Hermione lands squarely on her feet outside Malfoy Manor. No stumbles or nausea this time – just a roiling anger she can't wait to unleash. She casts a quick Protego overhead to keep away the sudden downpour, but she knows that the few seconds of rain she caught have already destroyed her bun. And by Merlin, she doesn't care. She yanks out her hairpins for good measure and lets her curls go wild, their tangles and snarls an apt manifestation of her heart right now.
Muttering curses – for practice, if need be – she storms through the open Muggle gates. They've likely shorted-out in the rain again; if Draco broke their Floo connection, then there's no way he left the gates open for her.
The long drive to the Manor has become soggy in places, filled with wide puddles she can't entirely dodge. By the time Hermione reaches the entrance, her ballet flats are as ruined as her hair. She resists the urge to kick them against the doors and instead bangs her fists upon the wood, so hard her wrists hurt.
The doors swing open to reveal Maevy, who looks horrified by Hermione's appearance, both literal and metaphoric.
"Miss Granger," the elf squeaks. "You shouldn't—"
"Where is he?" Hermione demands. Maevy hesitates, her little fingers still clasped to the edge of one door.
"Maevy's sorry, Miss, but Mister Draco isn't receiving company at the moment."
"Then it's a good thing I won't be much company, isn't it?"
Before Maevy can embarrass them both by trying to bar the door, a murmured Lumos echoes throughout the dark foyer. Beneath the spell's light, Narcissa Malfoy stands regal in her navy-blue dress robes. Her wand and chin are raised, and she looks far, far more imposing than her house-elf.
"Hermione," Narcissa says, all calm composure and gracious welcome. "How lovely to see you again. Please, come in from that horrible storm."
Hermione's wrath hasn't abated in the slightest. But she accepts the invitation, stepping inside to drip all over the marble entryway. She casts a drying charm on her clothing but specifically avoids the nest of curls atop her head; Draco doesn't deserve reasonably-sized Granger-hair tonight.
Somewhat more presentable, Hermione faces Narcissa. She's set to explain or defend herself to the older witch with whatever means necessary, including hexes. But it's not resistance she sees in Narcissa's eyes. Instead, the Malfoy matriarch is staring at Hermione with unwavering, unquestionable respect.
Narcissa angles her head toward the grand staircase. "I think you'll find what you're looking for upstairs, having a massive sulk in his library."
After a stunned pause, Hermione nods. "Thank you, Narcissa. I mean it."
"Anytime," Narcissa answers breezily. Then she lowers her gaze to the elf still sputtering at the door. "Maevy, I do believe we're needed in the kitchens. Straightaway, please."
Hermione watches them leave the foyer, Narcissa still carrying the wand above her head and Maevy following with a few, nervous glances over her shoulder. Hermione waits until the unlikely duo disappears into the shadows of the Manor. Then she storms up the grand staircase.
Despite all her previous trouble with the Manor's maze-like corridors, Hermione finds her way with little effort tonight. Maybe it's the number of times she's been here by now, or the angry flashes of the storm, lighting her way. Or maybe it's the fury seething in her gut.
That last option, she thinks, is the most likely explanation for the swiftness with which she finally bursts through the unlocked entrance of the Smaller Library. The door slams off the wall behind it, and the sound reverberates throughout the room.
Draco is standing at the far side of the library, staring out a darkened window at the front gardens of the Manor. He doesn't move – doesn't make any indication that he's heard the echo of the slamming door around him. This infuriates Hermione even more, and she makes no effort to hide her irregular breathing or the stomp of her feet as she marches into the library.
"How dare you!" she all but shouts at him. "How dare you disappear for three weeks and then shut the Floo on me!"
"Didn't stop you from Apparating here, now did it?"
"In a storm, Draco. In thunder and lightning and rain. Lots of rain."
"How is that my problem?" he drawls, and he slowly turns from the window to face her.
She starts to tell him exactly what kind of problem he's about to deal with and then stops short at the sight of his right hand. There, he's holding a crystal tumbler, filled with ice and at least two fingers of bright, amber-coloured liquid.
Firewhisky?
In less than five steps, Hermione crosses the rest of the library, bypasses the green sofa, and comes close enough to yank the glass out of his hand. Before Draco can protest, she knocks back an enormous gulp of its contents. She doesn't drink all of it – she wants at least a few drops to throw in his face, afterward. But the moment the liquid hits her tongue, she feels a relief so palpable she nearly sags to the floor.
"It's not…it's just tea," she breathes. "Cold tea."
"Now it is." He snatches the glass back from her roughly. "How do you know I didn't just transfigure whisky into tea, before you got here?"
"Because food and beverages other than water are the First Principal Exception to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration – they can't be transmuted."
Draco falters, obviously surprised by her automatic recitation. But he quickly recovers, and his jaw tightens. "Fuck, Granger, do you have to be such a goddamned know-it-all?"
"I'll take that as a compliment," she snaps. "Do you have to try so damned hard to make me think you're drinking again?"
"Just how conceited are you, Granger? I wasn't trying to make you 'think' anything. I was just drinking tea in my library, trying to stay sober like I've been doing every night for the last three months. You were the one who barged in here unannounced."
Hermione rolls her eyes. "Don't give me that 'unannounced' crap. You saw me coming from the Apparition point by the gates – you said so yourself."
"Okay then, I'll amend my word choice. You weren't unannounced, you were uninvited. Or didn't the broken Floo connection make that clear?"
Hermione feels that stab of hurt again, white-hot and cruel. She forces herself to ignore the ache as she presses forward.
"Oh, so we're back to cowardice now, are we?"
His pale eyebrows draw together. "What?"
"Cowardice," she drones, in her swottiest voice. "C-O-W-A-R-D-I-C-E. Defined as the pathological lack of courage. E.g., Draco Malfoy."
Draco snorts, and the sound is far too livid for its usual elegance. "Just like a bloody Gryffindor, to make it all about courage. I swear, the word 'bravery' probably gets your lot off, doesn't it?"
She blushes at the implication and opens her mouth to tell him off, but he goes on.
"Merlin, Granger, it doesn't take courage to keep someone like you out of my house. It just takes brains. And one bloody revocation spell."
All at once she's seeing red, and her hand twitches toward her wand. It's a testament to how she feels about him – how she still feels about him, despite this terrible display – that she doesn't draw the wand and hex him right there.
"Someone like me?" she hisses. "Someone 'like me'? Why don't you just say it outright, Draco, and save yourself the trouble of wiggling around it?"
His brow furrows again, into something that's not quite a scowl anymore. "What are you on about, Granger?"
"Just say it. Say the word. Get it out in the open like a curse." Hermione is practically shrieking now, and she doesn't care. Doesn't care if the whole Malfoy household can hear her. Doesn't care about the very real confusion on Draco's face.
"Granger, what the hell are you—?"
"You know what word I mean," she cuts him off harshly. "Quit pretending."
"I honestly have no idea—"
"Mudblood," she shouts. "Your favorite name for me. Mud-fucking-blood."
Her words slice the air between them like a scythe. She hadn't meant to say it aloud. She'd only meant to dance around it until he felt guilty enough to incriminate himself. But he hadn't said it; she had. And now that word hangs suspended between them like Avada Kedavra. Foul and green and itching to destroy someone.
Draco sucks in a sharp breath, and the blood drains from his face. "I didn't…I don't…."
He can't seem to finish his thoughts in the wake of the bomb she just detonated. Seeing the wounded look in his eyes, Hermione feels a twinge of regret. But his resolve has clearly faltered, so she plunges on.
"Why have you been avoiding me, Draco? Why did you close our Floo connection?"
His mouth opens. Shuts. He runs one hand through his hair, mussing its blond perfection. Finally, he swears and slams his glass down on a nearby bookcase. Without a backward glance at her, he stalks toward the roaring fire. Hermione knows, then – knows that he'll tell her. He won't hide it from her forever. Not if she fights the truth out of him right now, like the lion she is.
"Why?" she repeats, moving around the sofa so he can't escape her. "Tell me why."
Draco hangs his head, grips the tall fireplace mantel with both hands, and leans into it. He still doesn't answer her. The only noise that comes out of him is a series of ragged breaths.
