A/N: Hi folks, thanks for all of your wonderful comments! I'm updating a little quicker than usual since the last chapter was a bit of a cliffhanger, but also because Nanowrimo starts today and I'm thinking I might not be able to update for a bit. The good news is - the next few chapters are all seasonal, so up next is Christmas at the Burrow ;) Please comment or review if you've enjoyed the chapter, I love reading all of your kind words.

Side note: the warning for panic attacks is relevant in this chapter.

Hermione arrives at Nott Manor with her wand in one hand a crushed yellow parchment in the other. Her coat is still on the floor of her cottage, her hair is wild with her frantic chase, and she's simultaneously gasping for air and shivering from cold.

When Theodore Nott answers the door, the only possible thing he sees on his front step is a desperate witch.

"Is he here?" Hermione demands, nearly pushing past Theo in her haste to get inside. His front parlour is lit with Christmas decorations, and Luna is sitting on a plush loveseat wearing a long lime-green nightgown with small red bulbs flashing with lights.

"Hermione?" She asks, standing. Despite her ridiculous attire and perplexed expression, Luna has her wand out immediately and has settled into a dueling stance that Hermione recognizes from the war.

"Draco—" she half-yells, "Is Draco here?"

"Is he hurt?" Theo demands suddenly, his wand also making an appearance.

Hermione can feel the tears she's been fighting back begin to win, and Theo looks even more panicked at the sight. She can't quite catch her breath enough to explain, and when she realizes she's shaking and the lights are spinning, Hermione finally understands — she's done this before. Panic and fear; so common in the months following the war, have long been her companions.

Luna murmurs, "It's okay, Hermione." She presses a palm into the centre of her back but otherwise doesn't touch her, and Hermione, so rarely prone to dramatics, throws herself into Luna's arms.

"Please breathe," Luna says, rocking gently as Hermione sobs. "You can do it. I know you can."

It feels like a lifetime, and Hermione realizes eventually that although Luna is the one holding her, Theo has an arm wrapped around Luna and a warm hand also pressed on Hermione's back.

"He's okay," she finally gasps. "He's okay. I just can't find him."

"Did you fight?" Theo asks. Luna shushes both of them, and slowly leads Hermione back to the couch. Her nightgown lights have quieted to a soft yellow.

"No," Hermione says, "he just heard Harry say something stupid. And not true. He said he was coming here, that you needed him."

Theo winces. "I haven't talked to Draco since the party."

"Where would he go?" Hermione pleads.

"Malfoy Manor?" Luna asks.

Theo shakes his head minutely, "He might, but it's doubtful. Draco has more bolt-holes than anyone I know. I'm sorry, Hermione, but if he doesn't want to be found, we won't find him."

"I need to!" Hermione shouts, curling her fingers into the couch cushions in pathetic imitations of claws.

Theo watches her somberly, then sighs. "Thelma?"

His house-elf appears, her wide smile falling immediately upon finding them. "Lady Malfoy — are you okay?"

"She's okay, Thelma," Theo answers easily, "But we're looking for Draco. Have you talked to Juney?"

Thelma frowns and disappears; the space before them is barely empty for a full minute before the house-elf is back, looking more worried than ever.

"Juney is not available at the moment," Thelma says.

"Juney," Hermione calls, "Juney — please, come here."

Thelma watches with enormous eyes, her ears drooping in sadness at the lack of response.

"Juney, please," Hermione says again, voice cracking.

"Lady Malfoy," Thelma whispers, "Juney cannot answer right now. If you… if you keep calling her, she will think she is disobeying."

The warning is unspoken, but Hermione clamps her mouth shut; if Juney thinks she's disobeying, she'll be punishing herself, whether Hermione or Draco would want her to or not.

"Okay," Hermione agrees, forcing herself to gain some composure. "Okay. He's fine. We know he's fine — he's just mad. He needs time. That's okay, that's easy. I'll go home, and I'll wait."

She's never been good at waiting, and Luna's sympathetic expression sees right through her; still, Hermione doesn't have much choice. She stands slowly and faces the Nott family.

"I'm sorry for barging in."

Theo jumps to his feet. "You're always welcome. If I see Draco, I'll tell him to talk to you, right away."

Luna stands, and Theo doesn't even look before he's wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her to his side. Her worried expression seems to fade with every centimetre that disappears from between them.

Hermione feels the ghost of a smile on her lips — how she had misjudged Theodore Nott when she had first heard of Luna's WPG match! He's the least Slytherin person she's ever met, and it's obvious in every moment that he loves Luna more than anything.

"Thank you," Hermione says earnestly.

They walk her to the door, and she watches them as she apparates away, drawing on their comfort and strength.

Her cottage is still lit from her first appearance, and this time Hermione walks in with much less haste. She takes the time to hang up her coat, and stare at their Christmas tree, and swallow her tears.

She's logical — Hermione reminds herself of this. She can fix this, she can fix it all. Harry's blunder is hardly the thing that will break her.

She heads to their bedroom and pulls her beloved journal from her nightstand. There are no new messages, but she can only hope that Draco took his, that he's waiting and watching and hoping, the same way she is.

She flips through all the old messages — mostly it's him complaining that she's working too much. Some messages make her blush, and some leave her pressing her palms into her eyes until she feels ready to breathe again. She presses his yellow note that broke her heart into the centre and flips to an empty page.

What she told Harry wasn't true — he's not hers. He's borrowed.

But she's his.

'Draco,

Harry is wrong - he said something stupid and untrue. I'm not pretending anything, and you know that — it's all real. Just remember how I remember us.

Your gift to me is invaluable beyond measure and I'm sorry that you feel it's been ruined. I love it. I want to spend Christmas with you.

Please come home —

Hermione'

'Dear Draco —

I hope you have your journal. I hope you're reading this. I hate sleeping alone. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Please come home.

Hermione

Dearest Draco,

I miss you.

I know how to get to Rosmerta and Kingsley. I wish you were here to help me plan.

HG

Draco

Harry had me for dinner tonight to apologize, but I just yelled at him some more, even though it's almost Christmas. It's reminding me of bloody third year when those stupid boys wouldn't talk to me. Surprisingly, Ron's on my side (I know, you're shocked, too. But he told Harry to stop being a 'self-flagellating idiot and pull his head out of his arse' … self- flagellating — I didn't even know Ron knew that word!).

Ginny's mad at Harry, too. It probably would have cheered you up, seeing the three of us shouting. He's an idiot, and I've told you already that what he said wasn't true.

Yours,

Hermione

Happy Christmas Eve, Draco —

I've known you now for 3037 days and been married to you for 41 days.

I've never pretended a single moment of it. Never.

Please tell me what to do to make you believe me.

'You know what, Draco? I've had enough of you sulking. I've apologized and I've told the truth and you have NEVER IN YOUR LIFE believed bloody Harry Potter before so why start now?

I refuse to spend tomorrow's Christmas dinner sitting at the Burrow and pretending that everything is just fine when it's not! I don't even know where you are, or if you're okay, or if you where we stand, or what to do with the bloody gift I got you

The war may be over, but it still exists, only now it's inside of us — I'm not an enemy, Draco. I'm not some villain lying in wait and pretending, and if you've convinced yourself I am, then you're wrongstupid mad!

I'm YOUR wife

I'm about to go do something foolish and if I end up in Azkaban I expect you'll bail me out,

Hermione'

Madam Rosmerta has run The Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade for decades; and she's also half-owner at The Leaky Cauldron, though she's not usually there when the school year is in session. Since the announcement of her marriage to Kingsley, she's been missing from both establishments, and new managers have taken her place.

Hermione remembers Rosmerta — she remembers all the Hogwarts boys' obsessions with her, how pretty she was, how she always smiled and listened when they talked.

Most clearly, she has remembered something Ron said once — that Rosmerta had been furious in the third year, when The Three Broomsticks had been searched twice by the Ministry in the hunt for Sirius Black, and how she had threatened to call her friends in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to stop the randomized searches.

The thought had occurred to her after she had (secretly) borrowed Harry's invisibility cloak, a perk of yelling at him the previous night. She had searched the entire Leaky Cauldron establishment, looking for any insight into Rosmerta's behavior. There had been nothing — but then again, Hermione had remembered Ron's words, and how Rosmerta spent the majority time at the Three Broomsticks, not the Leaky Cauldron.

She apparates to Hogsmeade under the cloak, nostalgic for a moment for the days when Harry and Ron would be under it beside her, all of them still small enough to stay hidden.

The Three Broomsticks would close shortly — her last opportunity before the Christmas holidays. Hermione strategically waits until the door opens and a few people exit, and she slips silently inside.

It's fairly empty, with only two tables of people sitting quietly. An unfamiliar wizard is manning the bar, and Hermione takes her time walking softly through the pub, careful not to step on any creaky floorboards.

Memories assail her — some good, some bad. How often she had sat in the corner booth, rolling her eyes when Ron's obvious crush on Rosmerta had appeared.

She sneaks upstairs, opening each of the doors with a hushed alohamora, and peeking inside. The Three Broomsticks has fewer rooms for their Inn that the Leaky had, and she completes her search quickly and fruitlessly.

From experience, she knows that most of the Hogsmeade buildings have a basement, and she steps carefully back down the stairwell to find the customers all gone, and the barkeep sweeping the floor. He's humming tunelessly to himself, and Hermione breathes deeply before she heads behind the bar.

There's a door in the floor, the same way there had been in the Hog's Head. She lifts it as quietly as she can, wincing at each creak.

The stairwell down is dark as night, and Hermione doesn't dare light a lumos until she closes the door behind her. She extends her shaking legs out to find each step, careful to keep the invisibility cloak from tripping her up.

The basement is full of the expected — butterbeer kegs and firewhiskey casks alongside a few boxes of old dishware, and plenty of dust.

The barkeep's sweeping and mechanical steps creak above her reassuringly; Hermione takes her time, opening each bin and returning it exactly as she finds it when there's nothing important inside.

She's nearly given up when she finally finds it.

An old keg, larger than her by far and impossible to move, sits in one corner. She wouldn't have noticed it at all, except for the slightest scratches on the flooring in front of it, all in the same direction. Unlike most of the other kegs, there's no dust in front of it, only on top of it.

It's been dragged on this floor, and often, if the markings are any sign.

She pulls as hard as she can, but the keg doesn't budge at all. Her whispered leviosa is useless as well. Hermione casts every diagnostic spell she knows, looking for any trick to the mechanism.

It's not until she snakes her arm behind the keg and feels around that she finds anything — and what she finds couldn't be more unexpected.

It's a wheel. It's tucked so neatly behind, and so far back, that only someone with very slender arms would be able to reach it.

A woman, for example.

Hermione spins the wheel slowly and watches in the dim lighting as the keg grinds against the floor. She pauses with each turn, listening for the barkeep's movements.

She doesn't dare open it all the way; instead, Hermione squishes herself in as soon as she can, finding herself in a dark tunnel. She closes the entrance behind herself, praying that it's the right decision and she won't need a quick escape.

The tunnel is long, and she feels as though she's been walking for almost an hour. Her dimmed lumos is just enough to guide her steps; it's so similar to the Hog's Head tunnel that Hermione wonders if she'll suddenly end up in Hogwarts castle, and have unearthed a secret that even didn't the Marauders didn't know about.

The anti-apparition wards lift as the floor slopes upwards — it's a relief to know she can once again escape at a moment's notice.

She extinguishes her lumos at the top of the tunnel and presses her ear against the floorboards.

She waits — Hermione has never been patient, but she forces herself to sit still and be sure. There's no noise from above her, just a gentle light that outlines the panels.

Hermione eases the floor door up, slow and steady. The room she enters is another basement, this one much less dusty. The light shines out from a single lightbulb.

A lightbulb!

She pokes around quietly, finding more unexplainable Muggle contraptions, and bins filled with picture books of unfamiliar faces that don't move.

It's not until she gently pries open a rubber bin that Hermione feels the understanding dawn.

It's filled to the brim with children's toys and books.

All with battery compartments and unmoving pictures.

There was a child — a non-magical child. A child that Madam Rosmerta had gone to extensive lengths to hide and protect.

Just enough leverage to get her to do almost anything.

Hermione swallows back her dawning horror, and creeps up the basement stairs to the doorway at the top. She hears nothing beyond, and carefully eases the door open.

The house, when she finally sees it, is unremarkable. It's a lovely little home, decorated with cozy furnishings. The fridge stinks of rot as soon as she pulls it open, the food long expired. Hermione closes it as quickly as she can without slamming it.

Although the home has no upstairs, she finds a large bedroom by the front door. It's got a mussed bed that would easily fit two, and an entire collection of magical books shoved onto the tallest shelf.

Another bedroom is on the opposite end of the house — absolutely as far as it could be from the other. It holds a small child's bed, toys scattered over a comfortable carpet, and what appears to be a working television set.

There's blood on the floor — enough blood to send Hermione scrambling backwards, her heart slamming into her throat. The last time she'd seen this much blood, people had died.

Someone had died in this house; in this child's bedroom, standing before the bed.

Hermione balls her hands against her stomach — she can almost picture Harry's life, his mother standing before his crib and daring Voldemort to kill her, daring him to cast the blow that would ensure her son's survival.

A loud crack outside the door startles her, and instincts born of war send her apparating away as fast as she can.

Hermione had learned the hard way that instantly apparating to your destination could be a deadly mistake; she still has nightmares about being followed into Grimmauld Place. After that day, she had developed a system with the boys where they would always apparate to a second location first, then to their endpoint. It had saved their lives many times.

Which is why Hermione finds herself standing in the Forest of Dean, a place she had sworn to never return to, with her heart pounding and knuckles clenched white over her wand.

She waits silently, barely breathing, but no apparition follows her own.

A warmth on her wrist draws her attention for a moment, and Hermione glances down to stare at the bracelet she has rarely removed since it was given to her.

The azure stones are hot against her skin — and Hermione remembers Draco's words: 'If you are ever in danger, you can simply touch it and call for me in your mind. I will apparate to you — no matter if I've never been in the location before'

She's tempted to slap her hands to the bracelet immediately and drag her stubborn husband straight to the Forest with her, but Hermione knows better than to act without forethought. Draco is just as smart as she is; something she's learned in the past two months.

He won't come, not unless he truly believes she's in danger.

But now she has a plan.

Since her marriage to Draco, Malfoy Manor recognizes her as an official Malfoy, which means she's welcome whenever and wherever she pleases inside.

So far, she hasn't pleased.

Now, however, determination pulses through her as well as panic. She's been where she wants to go before, and she could find her way back there without trying.

She lands hard on familiar, cold marble floors.

Her bracelet is cool again on her wrist, and Hermione just prays she's correct about her theory.

She swallows hard before looking up and finds the room almost exactly the way it appears in her nightmares.

The only difference she can see is there are no doors or windows anymore — this place has become unplottable to any witch or wizard who's never been inside.

But she's been here before; she forces her shaking legs to take exactly twelve steps and stops only when she stands on the familiar spot that changed her life.

Hermione looks up — a few wall sconces have lit up with her apparition. The chandelier is missing from the ceiling; the wreckage cleared away from the floor.

Her breath is coming in gasping waves, and for the first time since her very first panic attack, Hermione doesn't fight it. She lets it overwhelm her, lets her terror run rampant.

She imagines Bellatrix Lestrange standing in front of her, demanding answers to questions she either doesn't know or can't answer.

She imagines Ron's screams of fury and Lucius' raised brows and the evil in his gaze.

Hermione slaps her hand down on her bracelet — it's so bloody hot it feels as though it could light her arm on fire. Nausea turns her stomach into knots, and she's concerned for a moment that she might faint. She focuses as hard as she can on her memory of Draco's terrified face; reality seems to shift — suddenly, he's standing in front of her again.

Draco's hands band across her biceps like iron and he's shouting something, but all the sound seems to be sucked into nothingness, and Hermione's so fucking glad to see him, even here, even in this place where everything is awful.

She's shoved nearly into his collarbone, and the snap of apparition barely concerns her, not until she can feel plush carpet under her knees and Draco's nonsense words in her ear.

"Where are we?" Hermione asks raggedly — her voice is hoarse, and she wonders if she was shouting as well.

"Home, we're at home, you stupid witch," Draco says, his breath hot on her ear. "What were you thinking?"

"You're stupid," she says weakly. There's no brainpower left for delicate repartee.

He's still clutching her almost stiflingly close to him, and Hermione realizes she's still holding onto her bracelet with one hand, and her fingers have gone numb. She peels them back one by one and slowly wraps her arms around Draco in return.

"My bracelet works."

Draco laughs wetly in her ear, and her own tears are still streaking down her face. "I got your note you were going to do something stupid and then suddenly all I felt was this terror, you have no idea—"

"Oh," Hermione argues, "I have an idea."

He goes silent, and they sit in their front room on their knees, just holding each other. Hermione gathers all the anger and arguments and reassurance she's been wanting to throw at him and breathes.

He waits; unlike her, Draco is patient.

"I'm so mad at you," she finally tells him.

He pulls away only enough that he can meet her eyes. "You're mad at me?!"

"Yes," Hermione snaps, "Because you believed Harry over me. Because you just ran away instead of talking to me. You scared me."

"Oh, and you didn't just give me a heart attack?!" Draco hisses, silver eyes narrowed. The way he's still clutching at her belies his anger.

"Yes, and myself one," Hermione glares. "You weren't answering me, and it's almost Christmas."

Draco gapes, "You're daft."

She tries again. "I know you were mad. I know Harry said something stupid, and it hurt you, but it's not true, you absolutely must know that."

"I do," Draco agrees, closing his eyes.

"You — what?!"

"I do know that." Draco answers. This time, when he pulls away, he finally lets her go. It's unwelcome, to be sitting before him without his arms around her.

A cold weight settles in her heart — maybe… maybe this wasn't about her pretending at all, but instead, about him.

Gryffindors are supposed to be brave; Hermione is, and she knows it, but she's never felt fear like this before, not even during the war.

Anger, however, is an emotion she's comfortable with.

"You left me!" She shouts — her voice, it seems, still has some power left after all. "I thought you were hurt, but you were just a coward."

Anger lights in Draco's eyes and Hermione braces herself; he knows exactly where to strike, where to cut, to make her bleed.

"I'm the coward?" He spits, "Then tell me, what is it, exactly, that I'm afraid of, Hermione?"

"You're afraid you like me," Hermione yells, throwing shaking hands out at her side. "You're afraid that I like you. That this isn't so bad. That maybe a mudblood isn't so bad, and Lucius was wrong!"

Draco's face has gone cold, but she knows him now. He's furious; he's scared, and he's angry, and she's crossed a line by saying mudblood and bringing up his father at all. She knows it — but she's so tired.

"You think you know everything," Draco says quietly. It's almost more frightening how calm he is, but Hermione plows on.

"You are scared," she accuses, then softens her voice. "You are. I know you are. I'm scared, too. I told you that. I know I don't belong in your world, Draco; I've always known—"

"Stop," Draco says, lifting a heavy palm to interrupt her.

This time she's willing to wait. He's scowling, but he's not running, and Hermione will deal with his anger as long as he stays.

"We're playing house, Hermione." He murmurs, "And somehow, you think I'm the one who's trying to leave."

"You just did leave!" Hermione protests angrily.

"Ask me who I avada'd." He demands suddenly. "Ask me who I murdered, Granger."

Hermione blinks — she's not sure what she's expecting, but it's not this. Dread courses through her; the war had made them into grief, into warriors, into creatures of splintered spine and blood, and she has no doubt that Draco is as capable of great and terrible things as she is.

What she needs to know, though, is why it's so important.

"Who did you avada?" Hermione whispers.

Draco stares her down without a hint of regret or fear; if he's feeling any emotions at all, she's not privy to them.

"On November 2nd, 1998, six months to the day that the battle ended," Draco intones, "I killed my father in his Azkaban cell."

Hermione has no love for Lucius Malfoy, but her hand claps to her heart in shock. Draco has just admitted to murder; not collateral damage of the war, as Greyback had been to her, but a premeditated murder.

The repercussions of which she grasps instantly — Narcissa Malfoy, his beloved mother, dead at 45.

"Your mother," she breathes, and for the first time since Draco had demanded she ask, he winces.

"I didn't realize," he says softly, "I knew they were bound, of course, but… well, the bond had never prevented him from hurting her. I didn't realize his death would cause her own."

Silence falls between them, and Hermione's thoughts spin with everything she's learned today.

"Why are you telling me this?" Hermione finally asks.

Draco clears his throat. "I was surprised when Potter said you were pretending —"

"I wasn't—"

"I know," Draco scowls, "I'm not stupid."

Hermione matches his frown, "Then why didn't you just come home, I wrote—"

"I'm in love with you—" Draco snaps. Hermione flinches at his volume, and stares as he freezes infinitesimally after the words escape him; she's surprised him into this declaration, and in a very un-Slytherin move, he's shown his hand.

"I'm in love with you, Hermione." He repeats, more calmly this time. "You want to know why I disappeared? That's why. I watched for years as my mother fought to escape a man who didn't love her, and when she was finally free of him, I held the only person I ever loved in my arms as she died, and it was my fucking fault. So no. I don't think you're pretending, but I'm tired of watching another person I love destroy herself to get out of this."

Hermione can't help but gape — of the many things Malfoy may have thought when Harry Potter said the word pretending; this was not one. He had told her, right from the very beginning, that he didn't want a marriage like his parents. The shock at knowing Draco murdered his father has bled into acceptance; Draco Malfoy is many things, and one of them has always been ruthless. Narcissa Malfoy had been the one thing he had always loved — Hermione has no doubt that this weakness had been exploited throughout the war.

What leaves her filled with dread is the idea that she has somehow made him believe he is anything like his father — has she done enough to tell him he's nothing like Lucius? How could he think that their marriage was something she wanted to escape, the same way his mother had wanted to escape her own?

Hermione thinks of how easily she had said he's mine to Harry. She thinks of how miserable the last forty-eight hours have been; how she'd sobbed over a husband she had once thought she didn't want. How she'd missed him; missed his snark, and talking to him, and how he read books over breakfast instead of mocking her for doing the same.

Hermione considers all the letters he has written her, and the way he had expected her to hide away again after he had first made love to her. The way he has given everything; his Manor, his money, his space, his forgiveness and apologies. He's given so much more than she has to this marriage.

It's a wonder she hadn't realized before — he's in love with her.

And he thinks she's dismantling the WPG to escape him.

"No!" Hermione blurts — Draco is easing away from her, his expression once again a mask.

"No?" Draco questions.

This time, she doesn't hesitate. Hermione leans forward and falls into him with all the grace her exhausted muscles have — she's swimming in leftover adrenaline and desperate not to be misunderstood.

"You killed your father to free your mother, didn't you?" Hermione asks, holding tight so he can't escape. "Why then? Why November?"

"He'd been approved a Christmas visit home under Ministry supervision. I'd found mother hiding when she heard the news, inconsolable." Draco says emotionlessly.

Hermione swallows this information and carefully, gently, releases her hold on him and presses her palms into his jawline, capturing his face before his.

"I'm muggle-born." She says, brushing both thumbs against his cheeks softly.

"Shockingly, I'm quite aware of that fact," Draco replies dryly.

He's not pulling away, but there's nothing but ice in his eyes. Hermione fights to find the correct words — there is no right way to give this to him, but she's desperate to try.

"I don't want you to give up everything for me," Hermione whispers. It's foolish, but it weighs on her — in a marriage with her, he loses his large ancestral Manor, his ledgers and histories of pureblood heritage, and any dreams of tiny pureblood heirs running around he might have had.

With her — he is a blood traitor, WPG or not.

Draco's gaze never falters, but he raises his own warm hands and lays them on top of her own, trapping her palms against his jaw.

"Listen to me, Granger," he commands steadily. "There is an infinite number of things I would sacrifice for you, and you've never asked me to give up any of them."

Tears warp her vision. "I'm trying to dismantle the WPG to help people who are trapped in loveless marriages. It's never been about escaping you." She says this all breathlessly — and though it's the truth, it's not enough. It will never be enough.

"And when we dismantle it?" He asks — and she nearly chokes when he says we — how had she not noticed that he is always, always, on her side.

"We're nothing like your parents, Draco," she whispers, the words dragged out of her like bone and gristle, "there's nothing here to fight or escape. I love you. I'm in love with you."

"Say it again—" he demands, his hands dropping from hers to drag her closer to him. She finds herself practically on his lap, arms twined behind his neck.

"I love you," she says, "I'd marry you again — over and over and over again."

She's hardly capable of understanding how she winds up on her back in front of their fireplace, but the carpet is still soft under her skin, and Draco is a blazing heat down her front. He kisses her like he's breathing her — his hands plunder in her tangled hair, and he practically tears her blouse off in his haste.

She's no help. She tugs at the hem of his shirt until he obliges her and removes it, and she runs her fingers in claws down his back. She sucks on the pulse point on his neck and hopes she leaves marks; hopes he carries her around with him for the rest of their life.

Draco slides down her body and makes use of his tongue — he curls into her and grips her thighs until she's shaking and repeating his name like a prayer. He's incessant, and she snarls fingers in his hair to pull him back up. He kisses her, and she tastes herself on his lips, and when he slides into her, she wonders how the fuck she got this.

"Hermione," he growls into her neck, and she answers him with a throaty cry when he snakes a hand between them to rub at her clit until she's clenching around him all over again. He drives into her again and again until he's gasping with passion, and finally stills.

The weight of him eventually turns from comforting to heavy, and she pushes at his ribs until he rolls over. He mutters a scourgify and drags her over until she's draped over him instead.

"I'm sorry," she says.

He raises an eyebrow, "I hope you're not sorry for that."

"No," she protests, "that was excellent. I meant I'm sorry for making you feel like you weren't important."

"It's fine, Granger."

"No, it's not." She argues. "It's not fine. You're important. We're married."

"That we are," Draco agrees.

Hermione steels herself. "Well, I don't know about you, but I'd like to stay that way."

Draco eyes her, looking very much like that cat that caught the canary. "You're sure?"

Hermione feels the corners of her lips turn up. "Very."

"I don't care that you're muggle-born," Draco says.

Hermione whispers, "Say it again?"

Draco pulls her closer, and she curls her face into the warmth of his neck. His heart pounds under her ear, steady and sure and honest.

"I don't care that you're muggle-born," he says into her hair. "I only care that you're mine."

"Okay," she agrees, and his arms tighten around her. The clock hovers right before the midnight marker, and Hermione closes her eyes, thankful that for the first time in years, she won't wake up alone on Christmas morning.