13

August 29, 1999 – First Sunday

After returning from the ropes course, everyone seemed to be a bit cheerier. During lunch, they all talked about how much fun it turned out to be, to Alys's delight, and for the first time since they all came to The Willows, everyone was at least friendly with one another. Group that evening even went smoothly. They continued their discussion on "fears," but thankfully, it wasn't Hermione's turn yet. As she sat, her heart in her throat anticipating Walt's eyes falling on her, he turned instead to Parvati and asked her to share with the group why she moved out of her parents' house so soon after the war.

Parvati spoke, her eyes glassy and her fingers twisted together, about her parents' inability to even look at her. She told them of how her mother would break down every time Parvati walked into a room and her father began working extra hours anytime she was home.

"They can't look at me without seeing Padma," she said, dabbing her eyes with the tissue Seamus handed her. "It seemed better to just give them space. I'm sure at some point it will get easier, but until then, I just stay away." Parvati sniffled and paused. Her face contorted in obvious pain, and she added, "It isn't fair. I lost her too, and my best friend, and I can't even talk to them about it. It's like they lost Padma and I'm just her ghost that won't leave them alone."

They continued around the room, sharing their stories of their family's lack of understanding and support.

When it got to Hermione, she said, "I live with Ginny and Harry, and they are completely supportive. I mean, they understand it better than anyone I imagine."

Walt looked at her, waiting for her to go on. She swallowed, knowing exactly what Walt was expecting from her. She hadn't personally spoken to him about her parents, but she was sure Alys had. "I… I can't talk to my parents about anything though. I can relate to you there," she said, shifting her eyes toward Parvati. "I haven't seen them in over two years."

She looked down, trying not to focus too much on the memory of their faces the last time she told them she loved them.

"Once I knew for sure there was no other way to protect them, I … I obliviated them. I gave them new identities, new jobs, and sent them to live in another country." She looked up, meeting Walt's eyes. There was no pity in them, thankfully, or she was sure she wouldn't have been able to finish. "They don't even know they have a daughter."

There was a moment of silence, as they all took in what she said, likely imagining how difficult that must have been. Finally, just as Hermione was about to begin rambling, Dennis asked, "Can't you find them? And reverse it?"

She shook her head and scratched an itch in the center of her palm absentmindedly. "It can't be undone. I had to make sure there was no way they could be found. I didn't just hide the memories or overwrite them, so to speak; I completely removed them."

Hermione felt a little bit of the weight she was carrying around lift from her. She had been carrying the load for so long now, she forgot that it was there. She remembered something her mother told her after her grandmother passed away. She had been ten, and at the time, it was the most devastating thing she had ever experienced. She asked her mother if the pain would ever go away, and her mother responded, "It'll always hurt a little when you think about your grandmother, Hermione. You'll be able to remember her and all the good times you had, but you'll also miss her dearly. But you just learn to function around it. It becomes a part of you."

Hermione felt the weight of the war and all that loss following her around like a heavy fog. Just like her mother said, it had become a part of her, written into her soul, and she was just now learning to function around it.

She went to bed that night feeling sad about the loss of her parents from her life but also feeling a little lighter. She never imagined it would be so easy to share that part of herself with everyone, and she was enthusiastic about the prospect of learning to live again. She fell asleep with fond memories of baking cookies with her mother and dancing in the kitchen with her father, her tiny feet balanced on top of his. So, when the nightmares came shortly after, she wasn't expecting them at all.

This wasn't the first time. She'd dreamed this same dream countless times before.

She sat in the middle of her living room floor, her parents on the couch beside her. They were watching the same nature documentary her parents had been watching when she took their memories of her. Only in her dream, she watched with them. After a moment or two, she remembered she needed to protect them, to do what she had already decided needed to be done, but she always said to herself she would do it later.

Just like every other time, the door was blown off the hinges, splinters of wood stinging her face and chest. She tried reaching for her wand but couldn't find it. Always, in her dreams, she was defenseless. Sometimes it would be there, but it was like she forgot every spell she'd ever learned or she couldn't speak at all. Her hand would be outstretched, pointing at the danger ahead, but out of her mouth came only gibberish.

She searched, trying to find her wand in the rubble that once was her living room, but before she could, she was blown backward, her back cracking with the impact against the wall. It looked like a dozen Death Eaters standing in front of her TV, but then she realized she was only seeing double. Once she was able to focus her vision, she saw there were actually only three. Unfortunately, however, Greyback was among them.

Stalking toward her, he said, "I told you I'd have you, Mudblood." In the implausibility of her dream world, it didn't matter that she hadn't met Greyback yet.

He pulled her close to him, just as he had in the forest when she was captured, her back pressed firmly against his chest, with one arm crooked around her throat and the other manhandling every part of her he could reach. His rough laugh little more than a snarl in her ear as he held her head steady, forcing her to watch the other two Death Eaters send curse after curse at her parents. Sometimes they were flayed alive. Sometimes their blood was made to boil. In this particular dream, she could only watch in horror as Dolohov cast a spell that cut her mother open at the waist as her father, his shaking hands covered in blood, tryied desperately to put his wife's entrails back inside of her.

She fought him, kicking and screaming, to get away and help them, but he only held her tighter. Slowly the dream started to fade and the hands around her weren't gripping her anymore. The voice in her ear wasn't gruff and coarse but scared and familiar.

"Hermione!"

All at once, an explosion rocked her room, throwing Dennis away from her bed and into the wall across from her.

Disoriented from the sharp transition from the fear of her dream to the fear of whatever just took place in her room, she squinted through the darkness. Too late she remembered where she was and that she wasn't in danger at all, and now Dennis lay crumpled on the floor with a sizable dent above him in the wall where her magic had blasted him.

She leapt from her bed, ignoring the pain in her palms and her feet as she scrambled over the shards of mirror that lay scattered across her floor.

Voices echoed throughout the hall outside her door, and then all the others rushed inside, the lights coming on above her causing her to squint in their brightness.

"What the hell?" Malfoy said before Walt and Alys pushed through the others, each with their wand raised, leveled directly at Hermione. She shrank away, sliding across the floor and into the wall, and raised her trembling hands. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to." She kept saying it over and over again, and they both dropped their wands. Walt instructed Alys to call for a healer, and he knelt down in front of Dennis.

Before he could ask, Hermione said, "I don't know what happened. I was having a nightmare and I woke up to Dennis yelling for me and then this happened. I've been taking the potion every morning. How is this possible?" She was frantic, yelling at Walt from where she sat as he was checking Dennis's pulse. "Is he okay? Please tell me he's okay."

"He's okay. I think he's just unconscious." He muttered a few spells, and Dennis opened his eyes and started to stand. "No, no, stay sitting down, Dennis. You're okay. You've had an accident. Can you tell me what you remember?"

Dennis's eyes were wild as he looked around the room. When they fell upon Hermione, they widened in shock and remembrance. "I heard Hermione screaming. I thought something was wrong, so I ran in. She was thrashing around, so I tried to wake her up. I remember grabbing her shoulder and her eyes opening, but … I… I don't know what happened after that."

Hermione sobbed, "I'm so sorry, Dennis. I didn't mean to, I swear."

Walt raised a hand to silence her. "There was an accident. Hermione's magic was trying to protect her, and apparently you were perceived as the threat. Are you in any pain?"

Dennis shifted and cried out in pain. "My back..." He grit his teeth and said, "What did you do to me, Hermione?"

"I'm so sorry, Dennis." She pulled her knees up to her chest and dropped her head into her hands. She gasped in pain, feeling a shard of glass embedded in her palm slice across her cheek.

Walt was still speaking to Dennis, trying to calm him down, and Hermione felt the air around her shift. She lifted her eyes to find Malfoy sitting down beside her. She tried to scoot away from him. She could feel her heart racing and her palms felt like they were on fire. She wasn't sure how much was from the cuts across them or from her own magic.

"It might happen again. I don't want to hurt you too," she said, her voice shaking worse than her hands. Malfoy never hesitated.

"You're not going to hurt me," he said, taking one of her hands in his and pulling an inch-long piece of glass out of her palm. She winced and tasted the familiar taste of metal in her mouth that always accompanied one of these explosions. Her whole body was shivering and her teeth chattered from adrenaline.

"Come on," Malfoy said, pulling her to her feet and into the bathroom behind them. He turned the water on and plunged her hands beneath the faucet.

Reaching behind him without turning around, he pulled one of the white flannels from the rack by the door and began wiping the blood off her hands with it. It all felt surreal to Hermione, and she had to blink a few times to reassure herself that this was really happening. She wasn't sure what felt more unreal, having just blown Dennis across the room in the throes of a nightmare or that Malfoy was cleaning the wounds on her hands, sullying the white rags and his alabaster hands with her filthy blood. She almost laughed before biting it back, realizing that he would definitely think she was crazy then. He was standing in her bathroom, barefoot and wearing nothing but a black t-shirt and gray sweatpants. She couldn't recall ever seeing him look so … Muggle.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, before she could stop herself. Perhaps, it was the adrenaline still coursing through her veins or the strangeness of the entire ordeal.

He paused, his hand twitched, and then he continued, rinsing the blood from the rag beneath the running faucet. When her hands stopped bleeding, he brought the rag up to her face and wiped the spot on her cheek where she cut herself.

Despite the intimacy of the situation, which she refused to allow herself to focus on, he wouldn't look at her. She reached up and gently pushed his hand away. She tilted her head slightly, putting her eyes directly in front of his, forcing him to look at her. In the faint light of the moon shining through the window, she could barely see the tendrils of blue in his eyes.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked again.

His eyes bounced back and forth between hers before he said, "I didn't help you once before. I…" He dropped his gaze to the floor and then shifted to rinse the flannel again. "I couldn't do that again."

He turned off the water and left the rag in the sink as he turned and walked out of the bathroom. As much as the present situation had thrown her, Malfoy's words seem to put her in even more shock. This was the closest they had ever come to discussing what happened to her on the floor of his drawing room.

When Hermione came back into her bedroom, all the other guests, including Malfoy, were gone. Hannah and Walt sat on the floor beside Dennis, along with a healer whom Hermione had never seen before. Alys cleared the glass from the floor with a flick of her wand and repaired the hole in Hermione's wall. She waved for Hermione to follow her, and they both left the room.

Hermione felt eyes on her as she walked through the hall following Alys to her office. She walked by the crowd of onlookers all standing outside their doors, obviously still talking about what just happened, and had a moment to be self-conscious of her bare feet and short sleeping shorts before thinking, they don't care about your bare legs, idiot. They're staring at you because you almost killed someone.

She turned briefly to catch Malfoy's eye feeling at least a bit of solidarity after their "moment" in the bathroom, as odd as that was to think about, but she found him looking away from her and then cursed herself for being stupid enough to think he cared how she felt. Absolution isn't the same as compassion.

When they made it to the office, she sat down beside Alys' desk and folded her hands between her thighs. Anything to keep them from shaking. The numbing quality of adrenaline seemed to be wearing off, and both her hands were searing in pain. Flexing her fingers and wincing from the surge of intensity, she focused on the pain instead of the anguish in her chest at the idea that now everyone knew. She had hidden this secret, that Hermione Granger was incapable of controlling her magic, for a year now. She'd only ever shared it with Ginny, Harry, and Ron, and now, with everyone being witness to what just happened, the entire Wizarding world would no doubt know, especially given that they were supposed to have visits today.

Also, there was no way they could let her stay now. If even the suppression potion wasn't enough to keep her outbursts in check, surely, they'd force her to leave. Why did the thought of leaving make her feel even more like a failure? Hadn't she not wanted to come in the first place?

Lost in her own thoughts, she realized that Alys had been speaking.

"Do I need to pack my things?"

Alys looked at her, furrowing her brow. "Pack your things? We aren't making you leave, Hermione."

The tension in her chest relieved a bit and she felt her shoulders relax.

Shaking her head, Alys said, "You didn't do anything wrong. Apparently, the dosage of the potion needs to be increased, but this was nothing more than an accident. The healer is certain that Dennis will be fine in a few days and –"

"A few days? What did I do to him?" Her mind was racing. So far she had never actually hurt someone, but hadn't this been her biggest worry, the reason why she began locking her door at night to prevent Ginny and Harry from coming in?

"He has three broken vertebrae, but Healer Andrews says they can heal him up in no time. The few days of rest is really more of a precaution."

Hermione sagged under the weight of what she had just done, and a thousand questions ran through her head. What if the potion doesn't work at all? What if it gets worse? Who would she hurt next?

She remembered what Malfoy had said when she tried to push him away earlier. "You aren't going to hurt me." Don't be so sure.

"You have to stop blaming yourself, Hermione. You have no control in those moments. None. Very little research has been done on trauma-derived magical outbursts, but from what has been, only the most powerful witches and wizards suffer from it. So, you aren't weak at all. In fact, your magic is so powerful that it pours out of you in order to protect you. We just have to teach your brain that you aren't actually in danger."

It's impolite to admit as much, but she already knew she was stronger and more capable than most. She just never thought it would come back to bite her.

As if she was reading her mind, Alys said, "I know it doesn't give you any reassurance right now to know that your strength is the very thing that's hurting you. There's a common saying in trauma counseling. 'What protects you from trauma as a child hurts you as an adult.' The same can be said for your situation. Your body and magic learned to defend itself during the war and now it's having difficulty adjusting to the lack of a threat." She gave Hermione a kind smile and then it faltered when she noticed that Hermione's hands were bleeding again.

She stood up and walked around the desk. Taking Hermione's hands in her own, she turned them over. "Did you cut yourself in your room?"

"It was the mirror. I crawled through the broken glass to get to Dennis. Malfoy …" She didn't really know how to describe that situation exactly. "Malfoy cleaned them for me, but without magic neither of us could heal them properly."

Alys was looking at her as if she was speaking a different language.

"I know. I'm as perplexed by that as you are."

"That was … kind," Alys said, appearing to struggle with finding the right word. She took out her wand and began healing Hermione's hands.

"I don't think it's just the mirror. The last time this happened, I didn't touch anything at all, but they were still cut open. I think the magic hurts me as much as whatever else it hits." She clenched her fists a few times after Alys finished, feeling the slight sting of the freshly healed skin as it stretched.

Alys pointed her wand at the cut on Hermione's cheek and said, "Yes, that seems to be the case. In some instances, the outbursts die down over time, but in others, it continues to escalate. I have to be honest with you. Using a magical suppression potion to mitigate accidental magic has never been done before. I'm confident that with treatment, you'll be able to control it, but we are operating in uncharted territory here."

How comforting. "I guess I'm willing to try anything." Remembering the look of pain and fear on Dennis's face when he remembered what happened, she added, "It seems to be getting worse with or without the potion."

Suddenly she remembered how her palms had been itching and tingly for the past day or so, but she hadn't really thought much about it.

When she shared this with Alys, she said, "That could very well be a symptom of your magic returning. We're having a stronger dosage brewed now, but just make sure you let one of us know if you're having those symptoms again."

Alys excused Hermione to go to her room, but, feeling antsy, she decided to take a walk instead. She went back to her room to change into something warmer, and more appropriate for a walk outside, and then headed toward the stables. She hadn't seen Equuleus in a few days, and she thought perhaps that would lift her spirits a bit.

Of course, the moment she rounded the corner of the stables, she discovered Malfoy had apparently had the same idea. She tried to backtrack, but he turned the moment he heard her coming.

"Sorry, I didn't realize you would be out here," she said.

"Would you like me to leave?" he asked. Why are Slytherins always so damn forthright?

Yes. "No." She didn't know what else to say to that, so she just let it hang in the air like the morning chill. She joined him by the fence but none of the granians had made it out to the pasture yet. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, and the wind of the lake was biting. She pulled her scarf closer around her neck and plunged her hands into her pockets.

"Umm…Thank you." She felt her cheeks growing hot. Why was it easier to talk about trauma in front of a group than it was to thank Malfoy for a single solitary act of kindness?

"For, you know, what you did earlier."

He said nothing, only pulled his jacket tighter around him. Either the cold was already causing his face to redden, or he was embarrassed as well.

"You didn't have to do that." Equuleus must've heard them speaking, and he came galloping out of the barn. Watching him strut toward them made her smile and wish that she had an ounce of his pep this morning. On the way out to the pasture, she grabbed an apple from the kitchen, and pulling it from her pocket, she offered it to him.

The silence was overbearing. "I really appreciate it." She glanced over toward him and found him staring across the field as if she wasn't even there, thanking him. He had the nerve to refuse her apology and now was going to stand there and not even acknowledge her 'thank you.'

"Say something!"

He snapped his head toward her, eyes wide. "You're welcome! Fuck! Why are you yelling at me?"

"I'm talking to you, and you're just ignoring me!"

"What the hell do you want me to say?" He lifted his hands off the fence in front of them in exasperation.

She didn't really know what she wanted from him, and she surely didn't know why they were both still yelling.

She took a deep breath and said, "Is it so difficult just to acknowledge when you've done something nice for someone? You went off on Luna just because she showed people a part of you that we didn't even know existed and – "

He clenched his jaw, clearly his tell that she had struck a nerve.

Now or never.

"Tell me about Dobby."

His eyes flashed momentarily before his face relaxed. He took a step away from her and straightened his jacket, though it hadn't been crooked at all. "What about him? You already knew he was our house-elf, didn't you?" He lifted one eyebrow, looking so much like his father in that moment that it was infuriating.

"Luna told me to ask you about Dobby." She wasn't about to back down. "She seemed to think Dobby was the reason Harry and I spoke at your trial. What about Dobby would make her think that?"

He seemed completely nonchalant, save the blush creeping up his neck beneath his jacket. "Surely you've noticed that Lovegood is a bit of a nutter. I rarely have any idea what she's talking about."

Her first instinct was to slap him. How dare he talk about Luna that way! But somehow, she knew that was just playing right into his hands. Instead, she turned away from him, leaning her elbows over the fence rail and shrugged.

"Okay."

"Okay?" he asked, warily. He lifted his chin and looked at her skeptically.

Glancing toward him, she said, "You're so desperate to make everyone hate you for who you used to be. I don't get it, but okay." She shifted, turning her face away from him as Equuleus came back toward them, having run away when they began shouting. She took a carrot from her pocket and stretched out to offer it to the colt. "I think I'll just write to your mother."

She saw him stiffen out of the corner of her eye. "Why would you write to my mother?"

"She was very appreciative after your trial. I'm not sure if she spoke to Harry or not, but she talked to me." She twisted to face him, leaning one arm on the fence and attempting to replicate his look of nonchalance. "She apologized to me, you know, for what happened. And for what most saw as arrogance at your trial. I think she'd be pretty willing to answer a few questions if I asked. Especially if she knew you were trying so hard to make this more difficult on yourself."

She quirked an eyebrow back at him. Your move.

He hadn't moved at all, had barely breathed even. He seemed to be weighing the options in his mind. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he sighed in resignation.

"You are a real pain in the ass, you know that?"

She smiled at him, dripping with saccharine, and watched his eyes flicker in the early morning light. For the first time, since she started seeing these shifts in him, it hit her. He was an occlumens, and he was trying to hide behind his walls. She took a step closer to him, focusing on his face and thought that if he was able to use it, even slightly, that meant his magic was fighting the anti-suppression potion as well.

Noticing the way she was staring at him, he drew his eyebrows together and turned toward the field, hiding his eyes from hers.

He swallowed once and said, "I… my mother and I sent Dobby." He paused. Hermione waited, but he didn't continue. He clenched his teeth, rolling the muscle in his jaw, and the wind blew his blond hair into his face. She was tired of waiting, so she shrugged and lifted her palms. And?

He shifted his weight and glanced toward her, rolling his eyes. "To the dungeon. In the manor."

