Author's note: Hey so maybe- i think possibly this one may have a Happy ever after...? I've not forgotten my other wips, but i felt inspired and couldn't let this one not come to fruition. (This one is only meant to be 30k) it won't take to long, 3 chapters are already written out.
Xoxo
Catstclaire
Chapter 1- We meet again
Hermione took a ragged breath as her head swam. Men in emerald suits surrounded her on all sides. Their eyes reminded her of the pit vipers she'd seen dance once at a zoo as a child. They were cold, and unmerciful. They would hurt her given half a chance.
They don't know- they can't know.
She willed herself to believe that, and she held the wand that most certainly did not belong to her as bravely as she could.
The rain had long since soaked through her borrowed cloak, it was pouring down hard. They began to advance on her, her back met the brick wall of a store. She glanced herself in a puddle on the ground. She frowned. Like the wand, the cloak had once belonged to a Sloan James. Sloan James being the woman who's body Hermione now found herself occupying.
One of the emerald suits jabbed her with his wand, and forced her to her knees.
"Mudblood bitch." He sneered at her.
Fuck, maybe they do know...
Hermione had barely been risen from the dead for half a day, and somehow Voldemort's followers had already discovered her.
Hermione was contemplating her bad luck. How unfair for her to be resurrected only to be almost immediately murdered at the start of her second life.
Someone had just wrenched the wand from her hand when the suits began to disperse like some great force was forcing them away. That was when she saw him.
He wore a posh suit the same shade of emerald as the others, but his was cut finely where theirs were noticeably ill fitting. Heavy black chains were hanging from around his neck. His silver cloak billowed around him, as he walked nearer.
"She's no mudblood. I will deal with her. Leave us."
The pops of multiple apparitions rang out.
That voice took her back in an instant. To school days, and childhood commiseration. Hermione was certain she could have been dead for a 100 years at least, and that voice would still be as familiar to her as her own 2 hands once had been.
Hermione raised her eyes to meet the still imperious gaze of Draco Malfoy.
She expected that when he grabbed her arm she would be flung out at Voldemort's own feet in the next moment, but she was instead colored shocked to find he had taken her to a house. An opulent sort of home with columns and brass door handles.
Malfoy pushed her through the door, and the locks clicked and she felt the wards settle over them.
"You'll be staying here with me."
Hermione stared mouth agape. Water droplets were pooling down at her feet on Malfoy's marble flooring.
"I will?"
Why hadn't he at least restrained her yet?
Seconds ticked by, long and awkward as they appraised one another in the elegant entryway. He was searching her, she knew. More than once in her previous life she had been victim to the Malfoy gaze. In that life he tended to regard her with disgust at the end of his appraisal- now though she'd have to call it mild curiosity. He opened his mouth to say something, but then Malfoy spied the puddle around her, and she guessed he decided to say something else all together.
"Upstairs to the left there's a washroom. You can clean yourself up there."
"What do you want with me, Mal- sir?" She crossed her arms across her chest. "Why did you bring me here?"
"Someplace you're supposed to be instead?" His lips worked up in a coy little smile, and he cracked his knuckles. Then he was climbing the stairs slowly waiting for her to follow. So she did.
Malfoy handed her a fluffy white towel, then stepped back out of the wash room.
"Have i been arrested?" She blurted out when she couldn't stand it anymore. It was strange, bizarre, the fucking weirdest experience of her life (the new one and old) to have been handed a bath towel by Draco Malfoy.
He refrained from answering.
"My mother's old clothes should fit you just fine. I'll bring some up for you."
Hermione's rage was bubbling just below the surface. "You haven't anything else to say?" Her second life hadn't even been a full day and it had been extremely exhausting both mentally and physically.
She awoke in a strangers body without so much as an answer or reasoning behind her new life. She tried at first to convince herself it was all a dream. How could any of this actually be happening?
The only thing much she had managed to discern before Malfoy snagged her was that this new world was 10 years from when she died after the battle of Hogwarts, and that Voldemort had won the war. Those emerald suits, and Malfoy for that matter were his cronies.
10 years since the battle of Hogwarts and it was obvious that the wizarding world had been irrevocably changed. 10 years had changed Malfoy to. She saw it in the crinkling of the corners of his gray eyes. She saw it in the weighted way he walked- as if the whole world were sitting upon his shoulders.
She could remember her final moments in her previous life. They were crystal clear and fresh in her mind. The golden trio had been captured and brought before Voldemort. Ron had been Avada'd in front of them. Then Hermione remembered being tortured by Bellatrix. They made Harry watch, and she heard him scream her name over and over in helpless agony. Hermione supposed it had been Bellatrix who had been the one to kill her, but after that she didn't know what exactly had befallen Harry. Had they tortured him to? Had he been killed after Hermione's lights went dark?
