Hermione expected Draco to look away from her the same way he had after she finished sharing her own memories, but she was surprised to see his worried eyes looking back at her. He searched her face for something, and her heart shuddered in her chest when she realized the expression that he was wearing was one of shame.

Dennis still stood as Hermione sidled past him, one hand on his elbow. Without a word, she scooted Dennis's chair closer to Draco's. The idea that this perhaps was too much—too obtrusive for their current setting, too brazen for this stage in their relationship—barely flitted through her mind as she took Dennis' seat and laced her fingers through Draco's. Looking back up at him, the furrow in his brow had faded, and he returned her half smile, though it didn't show in his eyes the way she loved.

Dennis never faltered; he just turned to Hermione's open seat and sank into it. As she looked at their entwined hands, she couldn't understand what Draco had been worried about. Other than the open vulnerability of sharing his memories, he certainly had nothing to be ashamed of. She'd already known a few bits and pieces of his story, and she'd managed to piece more together just from what he'd told her, but having seen all that he'd gone through, he had no need for the guilty expression he'd worn as soon as they'd returned from the pensieve, as if he was worried that his memories would change something between them.

She knew it wouldn't help him, but she wanted nothing more than to leave this room and to shield him from all of it, from having to talk about everything now. She remembered all too well how hard it was to actually speak to what everyone had seen in her own memories, possibly harder than just sharing them to begin with. But that was all part of the process. Wasn't that what they were here for?

Draco gripped her hand, his own clammy as he pulled her gaze back up to his face. He swallowed thickly, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, and without hesitation, she leaned forward, her left hand brushing his cheek and scuffing across his stubble, and kissed him. He loosened the grip on her hand, the tension abating a bit in his face after she pulled away.

Seamus's voice broke through the silence, causing eight sets of eyes to jump toward his. "Shit, man," he said, rubbing a hand down his face, "I feel like an asshole."

"Well, you are an asshole, so…," Draco said, looking seriously at Seamus before a smirk curled up one side of his mouth.

He's certainly able to deflect at the drop of a hat, she thought, and Seamus scoffed as he shook his head in disbelief. "Seriously. You just sat there and took it when we first got here. Why didn't you ever—"

"Would you have believed me?"

Seamus opened his mouth but then hesitated before closing it with a sigh as he reclined back into his chair. Dropping his gaze momentarily, he shook his head.

Draco said nothing, just nodded and lifted one hand as if to say, "See?"

Hermione glanced around at the others, and she was momentarily taken aback to see that along with Seamus, both Parvati and Dennis looked abashed as well. It was ridiculous, honestly, that after all they'd fought for in the war, after all the cries for equality and tolerance, that they were still divided, or had been when they'd first gotten here. There were still lines drawn down the middle, separating those who were good and those who weren't.

Here, in this forced proximity with one another, they'd learned that those lines were inaccurate at best, and at their worst, they were damaging. They'd overcome those barriers separating them from each other, prying their way through them despite the amount of rubble in their paths—but the rest of the world had not. The memories of their first few weeks here was proof enough of that.

When silence permeated the room again, Walt said, "Draco, thank you for sharing with us. I know…" He cleared this throat, looking a bit rattled along with the rest of them after seeing into Draco's mind and learning just how awful it had been for even those with Voldemort's brand marring their skin. "I know that couldn't have been easy." Walt leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and dropping his chin onto his clasped hands.

He seemed to be trying to determine where to start when he clicked his tongue and said, "I think we should talk about why you started with memories of your father. What made you choose those?"

Draco shifted in his seat, his free hand seeking the signet ring on the hand still holding Hermione's. She started to let go, to allow him to self-soothe in the way he always did when he was uncomfortable, but instead, he dropped his other hand to his lap, as if he hadn't realized until then what he'd been doing.

He took a breath, and hesitated, chewing his bottom lip again before bringing his gaze up to meet Walt's. "I'm not making excuses. I'm not trying to place blame on anyone else for the things I've done wrong, but I wanted… I thought maybe it would at least be an explanation." Draco's grip on Hermione's hand tightened, and she felt like he was speaking directly to her, not to the rest of the room, even though he never faced her.

"That was the first time I remember hearing that word… but after that, it was a common occurrence in my home, from my father at least. From as early as I can remember, he talked about how superior we were, how everything wrong with the world was due to Muggles and those with impure blood." His brow furrowed as his eyes shifted upward, and, even though he'd already apologized multiple times, the look he was wearing as he met her gaze said that he still hadn't forgiven himself for the times he'd spat that word at her himself. When she gave his hand a squeeze, he sighed and continued, the pained expression never leaving his face. "I wish I could say that I saw it for what it was, but I didn't. My father was never wrong, and he'd certainly never lie, not to me anyway. So, I bought into it all."

"When—when Voldemort came back, I started questioning it. To me, my father was the most powerful man in the world, and when Voldemort came into our lives, he became someone else." Draco's face shifted from indifference to disgust. "He bowed down to him, groveled at his feet for forgiveness. It—it turned my entire world upside down." He cleared his throat and added, "You saw what happened when I called him on that."

After a brief pause, Walt asked, "Was that normal? For him to hit you." Draco's frown deepened as he shook his head. "No. That was the only time."

"Do you think your aunt's presence had anything to do with that? Perhaps he was trying to keep up appearances?"

Draco's features relaxed again as he shrugged. On the outside, he looked completely apathetic, unfazed by his own memories, but Hermione knew him well enough to know now when he was blocking people out.

Apparently so did Walt.

"Come on, Draco," he said, a pointed expression on his face, "I thought we were all being honest here."

Draco slowly lifted his gaze toward Walt's, his glare reminiscent of the boy he used to be. The tension in the air was thick, falling over them in the same way the haze had in Draco's memories. But Walt refused to be cowed under the heat of his stare. He merely lifted his eyebrows questioningly.

"So that makes it okay, then?" Draco asked, his cheeks flushing. "It's okay to hit your children if you have a good enough reason for it?"

Walt didn't take the bait. His voice remained calm as he said, "That's not what I said, Draco." Casting a quick glance around the room, Hermione noticed that everyone was on tenterhooks as they watched the two staring one another down. She brushed her thumb across Draco's knuckles, and the small act seemed to quell the anger in his face. He shifted uncomfortably again, returning Hermione's gesture before mumbling, "Sorry."

Walt inclined his head once and offered Draco a soft smile.

"Yes, it probably did have something to do with her being there." Draco glanced toward Hermione and added, "Perhaps he thought he was protecting us in the only way he knew how." He turned his eyes back on Walt and added quickly, "That doesn't make him right though."

"Of course not. But you of all people should recognize that the right choice is very rarely the easy one."

Hermione cut her eyes at Draco again, expecting him to be seething after 'you of all people,' but Draco had managed to rein in his misplaced anger, and rather than making the situation worse, Walt's comments just left Draco looking chagrined, his gaze dropping from Walt's in discomfort at his earlier outburst.

"As you said, not excuses, just an explanation. But we can move on if you'd rather not talk about that. I'm not forcing anything here, Draco. This is about you." Walt folded his hands across his lap and looked intently at Draco. "Now, about your next memory, the one where you took the Mark. Would you like to talk about that one?"

Before Draco could speak, Dennis said, "I didn't realize the Mark would work if you were being forced." His face immediately reddened when everyone looked at him, as if he hadn't meant to say what he was thinking aloud.

"It won't." Draco removed his hand from Hermione's and unbuttoned his left sleeve. Pulling the cuff up past his forearm, he met Dennis's wide-eyed gaze unflinchingly. "I wasn't forced."

Dennis swallowed, a blush creeping up his cheeks again, like he was somehow the guilty one. Draco pulled his sleeve back down and rebuttoned it as he continued speaking, his voice tight and monotonous.

"I was terrified. I knew if I refused, he'd kill me and my mother. I really had no other choice, yes, but that doesn't mean I didn't want it. I…," he hesitated, struggling to find the right words, and looked up at the ceiling with a sigh. "By that point I knew he was a liar. I knew he was just using me and everyone else to get what he wanted, but I still believed in all that blood supremacy bullshit. Or at least I wanted to. I could see all the flaws in it but admitting that it was all bullshit would mean I'd be admitting that everything about my life was too. And—" Draco dropped his gaze to the floor again and began twisting his signet ring around his finger. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't see that as my opportunity to no longer live in my father's shadow."

He'd already told her this, when they'd been destroying his father's study, but hearing it again, watching him lay himself bare in front of everyone felt like her heart was in a vice. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and ran his hands through his hair.

"Do you regret it?"

Draco jerked his head up, looking incredulously at Walt. "Of course, I do."

"Why?" There was no malice in his questioning, but Hermione knew he was leading him, drawing him to a conclusion in the same way that he did them all in order to point out something about their situation that maybe they hadn't ever considered before.

"Why?" Draco's look of astonishment at Walt's questioning would have been funny under any other circumstances. He continued to stare at him as if the answer was obvious. "Be—because it was wrong. Because I was wrong. Everything I thought I knew was wrong."

Walt said nothing, and Hermione had seen it enough with Alys to know what he was doing. She couldn't help but wonder if it was something that all counselors did, nodding in understanding and then remaining silent long enough that the other person felt pressured to keep speaking.

It worked.

"Everything my father had filled my head with about 'the world we were creating,'" Draco said, bristling. "About how much better our lives would be, the lives of every true magical person. It's so fucking stupid, but all of that led me to believe that we were somehow doing the right thing. I had no idea the things he would—" His voice cracked, and a heavy silence filled the room as he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

Opening them again, he licked his lips and said, "The things I would do. The things I would let happen." His voice was barely more than a whisper, small and burdened by the weight of all that he carried.

Walt spoke just as softly. "That's not what I saw. That's not what any of us saw." Tentatively, Hermione coaxed his clenched fist back open and laced her fingers through his, hoping to remind him that she was still here.

"What I saw," Walt continued, "was a young man put in an impossible situa—"

"Don't do that," Draco said, looking up at him again. Through their clasped fingers, Hermione could feel his hands shaking. "I may have been in an impossible situation, but don't minimize what I did, all the wrong choices I made." He paused to swallow, the corners of his mouth turning down. "I took the Mark. I let them into the castle. I put everyone in danger. I've cursed so many people that I lost count. I almost killed two people, and—and that family— and I—" His voice broke again, and he snapped his mouth shut, clenching his jaw so tightly Hermione could hear his teeth grinding. He took another breath and licked his lips. When his deep breaths managed to calm the deep rising and falling of his chest, he continued, his voice heavy and raw. "I might as well have killed Astoria too. All because I was scared. Scared of what he'd do to me and my family. So, don't talk to me like I'm somehow the victim…"Shaking his head, Draco seemed to just realize that he'd been crying as he spoke, and he quickly wiped his face with his free hand.

"You aren't the victim, Draco, but you're certainly a victim. However," he continued, when Draco scowled at him again, "it isn't my job to change the way that you view yourself. That's a journey you have to take on your own, unfortunately. Hopefully, by the end of your time here, you can come to see more than just your wrongdoing."

Draco said nothing. Hermione squeezed his hand to get his attention, but he wouldn't look at her again, choosing instead to keep his gaze intently on the floor.

"I want to talk about something we saw in your memories that we hadn't in any of the others, the effects of your Occlumency. I think the first instance of this was when you were dueling with your aunt?" Walt asked. "For us, the memory seemed hazy, less sharp. Is that the way you experience it?"

Draco nodded once, his eyes still downcast. "At first I couldn't find the right balance."

"What do you mean?"

Draco sniffed and cleared his throat as he sat up taller, once again able to look at the rest of the group. Hermione knew what that felt like; it's easier when you're talking about something that you can distance yourself from. Something that isn't ingrained into you, burrowed inside your bones. Something that you have to dig out and present to the world as if it isn't a living, breathing, painful part of who you are.

"I'm a natural Occlumens. Most Malfoys are. I've been doing it to some degree since I was a child, but with Bella forcing her way into my mind all the time, I had to learn to strengthen it. But it took some time to figure out the right balance. If you go too deep, you feel nothing. It's a vulnerability, that dissociation, because you could do anything and not be affected by it. It's a dangerous place to be. I—I didn't want to completely lose myself. But once I got a handle on it, I was able to go just far enough to hide."

"Hide what?"

"Everything. The way I felt about it all, the way I hated him, how terrified I was. I had to hide all of that, or he would've killed me. It's funny," he said, though his face didn't match the words. "Bellatrix always said it was to protect me, all the times she used Legilimency on me. She said it was to learn to organize my thoughts for when Voldemort would inevitably use it on me too, but he never did. Not once. It was only ever her."

"Why do you think that is?"

"You saw her," Draco said with a bitter laugh. "Clearly she got off on it. They all were cruel, but she and Greyback were the only two who seemed to live for it. He wasn't crazy though, not like she was. He just… he thrived on how much he could hurt someone. What he could take from them."

Hermione wasn't sure if it was due to the way Greyback had hurt her and promised to do more or if it was the memory of what Draco had shared with her of the things he'd seen Greyback do, but her arms broke out in goosebumps as Draco talked about the werewolf that still haunted her dreams.

"Bella, though, she was…" He leaned forward in his chair again, shaking his head to rid whatever his first thought had been. "She was completely mad. I think that control was the only time she felt powerful, and any time it was stripped away, there was nothing left of her."

The room grew silent again for a moment before Walt spoke up. "I'd like to talk about something else now. I'd like to talk about where you ended your memories. Why didn't you share your time in Azkaban?"

Draco stiffened beside her. Hermione knew about some of what had gone on inside the prison, but not everything. She too had been curious as to why he didn't share such a major part of what he'd been through.

"I—I didn't think it was necessary."

"I think you left it out because, in your mind, you deserve it."

Draco's silence was answer enough.

"You shared when you turned yourselves in because the way those Aurors were treating your mother was excessive and unwarranted, wasn't it?"

"She was unarmed and… and she helped save Potter's life, but they were treating her like a criminal just because of her last name."

"And that was wrong?"

"Of course, it was wrong."

"And what they did to you was, what, justice? Penance?" When Draco once again said nothing, Walt continued. "I'd like you to share it with us if that's okay."

Draco swallowed, the sound filling the silence. "There isn't much to tell," he said. "It's dark and cold."

Walt's penetrative stare urged him to go on. Draco sighed, his shoulders falling as he gave in and began speaking, his words devoid of emotion. "It's dark because there are no lights. No glimpses into the outside world at all. None of the cells, or at least none that I've seen, have windows. It's a dungeon, fitting after how many people were locked in mine." The hand in hers tensed briefly as his voice became his again. "And…and it's cold. So cold it hurts. The only time my door was opened was to get a letter from my mother, a meal whenever they decided to be gracious, or the shit kicked out of me by whichever guard felt that I had personally wronged them by existing. Do I think that's justice? No. Do I think I deserve the pity you all are looking at me with right now? No."

After he finished, his breathing was ragged, and the pained expression he wore spoke to exactly what he thought he deserved.

"This isn't pity," Susan said softly, pulling his gaze from Walt's toward hers. "It's sympathy. It's compassion. We care about you, and that's what you deserve, whether you feel like you do or not."

Susan offered him a kind smile, and Hermione brushed her thumb across the back of his knuckles again. She knew she wouldn't ever be able to rid him of the guilt he carried, but she'd never stop trying.

Hermione hated that even after the time they'd spent here, the time they'd spent together, that he still believed himself to be guilty, stained by all that he'd done during the war. Though, now, after seeing into his memories, Hermione was even more sure than she'd been before of his lack of options. Just like Lucius had written in his letter, there didn't seem to be any other way. Even Dumbledore had failed him, the same way he'd failed Harry with all his deceit and veiled plans. He knew what Draco had been tasked with, saw how it was killing him, and he did nothing. He could have intervened at any time, and yet, just like with Harry, he chose not to act. Hermione already despised him enough for the choices he'd made regarding Harry's life, but now, knowing how he'd just allowed Draco to suffer, to try and navigate the war and his place within it all alone, she wanted to curse his portrait off Professor McGonagall's wall.

After Draco had finished talking about his memories and they'd all been dismissed, Susan lifted one finger, indicating to Draco to stay behind as everyone else left the room. Their hands were still clasped, and Hermione slowly slid her fingers from his. He'd seemed almost dazed, lost in his thoughts, as she left the room, allowing him privacy to talk to Susan.

Nicola's voice beside her as she walked toward Draco's room pulled her from her own thoughts. "You okay?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you. It isn't easy watching someone you love hurt." Nicola's gaze shifted downward as they stopped in front of her room.

Hermione sighed. "I'm okay. I just…wish I could help him."

"You are," Nicola said, squeezing Hermione's shoulder once before stepping into her room and easing the door closed.

After returning to Draco's room, all that she'd seen inside his memories continued to play through her mind as she showered. The Dark Magic of the Mark. The look on Draco's face as he'd stood on the Astronomy tower with Dumbledore. Narcissa's bruises and the way she'd hidden her emotions throughout everything. The bridge and the sheer number of bodies left floating in the water.

It was no wonder that Draco had a difficult time reconciling the man he knew his father to be and the man who'd destroyed that bridge and killed all those Muggles. Hermione was sure that had Lucius not been the one to cast the curse, one of the other Death Eaters would have, but that didn't absolve him of it. Suddenly, Ginny's words from months ago about the Malfoys' sentencing played over in her mind.

"I'd be shocked if half the Wizengamot wasn't still in Lucius Malfoy's back pocket."

At the time, she remembered thinking that couldn't possibly be true, but the man had helped kill all those Muggles. She couldn't imagine how hard that was for Draco. It was hard for her even to wrap her head around the pity she'd felt in reading the man's letter and the astonishment at watching him cast the curse that brought the bridge down. It had to be that much harder for Draco.