It all fell together like the missing pieces to a puzzle. Dobby had shown up in the dungeon of Malfoy Manor while she was upstairs being tortured by Bellatrix, and he freed them. He helped Harry and Ron save her before Bellatrix could finish whatever she was trying to do and hand her over to Greyback. Just the thought of how it could have ended caused her to shiver worse than the cool air.

Dobby saved them all, transporting them to Shell Cottage with Bill and Fleur, but he lost his life in the process, before any of them could find out how he knew to find them there in the first place.

"But how? You both were there the whole time. While…with Bellatrix." He snapped his head toward her just as quickly as he had when she was yelling at him.

"We weren't." He shook his head. "We weren't in the room. Not the whole time. You don't… you don't remember?"

"I was a little preoccupied." She thought back, trying to remember that night, but not the pain of the blade cutting into her flesh or the humiliation and shame at what Greyback did to her or the fear when she thought she was going to die. Instead, she tried to remember the faces of those standing around, those who were watching as she lay there beneath the weight of their stares and Bellatrix's thighs across her chest.

She remembered Greyback as he watched, a look of pure hunger and bloodlust on his face. She remembered the other snatchers, nameless faces, all staring down at her. Some sneering, others laughing in amusement. She remembered Lucius Malfoy, his eyes much like those of his son, black, and his face expressionless. He wasn't even looking at her. His eyes were focused somewhere across the room above her body. But, in her mind, for the very first time, she noticed that Draco and Narcissa were gone. She tried to never think about it; most of her memories of that night came flooding back in her dreams.

They had definitely been there before. She remembered Draco's unwillingness to admit that he recognized them. The look of fear on his face was just as evident as the one she knew to be plastered on her own. She remembered him turning his back on them, refusing to give his father and aunt a truthful answer. She remembered him being there once Bellatrix realized they held the sword of Gryffindor. His eyes had been on hers when Bellatrix sent Ron and Harry down into the cellar telling them they'd be next if Hermione died during questioning. She remembered the way she searched his face, silently begging him to help her as the tears broke free, the tremors of the first Cruciatus raging through her body. His face shifted from terror and anguish to detachment.

She remembered feeling confused amid the tremors and aftershocks coursing through her body as images of her life flashed before her eyes. She remembered thinking that perhaps she was dying.

She remembered all too well when Bellatrix tore her shirt down the middle so that they all could see the "filthy, Mudblood whore" for what she was. Through her tears and the breaks between curses, she thought Draco was there for all of it, but now, looking back, she could see him in her mind, but his back was to the scene going on in the middle of his parlor floor. His mother and father stood with him, none of them watching her being tortured. Then, somewhere between that last scene in her mind and when Harry and Ron showed up, Draco and Narcissa were gone.

Pulling herself out of her memories, she realized she was sitting on the cold ground, arms wrapped tightly around her knees and shaking all over. Draco was kneeling on the ground beside her, saying something, but the blood pounding in her ears drowned out the sound. Her breaths came in quick gasps, causing thin puffs of smoke in the air in front of her. And she looked up at the sky and tried to focus on her breathing like Alys taught her.

Draco never left. He stayed right there, waiting for her to pull herself together, his shoulder resting against hers, and his arms balanced across his knees. She tried to focus on the warmth of his jacket against her arm and the mist rising of the lake in front of them, anything but the burning in her palms. The last thing she wanted was to inadvertently throw him across the field with another magical explosion. Especially after just finding out that he basically saved her life. She hadn't realized how much she blamed him for what happened that night. It was like taking off a heavy coat after a long day of being outside in the cold. You forget the weight of it until it falls from your shoulders. It was like that, feeling the weight of the anger she didn't even know she felt toward him.

When she got her breath under control, she rested her arms on her knees in the same way he was. Without looking at him, she said, "Thank you. For staying with me."

