't lose me."

I shake my head against his palm, "I belong to you."

He leaned forward until his forehead rested against mine and we just stood like that, bodies pressed together, feeling each other's heartbeat until they merged into the same rhythm. I couldn't tell his from my own.

"Darlings! What are you doing out here?" Narcissa's voice broke the spell. Draco kept his arms wrapped around my torso as our gazes turned back to the house, where she stood, a figure in black holding an umbrella.

My eyes narrowed in on the umbrella—why in Merlin's name did she have an umbrella? A drop of water plunked onto my scalp, rolling down my wet tresses. Wet?

"It's been raining for ages! Come in, would you?"

Draco and I laughed nervously as we separated entirely, latching onto hands, and walked back towards the Malfoy's enormous patio garden.

This is how we should be, unified. I chewed on my bottom lip out of nervous habit, knowing I was probably undoubtedly doing horrors to my face but I didn't care, I only hoped Draco and I could manage to scheme a plan with enough force to blow a great big bloody hole in my engagement.

Narcissa took in the state of our clothes and clucked her tongue, "I can dry you out in a minute, but that won't do anything for the chill. Hayley, come with me and I'll get you something warm to put on. I think it's dropped about a hundred degrees out there."

I smiled back at Draco, letting loose of his hand.

"Meet me in the library, whenever you're through."

"You'd do well to change, too. And don't leave your wet clothes on the bathroom floor. Properly dry them and put them in the hamper."

I walked in a daze behind Narcissa up the stairs, taking the left hallway while Draco snaked to the right. Everything about her scolding was normal, it didn't speak to the elitist attitude of society. She was making Draco take care of his own affairs, tidy up on his own. The same was true when we were children.

It was all too easy to remember the messes Draco and I would make. The bigger the mess, the less magical help we received. There was something enduring about that, something encouraging about it, too. My Draco was sweet. My Draco was so, so kind.

My Draco could never kill.

I wondered if there was a way to make him see that, too.

The thought is robbed from my mind as we step into Narcissa's bedroom, the color nearly blinding me after the dark greens and black that filled the hallway before. I first noticed the gold walls and the black, wrought iron canopy bed. The posts were shaped like serpents, mouths holding bars at the top.

The frame was exactly what I would have expected from Lucius' serpent fetish. I wasn't expecting the peacock feather palette—some emerald, yes, but the bulk of colors were blues and airy yellows.

There wasn't anything dark about it at all.

"Your décor up here is marvelous," I breathed.

Narcissa cut her face over her shoulder, "We don't usually let people in, but you're family." She says this as means of an explanation for why it's so…unexpected. That doesn't go unnoticed. "Thank you, darling."

I followed her over to the far left side of the wall, to closed oak paneled doors. With a twist of the gold knob, she pulls outward to reveal a room only slightly smaller than the previous, decorated in the same gold and airy blues. Only this room is wall-to-wall shelves and rods, filled with clothes.

"Lucius' is bigger, right?"

She laughed, "Oh, yes. Quite."

There was a sparkle in her eye but I wasn't completely sure she was kidding.

"Hmmm…" Narcissa walked to the middle, where a cube of dressers sat, all sides boasting drawers. She pulled one open seemingly at random, "You're quite a bit shorter than me, and much more…buxom."

I tried not to blush at her phrasing, but she was right. Narcissa was tall and slender, very modelesque, very Parisian. Whereas I…I'd clearly favored my Greek heritage as far as physique.

She shifted through the clothes before settling on a mass of dark plum, and another dark grey.

"I think this should work," she handed the stack over, "Bathroom is just through there."

I took them from her, smiling, and followed her pointed finger to the alcove in the wall that did, in fact, lead to a bathroom.

"Towels are in the cabinet! Fetch one to dry off."

Setting the stack on the gold marble counter, I did just that, pulling the fluffiest green towel from the stack. My hair was dripping lines of water down my back, chilling my spine and keeping me from warming at all so I started there. I didn't realize how cold I was until we came indoors, and now I could barely keep from shivering.

I unfold the clothes on the counter to see that Narcissa scrounged up a pair of purple velvet lounge pants and a grey jumper.

My fingers fumbled around to find my wand, furiously searching until I realized with a shaky laugh it was in my bag, on my bed, back at my home. This had only happened to me a few times in my life—leaving my wand far away. I felt naked without it, lost. It was almost as if I'd stepped out in public without my head.

With a sigh, I resigned to keeping the towel wrapped to dry my hair and pulled a second from the cabinet to dry off the rest of me.

Narcissa ended up being right about the clothes—they fit, but they ended up hugging my curves so tightly that it was like wearing a second skin. There wasn't hiding…anything.

It was only Draco, I reminded myself, and Narcissa. It could be a lot worse.

"I'm not sure what I ought to do with my clothes."

"Bernie?" There's a crack and a pop before a house elf appears, shivering. Once his eyes locked onto Narcissa he eased a bit, "Could you see to it that Miss Bennett's things are properly laundered?"

"Yes, missus," the elf stepped forward and removed the items from my grip carefully.

"That is all," she dismissed him sternly.

"Curious," I said, "That you allow the house elf to assist with my wet clothes, but not Draco's?" I tried to keep my tone teasing.

"Draco needs to understand that—"

"Hard work hardens character," I finished with her.

Sparkling eyes turned to me as Narcissa's lips quirked upwards, "Yes. I daresay I am surprised to know you've remembered that."

"With how many times you said it to Draco and me as children? How could I forget?"

She leaned forward and twists a free lock of my hair off my face, not bothered to tuck it back into the towel, "You're still children and yet, we're asking you to act like adults."

As she withdraws her hand, I noticed that her fingers were shaking.

I'm so surprised I didn't know how to respond.

She didn't give me much room, quickly continuing, "I am so sorry about your arrangement. I know that's not what you want."

"Does it matter?" I couldn't ease the bitterness in my tone, it was so poisoned there was no use.

"Of course it matters, darling. It's the only thing that matters."

I looked up, unsure of where this was leading.

"All that we're doing—everything this is—it's for freedom. Freedom for us. Freedom for us to be who we are and make the choices we want to be happy. I want you to get to choose happiness."

"So it is doomed, isn't it?"

"Merlin, no! Why would you think that?" Her voice raised in pitch.

"You're speaking of it all very finalized, you know."

Her lips shifted, the smile turning more mocking, a corner higher than the other. One would be quick to assume that the quintessential Malfoy smirk was a product of Lucius, passed from one Malfoy patriarch to the next, but they would be wrong.

The Malfoy smirk was the Black smirk, tracing back through their family tree. Draco got his smirk from his mother. And his high cheek bones.

It was easy to forget.

"I forget how much fire you have in you," Narcissa's voice was low. "You've always had such a lively spirit but one overlooks it from the portrait of a lady."

"A subject you know quite a lot about personally, if I may be so bold." I smiled.

She nodded her blonde head conspiratorially, "Quite right that is, I'm afraid. So the two of you—you're planning to fight?"

"This sounds like the most bloody daft thing I possibly could say, but, Draco and I? Whatever we're made of, well, it's the same. We're practically—"

"You do love him," her gaze turned tender.

I nodded, "Very much."

"Then you'll need an ally."