By the time she finished her shower, Draco had finished talking to Susan and now sat on his bed, his back against the wall. He was holding his wand, looking down at it with an expression on his face that said he wasn't really seeing it.

Her bare feet padded across the floor, leaving a trail of footprint behind her as she stepped toward him. Propping herself onto her knees beside him, she kissed his shoulder before resting her chin there. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

He shook his head. "There isn't much to talk about. Nothing that I haven't already said."

She nodded and shifted on the bed, resting her back against the headboard and lifting her knees the same way he was. "You have your wand back."

He twisted it between his fingers as if just remembering it was in his hands. "I thought it'd feel different."

"What do you mean?"

He swallowed, and she watched his brow furrow as he seemed to think of the best way to explain.

"I thought after not having it for over a year that it'd feel different. Like, that feeling you get that first time you held your own wand in Ollivander's." He turned his head to the side, just the barest glimpse of a smile playing across his lips.

"Like finding a part of yourself you didn't know you were missing," she said. She knew exactly what he meant. The moment her vinewood wand had touched her palm in Ollivander's, it was like her entire world shifted, the pieces falling into place to reveal a puzzle she hadn't even known she'd been trying to solve.

He nodded, a faint smile still on his face. He twisted his wrist, lifting the tip of his wand toward the ceiling as he continued to look at her. "This just feels like a stick," he said with a humorless laugh. "Fucking Potter." He tossed the wand onto the foot of the bed and shook his head. "My own wand doesn't even want me."

Hermione couldn't help but laugh as well as she lay her head over onto his shoulder. It did seem rather ironic. "Well you can legally buy a new one now, so there's that."

She felt him chuckle, the deep rumble music to her ears after the tension she'd felt radiating off him earlier in the evening, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't known what to expect really, after group and the myriad of emotions he'd cycled through while sharing his memories. Sometimes he was surprisingly open with her, allowing her the opportunity to see behind the mask he wore for everyone outside of The Willows, through the distance he kept between himself and the rest of the world. But other times, it was as if he himself wasn't even sure how he felt yet, so he had to think through it, withdraw in on himself for a period of time to work through it all before resurfacing again, just as he'd done after finding out that she'd read Lucius's letter.

But he seemed much more himself than he'd been under the rest of the group's penetrative stares earlier.

"Might be a good opportunity to start over anyway," he said, his voice dropping to just above a whisper, "with one that isn't so tainted."

She wanted to tell him about how it was just a stick, just a piece of wood. It couldn't be good or bad. But he already knew all that. And she knew what it was like to feel polluted, tarnished by both what you'd done and what had been done to you, so she just let his words hang in the air for a moment.

Remembering the way his face had looked after she'd stepped out of the pensieve, the mix of shame and regret marring his features, she thought of what Walt said. It isn't my job to change the way you view yourself. Though she agreed with him that this was something Draco would need to accomplish on his own–this reconciliation between the boy he was and the man he was trying to be–she wanted to help him to see who he was to her.

Without thinking, without allowing herself a moment to reconsider, she turned, climbing over his leg and into his lap and shifting so that her legs were on either side of him. Placing her hands on either side of his face and ignoring the look of momentary confusion on his face, she kissed him. Her fingertips twisted into the soft hair just behind his temples, and she pushed closer to him.

The warmth of his hands splayed across her back as he tried to deepen the kiss, but she pulled away, just enough to break it so that she could say what she needed to.

She kept her eyes closed, refusing to see any expression that might make her regret having opened her mouth to begin with as she rested her forehead against his.

"I love you," she said, and his hands immediately stilled on her back, his thumbs ceasing their strokes up and down her spine. "Don't—don't say anything back." Her hands trembled against his cheeks, but she pushed through, knowing this wasn't about her, not about whether or not he felt the same. His memories resurfaced in her mind, and she willed the tears stinging her eyes to not fall as she continued. "I know that's probably incredibly soon and ridiculous even, but I need you to know you're worthy of that. You don't deserve any of what happened to you. You deserve forgiveness and… and love… and—"

His lips on hers again ending her rambling, and, opening her eyes completely out of surprise, she noticed a crimson blush warming his skin beneath her fingers. He pulled her to him, one hand fisting the back of her faded old sleeping shirt and the other gripping her bum.

She parted her lips, every inch of her coming alive beneath his touch, and she poured everything into it as he lit a fire within her. In each kiss, she wordlessly told him how much he meant to her. With each insistent touch, each breathless whisper, she told him she needed him. And each time she called out his name, she hoped he heard it again. I love you.