After a moment, she dried her cheeks on the sleeve of her jumper and continued. "I…I haven't really allowed myself to think about … about all that. I didn't realize you weren't there in the room. I've…I've been angry at you for that day, even though I knew it wasn't fair. What could you have done? We weren't remotely friends. I guess, at the time, I thought that even though you hated me, that you knew me. We knew each other, and I kept waiting on you to do something, to intervene somehow. Then, I just felt like an idiot for thinking that you would. Rationally, I knew there was nothing you could have done, and why would you, even? But I still blamed you for watching it and doing nothing."

She took a breath and tried to stop her voice from shaking. This wasn't at all how she wanted this conversation to go. "And, seeing Luna's memories, seeing you step in and help her the way you did, it should've made me happy, and in some ways it did. I was happy that she didn't go through that, but on another level – " She didn't think he would be looking at her, but when she turned toward him, she found his stormy ocean eyes staring back at her, no hint of the blackness she saw in them in her memories. She thought surely, he would look away then, but he didn't. The look on his face wasn't one she had ever seen him wear before – it was the unmistakable face of grief. She thought perhaps she was seeing him for the first time, the real him, the one Harry glimpsed in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom seconds before almost killing him.

The haunted look on his face forced the bitterness in her voice to fade, leaving behind it only sadness. "On another level, I thought why couldn't you have done that for me? Did you hate me that much?"

Until this moment, she hadn't realized how much she had wanted to say all of this to him. But once she started, it just came pouring out of her, and she thought she couldn't have stopped it even if she tried.

"I didn't even realize how much I blamed you for that until now." She wiped the fresh tears from her eyes and shifted her gaze back to the lake. "Why didn't you ever tell anyone? And how did Luna even know?"

He continued to look at her for a second before he leaned his head back against the fence post behind him, looking toward the sky, and sighed. "Would it matter? Plus, would you have even believed it if Lovegood hadn't mentioned it?"

Would I? If he came to her begging and pleading for her help before his trial, like Ron told her he would, if he had told her this story then, would she have believed him?

"That's why I didn't tell anyone," he said when she still didn't respond.

"It does matter."

"It changes nothing, Granger. I'm still me, and you're still you. And Potter still saved the whole fucking world."

"It matters to me."

There was silence again, broken only by the sound of the wind gliding over the lake and Equuleus galloping behind them.

"I told Lovegood that I could get her out," he said, finally, his voice barely more than a whisper.

"Why though? You seemed to care about her. In her memories I mean. Why would you even help her to begin with?"

His jaw clenched again. "I can see how it would surprise you to know that I'm not a total monster."

"I didn't say –"

"She was the first person who ever listened to me. Really listened, without wanting anything from me or because they had to simply because of my last name. She saw right through me," he said, dropping his head and picking a blade of grass from the ground beneath him. He began tearing it into tiny pieces and continued speaking, talking slowly. It seemed that, just like her, he had been wanting to say this out loud for a while too, even if he hadn't known it. "Dobby still came to me and my mother when we called, so I knew he could bypass the wards. Lovegood told me to wait. The others had been brought in pretty recently, and she wanted to wait until it was necessary. If they escaped, the wards would be tighter, and Dobby might not be able to get back in for other prisoners. Then, you lot showed up."

He dropped the grass and went on, his voice faster and more like his normal tone. "When she started torturing you, my mother and I left the room and called for Dobby." He shrugged and added, "That's it."

She waited for him to continue, but he didn't. She knew there was more to tell, but she was grateful that he shared that much at least. At first glance, he seemed to be completely indifferent, but the steady bouncing of one foot gave away his nervousness. And he was twirling the ring on his pinky as he had been when talking during their group.

She turned to face him fully, and he lifted his head. His brows were furrowed in confusion and he tilted away from her, as if this revelation was in no way life changing. She laid her hand across his arm and felt him flinch. He dropped his eyes to her hand, but surprisingly, didn't pull away.

"Thank you, Draco." His eyes searched her face, like he was waiting for a punchline. "That was very brave."

He scoffed and pulled his arm away. "That wasn't brave." He stood up and wiped the dirt from his pants. He started to walk away, but then stopped. He never turned back, only dropped his face toward the ground. "For what it's worth, I didn't hate you nearly as much as I hated me."

Then he walked away, leaving her with twice as many questions as she had before.