That thought tipped her rage over. "Answer me!" She wailed at Malfoy viciously, and she threw the towel down. It felt unreal, her new reality.
But this was no dream she stumbled into, she couldn't even try to lie to herself anymore, this was a nightmare. Hermione had died, the Order of the Phoenix had been obliterated, and the world moved right on along without any of them.
Malfoy bent down to retrieve the towel from the floor and he pressed the towel back into Hermione's hands.
"You're not my prisoner. Nor have i arrested you." He turned the shower on for her. "Clean yourself up. I'm going to make a floo call. I'll be waiting downstairs. Maybe we can talk some then."
Hermione hardly acknowledged the warmth of the water, it wasn't soothing as she had found showering to be in her previous life. Instead she felt vulnerable in the same sort of way she once had with her hair being yanked back by Bellatrix lestrange in the drawing room of Malfoy manor. She felt trapped, like at any moment Malfoy would stop toying with her and strike.
When she poked her head back out of the shower she found a stack of clothes waiting for her, although she hadn't heard Malfoy come back.
Hermione let her fingers drift along the silky fabric of Narcissa Malfoy's dressings. The pants were dark khaki, and the top frilled with black lace at the collar. The faint scent of lavender came off them when she unfolded them.
She stared at her reflection. Or the reflection of Sloan James. It was entirely contrasting to that of her former appearance. Hermione had been fairly decent looking she thought in her former life, but now she daringly thought she could rival the looks of Fleur Delacour. Perhaps Sloan hailed from a family with Veela blood in it?
Sloan James sported a short, sleek, blonde bob it fell around her face in layers and made the hollows of her cheeks seem more pronounced somehow. Hermione had spied 5 tattoos across the skin of her back. At her cupid's bow a scar in the shape of an 'x' Hermione wondered about the marks. Why and when had Sloan gotten the tattoos? Then the scar, it looked rather fresh, it even felt a bit tender.
Hermione padded back down the stairs the way she had come. The banisters were polished, the flooring sparkled, and even the crimson colored wall paper screamed of exceeding opulence and wealth. It was the kind of house Hermione guessed her own mother would have told her not to touch a thing in when she was a child. It reminded her faintly of Malfoy manor, not that she'd been able to glean much of the place since she only saw it the once.
Malfoy sat in a recliner at the far end of the room. The floo was still warm. He was still dressed in the same outfit from before, but the had removed the heavy black chains and cloak. They were hung up on a wall behind him.
Hermione conjured up the last memory she had of Malfoy. After the Order had lost the battle at Hogwarts and the golden trio had been captured, they along with Ginny Weasley had been taken to Malfoy's manor. Hermione remembered the look on Malfoy's face when they were checked for wands, and weapons- he was just a terrified boy, probably as terrified as they had been even.
Looking at him now, he was no longer a boy, he had grown into a very handsome man and it was to Hermione's own chagrin she admitted that. Something about him stirred her insides and sent them a flutter.
Malfoy watched her as she floated around the room surveying her surroundings. The bookcase nearest her held vases of flowers, and a line of silver framed photographs.
She felt Malfoy's eyes on her all the while, tension thrummed in her chest.
The photographs mostly showed pictures of Malfoy with his own mother and father as he had grown. However there were 2 photographs that made Hermione suddenly desperate to uncover their reason for being present.
"Luna Lovegood?"
A small glimmer of hope swelled in Hermione's chest overtaking any emotion from before. Luna her friend, Luna would help her, she would be safe with her.
The first picture showed Luna side to side with Malfoy neither of them smiled, and a small bundle was between them. A baby. The second photo showed Malfoy and who Hermione suspected to be the same child in the first photo a few years later. The boy had Malfoy's icy blonde hair, and the same aristocratic arch to his nose.
"Indeed."
Hermione nearly sighed with relief.
"She's around somewhere- perhaps i might pay the lady of the house my respects as well?"
"She's dead." Malfoy began to inspect his nails in a disturbingly carefree manner like he'd told her about the weather, and not a devastating revelation regarding the fate of her friend.
Of course she was. Hermione instantly deflated, and the glimmer of hope she briefly felt withered away. Luna. Dead. How could Hermione have expected anything less.
"Was it some sort of political marriage then- you don't seem very broken up about it."
"The dark lord proposed the marriage, i aquienced."
"And-did Lu- Lovegood aquience as well?"
Hermione suppressed a gag. The thought of Luna being forced into a marriage, and being forced into bearing the next Malfoy heir, it was horrible and it made her want to empty the contents of her stomach.
"She knew the score. No one defies the Dark lords wishes, not unless you want to die of course." He shrugged.
"-but she died anyway."
Malfoy looked incredulously at her. