"Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long preserv'd virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave's a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace."

- Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

Chapter Twenty-two: Love Is Not the Enemy

She had been shut in her chambers for a few hours now, knowing that it was very unlikely that anyone would disturb her until she was ready to be. With the abduction mission a failure, she needed to focus her mind on a different part of the overall plan to calm down.

Hermione Granger was proving to be more trouble than she was worth.

With the slow, steady dismantling of the muggleborn prosecution system that the Ministry and magical world had adopted, Granger was kept fairly busy. She was supposed to become the posterchild for such efforts, especially since she'd had been partially responsible for the Dark Lord's demise.

Master had honestly expected that capturing Granger while she was on holiday would be somewhat simple… with no one watching her, sucking up to her, listening to her…

Master traced a finger along the wood of her new device. Oh yes - she would retrieve the Granger girl's memories first - memories of the internal goings on of the Order of the Phoenix, memories of Harry Potter and others, memories of the most private musings and weaknesses of her friend... through her, the dark side could bring him down for the pain he had delivered, for the uproar that a seventeen year old boy had caused.

She hated him with every fiber of her being.

Then after the memories, she would break dear Hermione against the machine. But first... she needed to know if it would work. Would it purify her?

Master had thought about this many times: what was it that made Hermione Granger, and other people like her, what they were? What was the composition of a mudblood?

She was a scientist above all else - she would be the first to dissect the wizard gene, the smallest code of DNA that made people magical versus non.

And then, she could purify the rest of the world.

She was so close, and Hermione Granger was the missing piece of the puzzle, because she fit so perfectly. A shot against the great Harry Potter, a shot against the Ministry... and the gift of magic for the rest of humankind.

But this could only happen if Hermione was captured.

Oh, she'd have her fun with her for causing so much trouble...

"It's time we stopped the defense and started our offense."

Hermione nodded, rubbing small circles in the glossy surface of her conjured apple. She was getting addicted to this fruit. "I agree."

He looked at her closely, seeing the sadness behind her expression. He knew that she was still grieving over the loss of Sasha, who had been the comforting, motherly figure that she had needed to overcome the fear of her blindness. "Hermione, realize that we have quite a while to travel before we reach there. Portkey would be fastest, but it would also be the easiest to trace. I talked to Nora; she suspects that this is how the Death Eaters found our exact location."

"Harry took a portkey to Norway? Is he mad?"

Draco shrugged. "Nora said that Master sent her cronies to Norway much before that and had managed to find someone who remembered seeing us that day we went shopping - a priest. They killed him as bait for Potter's outfit, and Potter of course took the bait. After the portkey was registered, Death Eaters probably just came to the same place."

"So it wasn't coincidence that Harry and the Death Eaters arrived at the same time?"

"Probably."

Hermione raised her eyebrows.

"The only other thing I can think of to get there... is the muggle way." There was a slight note of disgust in his voice.

She picked up on this immediately; she could sense racism like the rest of her kind, since she was brought up to look down on no one. "Please tell me you aren't still hanging on to your beliefs about race, Draco."

Draco shuffled his folded arms. "I... can't help it... it's hard to get over."

Hermione nodded slowly, letting the waves of disappointment crash over her. "It's really quite easy to get over," she replied tartly. "I know wizards are brought up to think of muggles as animals, no better than monkeys, but since you have spent almost a whole month in the home of muggles, and nearly two months in the presence of a muggleborn, I would assume that you have learned something about these people."

Draco shook his head. He was of course confused about the conflicting information; he had grown to respect Hermione, Jesse, Amy, Sasha, Tim, and Frank as individuals rather than as people belonging to certain groups.

Frank had confused him the most – Draco had looked into the eyes of the inferior being and had wished he could be as carefree, wished he could be as giving and as friendly. While Frank didn't exactly make an honest living, he was as honest as he could be despite it, and was blissfully unaware of the dangerous nature of the cargo he was "sneakily" transporting.

Tim was another story; while the man had gotten on Draco's nerves because he resembled the bookworm caricature of Hermione Granger, he was also exceedingly helpful and caring. He was another inferior being, one who Draco disliked because he envied that kind of attitude toward life, where it was okay to give and give and just appreciate waking up to sunlight.

Jesse was a witch, but was living a half-life, the life of a witch under the guise of a muggle. She was half-blood, and yet was more cunning than a lot of Draco's pureblood acquaintances; he wouldn't wish any of his former mates to have a duel with her, because not only were they likely to have their egos completely shat upon, but they were also likely to be missing an arm or two afterward.

Hermione... he couldn't even think of the countless times he'd been mean to her. Of course, he'd thought nothing of it before. To him she had always been just another muggleborn; the only thing that made her stand out was how easily she invited torment based on her personality, interests, and friends. But in reality, she was intelligent, strong, and extremely loving and sincere.

Yes... the lot of them just completely muddled his beliefs. He still could not get the Neanderthal picture out of his head when he thought about muggles, but he also knew that some muggles and half-breeds were worth respecting.

"How do you think of me, Draco? I know you hate me... you've hated me all this time, haven't you?"

He turned to face her, willing the strong aversion to her statement to die before he said anything he would regret. "Let's focus on how we are getting to the Death Eater base - "

"Haven't you?" Her black eyes were wild with tears.

He needed to say something to dispel this thought from her head, but what was he to say? Should he tell her the truth - that despite her birth, despite her previous relationship with him, and despite her allegiance to Potter, he was...

He was falling for her?

"Hermione, I - "

"See? I can't tell you how many times you've called me 'Hermione' since that morning! It was always 'Granger.' It had always been that, or 'Mudblood' when you were feeling mean."

"Look, you know I - "

"Stop dancing around the bloody question! Do you hate me? I should - expelliarmus!"

Draco's wand left his pocket and thwacked against a tree a few yards away, tumbling into the foliage. Hermione threw down her apple and started toward him clumsily, her wand raised.

"Hermione, we don't have time for this - "

"Au contraire. We've got nothing but time for this!"

Draco's back made contact with a wide tree trunk; Hermione's wand tip was now poking into his chest. Though she was as blind as she had been the second that spell had hit her, she looked as though she was staring directly at him, directly through him. At this proximity, he could distinctly see tan freckles dotted across her pale nose, the small baby hairs lining her hairline...

Hermione's resolve faltered as his breath pooled on her face. Her fierce expression began to harden with sadness. She sucked in a gasp, trying to keep tears from falling. "To think that all this time, I've been understanding you, been dissecting your pain, and have even felt guilty, felt bad, for you... I wanted to see through you and piece together the memories that we share now because of that night... I wanted to hurt the world for making you feel like that."

Draco gulped - the apple-cider smell of her breath was almost painful to have so close.

"I felt bad for every ill thought I ever had about you... but you could see none of that... the only thing you ever saw was my unworthiness, your hatred for my kind - "

"Hermione, no..."

"Don't even say anything right now, I could hex you into oblivion... I could actually kill you right now." She faltered slightly, her brain beginning to scramble. She... she had to ignore the warmth of his body and her own cowardice and just say it. "Because you don't even realize how good it felt to know you like that."

Safe, Draco's mind echoed. Be safe...

No. He didn't want to be safe anymore. If he had wanted to stay safe, he should have never been brought into this world, because there was no such thing as safety, no such thing as security. Life threw at you what it wanted, and you did what you had to do to keep afloat.

Draco pushed down the warning and cleared his mind before he could chicken out. She was about to say something else, and he could see it, in her face, that she was about to admit it to. Maybe he was imagining things again, or maybe he was bringing his own fantasy to the real world to mix what was real and what wasn't... but he was tired of having to be sure.

All at once, Draco pushed her wand out of the way and wrapped her in a fierce hug.

She must have died, for everything she had been trying to push down filled every cell in her body. Her fingertips tingled as she reached to grip his back.

His hands were suddenly on either side of her face, rubbing the tears that had escaped over her skin.

"Don't," she mumbled, tears falling, as he held her so close she was sure he could feel her rushing heart. Her body rejoiced as she felt the individual indentations in his fingertips rub against her cheeks; they were so clearly the same ones that had rubbed the drying blood off her battered skin on a night that felt so far away, on a night where he'd healed her. She wanted to hit him, beat him with tired fists over and over until she had no fight left in her; she wanted to make him understand what she felt every time he was close to her, every time he did something that surprised her and made her feel whole.

Draco brought his face down to hers; his lips traced from her eyes to her jaw, and he unconsciously let his mind detach itself from his body. Before he knew it, he was as blind as she, trying to absorb her soul and everything she was feeling into himself.

Finally, he kissed her mouth, tasting every one of her emotions mixed with the apple she had been eating.

She broke away, knowing that her head was beating like a drum and willing it to stop. "I... I can't do this."

"Kiss now, talk later," he whispered, closing the distance between them again.

He backed them away from the tree, knowing that she was using him for support; his hands gripped her waist, feeling her skin as her shirt rode up. She tentatively kissed him back, pushing her body against his.

Seconds later, her hands weakly pushed against his chest, enough to let him know that she wanted to stop. Draco brought his mind back to reality.

"I'm serious," she mumbled, though her low voice and heavy breathing said otherwise.

He released her, taking a step back. What was happening? He thought that she felt the same way! "Why?"

Hermione shook her head, feeling the loss of connection immediately and not needing to see him to know that he was wearing a distinctly hurt expression. "I already feel guilty enough."

"... Is this about Potter and Weasley?"

She nodded.

Draco ran a hand through his hair, anger starting to boil in his heart. "That night, that time... please tell me that what just happened was not a spur of the moment thing for you."

Hermione shook her head quickly. "It wasn't, not at all."

"Then what is the problem?"

She turned her head away from his hurt tone. No matter what happened, she was going to hurt someone. "I don't know. It's just... they already think the worst about us traveling alone together - "

Draco scoffed, circling. After a second, he turned back to face her again, his voice the epitome of control. "If they already think that, then once again, what is the problem?"

Hermione sighed. "You're right. There is no problem. But it doesn't make it any less difficult."

He nodded, sarcastic, not willing to acknowledge the moment that was now ruined. He turned around and picked their wands up from among the leaves.

"If you feel guilty, then maybe this isn't the best idea," he muttered, opening her fingers and closing them around her wand.

"Wha - what is that supposed to mean?"

"Nora made me an offer, and I told her no. She asked me to release you to the Ministry, in exchange for a lighter Azkaban sentence."

Hermione froze. Nora would make him such an offer? She did have some control over the Wizengamot, but the only thing she could do here was plead in his defense, and even then there was still a chance that he'd serve a maximum sentence for every crime he ever committed. All of that could easily amount to life imprisonment, without bail for at least 15 years.

Then again, it was definitely a better deal than facing death if they did not succeed, or life in Azkaban without possibility of bail if he waited until they did succeed. In fact, only a madman would pointedly reject such an offer.

"You... you chose me over a future?"

Whatever he had been about to say dissipated. Instead, he replied, "I chose to have you with me now, to have your company now. I chose to be selfish."

Hermione shook her head. "You basically sacrificed the happiness of the rest of your existence for my company. You didn't say love - you said company... I'm not worth such a thing."

"Don't say that," he said, stepping toward her, his heart starting to race. "You are worth it."

Despite the fact that they had only moments before kissed, Hermione still blushed at his words.

Draco was too afraid to try to hug her again, try to touch her again like that. Every impulsive fiber in his body had left, leaving a grounded shell that wondered even at the words he was speaking. "That's why I wanted to keep you to myself a bit longer - you are completely worth it." He watched her expression.

"You've... you're so different than I thought, it's maddening... I just... It's weird."

"Fine," Draco said, his emotional mask reforming a bit to allow him to heal from the abrupt stop to the romantic moment.

The opportunity for heavy admissions was escaping, and she knew it, so before he got more than a few feet away Hermione blurted out, "I feel the same way - I'd rather stay with you than go back."

He stopped, his expression wavering. She walked forward tentatively, reaching out with her senses and her mind to find him.

:Do you feel this?: she asked, and stepped into his personal space.

She shared her memories, memories of how her body reacted when he was close. He could feel her emotions as if they were his own - she was overheating, feeling a million sensations at once. Her heartbeat crescendoed in his head.

"That's what you feel for me?" he asked uncertainly.

"Yes."

"Then... what else is there?"

Hermione closed her eyes, trying desperately to create the image of him in her head, desperately to attach the Draco Malfoy she remembered to the complicated boy standing in front of her. She couldn't do it - she couldn't even think about the past, think about Hogwarts, Harry, or Ron. "There is nothing else."

He nodded, trying to keep his emotions in, keep them smothered; he wanted to jump up and down, wanted to release his built up energy. Instead, he smoothed down her bunched up sleeves, looking at her squarely.

"I do not think of you as a muggleborn; I think of you as Hermione. Please understand."

She nodded, her apology for her ranting radiating off her. "I understand."

"Wingardium leviosa... evanesco... I think this is yours."

Hermione smiled as her fingers enclosed around the apple, as clean and smooth as it had been before she'd dropped it.

Author's note: If you would like to submit any fanart, just send me a link ;)