"Tell me," she commands.
"Because I'm poison," he rasps, without turning away from the fire.
The frenetic pulse of her anger - so insistent only two seconds ago - stops abruptly. As hard and sudden as a branch shoved into the spokes of a bicycle wheel.
"You're...what?"
"Weasley was right that night, Granger: I'm poison. I'm a ruiner. I've ruined everything I've ever touched. That's one of the reasons I drank – the reason, most of the time. I didn't just fail sodding Voldemort, or Dumbledore, or my father, or Vince. I failed myself. I failed you. And I can't – I won't – do that to you again. Because I didn't know it back then but I know it now. I know it in every rotten corner of my rotten heart."
He thuds his fist onto his chest to emphasize the point and finally, finally, looks at her.
"Know what?" Hermione whispers, afraid to break the spell of honesty that has fallen over him. "What do you know, Draco?"
His eyes frantically skim over her curls, her body, her lips. "I know that you're…you're so…."
"What? I'm so what?"
Swotty? Annoying? Muggle?
Unwelcome?
"Perfect," he gasps. "You're so perfect to me."
Draco's eyes widen, as though he just stunned himself as much as he did her. He moves like he's been jolted with electricity, twitching and jerking backward. Away from the fireplace and away from her.
But Hermione still isn't going to let him escape. Not after he said that. She strides toward him, even when he edges backward until his legs strike the sofa.
"You aren't poison, Draco. You aren't a ruiner."
Her words themselves are kind, as are the thoughts behind them. But her tone is brutal. While Hermione's heart already knows where she wants this conversation to go, her head is still furious. So they need to fight until her anger dissipates, or he changes his mind, or both.
Draco senses this, she thinks; she can tell by the way his eyes start to glow and his lips curl into a sneer. It sends a thrill right up her spine, the fact that he's going to fight with her in earnest. The fact that she matters enough for him to do this, right here and right now, whatever the outcome might be.
"You don't think that," he growls, angry again instead of broken. "You can't."
"How do you know? Are you a Legilimens all of a sudden?"
"I'm a fucking Occlumens. You know that."
"Of course I do. And quit dodging the question. Why can't I think that? Why do you think I secretly hate you?"
"Because you showed up at my house with pastries," he says. "With bloody apple tarts, like you wanted to make some kind of…some kind of amends."
"And that's supposed to mean what, exactly?"
"That means we have a bloody problem. There are only two reasons you would do something like that: either you're terrified of me and had to figure out a way to cope with it, or you're insane." When she makes a derisive noise, he snarls again. "You were fucking tortured here, Granger. Then you show up almost two years later, looking to apologize. It doesn't make any bloody sense. And since we both know you're too stubborn to lose your mind, I'm left with only the first option."
His sneer deepens, but it isn't really directed at her anymore. "What kind of monster am I," he asks, "to have that effect on people? To make someone feel like they have to pacify me so that they're whole again?"
Hermione groans in frustration. "Merlin, you are so damned arrogant. I didn't bring the tarts to apologize to you, Draco, or to pacify you like some dragon under a mountain. I brought them to show you that you didn't have to apologize to me. I wanted you to know that you didn't have to make amends, because I forgave you before I even arrived here that day."
"You...before you even...?" He rakes both his hands through his hair, which has gone from mussed to wild like hers. "You already forgave me? So...what is this, then? You're here to fix me?"
"Fix you? You think I want to fix you, Draco? If that were even possible – for one person to fix another – I still wouldn't want to. Do you even remember what I told you about my father? It wasn't up to me or my mum to fix him. Help him, yes. But fix him? No. He had to heal himself, just like you do. The hard work is all yours, Draco, not mine. I just want to be around to watch the process. Maybe enjoy the finished product."
He snorts at that, but she barrels on.
"Ron was full of shit, by the way. You're not the poison, Draco, any more than I'm the antidote. And just so you know, you self-centered prat, my forgiveness had nothing to do with you. It had to do with me. It was my brain and my heart that forgave you, without any action on your part. And I did it a long time ago. Long before I…before I…."
"Before you what, Granger?" he snaps. "Spit it out."
"Before I fell for you, you giant arse."
The scowl melts right off his face. He's blinking – a shock-response he definitely picked up from her – and his mouth opens and closes wordlessly. It feels like forever, a wizard's full lifetime, until he finds his voice.
"F-fell?"
"Yes, fell. I've fallen for you, Draco. For you – not for your supposed 'con,' like Ron said. Not 'despite' anything, either. I haven't forgotten how you treated me in school, or the fact that you didn't stop your aunt, or the way you slunk into the shadows after the War. Your mistakes are still as much a part of you now as they were back then. But I fell for what you're trying to do with all those mistakes now – the way you're taking that lump of shitty clay and molding it into something worthwhile. And I've learned that there was plenty worthwhile to begin with, underneath all the dross. So that's what I want, Draco: you. Your past and your future. All of you."
"Me?"
"You," Hermione says firmly. "I want you, Draco. Full stop. However – and this is a big 'however,' so pay attention – the stunts you pulled at the restaurant and with the Floo mean that my heart isn't the one in question. I'm not going to stay where I'm not wanted. So you better say something right now. You better tell me what you want from me. Or you can watch me from that window as I Apparate away from here. For good."
Her words sink in, and he goes pale. So worryingly pale. His hand lifts toward her, clenches and unclenches in the air, and then drops to his side.
"You," Draco says finally. Not with doubt, as she feared, but with a sad sort of resignation. Like he's waiting for her to take it all back. "I want you, Hermione. All of you."
Her heart leaps. Jumps. Soars. Yet there's more he owes her. Not because they're competing, but because he's Draco, she's Hermione, and, given their strange and circuitous history, she needs this.
"Why?" she asks. "I need to know why."
"Because you're Hermione Granger," he says. When she scoffs, he holds up one hand.
"Hear me out, okay? You're this amazing war heroine. The Hermione Granger, versus this Death Eater piece of rubbish." Draco gestures vaguely to himself. "Before you start to argue with me, just stop. I was a Death Eater piece of rubbish. I'm not anymore, but people still see me that way – the way I was as a boy. Yet here you are, acting like I'm worth something."
It breaks her heart, to hear his voice crack over that last sentence, but she doesn't interrupt again.
"You treat me that way," he goes on, "because you really believe it. You believe I'm worth something. Even on that first day with the tarts – when you had no reason to, when you barely knew me – you treated me as though...as though I might be human after all."
"And that's the only reason you want me?" she asks. "Because I'm one of the few people who treats you like a human being?"
"That's why I started to like you as a person, not why I started to want you."
"Then why, Draco? Why do you want me?"
Her tone stays neutral and smooth. But inside, she's begging, begging, that he wants her for the right reasons. Not because she's The Hermione Granger, or because she doesn't treat him like scum, or because he was lonely and lost before she burst into his life with a cakebox full of apple tarts.
"I want you, Hermione," he says raggedly, "because I can't look away from you. Sometimes you're a mess, and sometimes you're so fucking beautiful I can't take it. But no matter which, I can never look away from you. It's…it's like you've bewitched me. And I know that's a cliché, considering what we are, but that doesn't make it any less true."
Despite the tingle in her spine, she doesn't change her impassive tone. "How I look, then? Is that it?"
Draco frowns and runs one hand through his ruined hair. "Of course not. Do you want me to tell you it's because you're smart? Well, you know you're smart. But you're also funny – darkly so, sometimes, thank god – and you're a damned talented witch. And somehow, some way, you started to look at me the way I've been looking at you since you showed back up at the Manor."
"And how is that?"
"Like you want…." Draco hesitates. Breathes slowly in and out. Meets her eyes with a hopeful, searching gaze that makes her toes curl. "Like you want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss you."
Her cool facade nearly shatters. "You want to...kiss me?"
"Yes. Yes." He laughs softly. "I'm so goddamned afraid I'm going to fuck it up, just like everything else I've ever done. But all I've been able to think about since that first day you showed up here is how much I want to kiss you until you can't breathe anymore."
And with that, she's done. In an abrupt flash of movement, Hermione closes the space between them, fists his shirt in her hands, and crushes her lips to his.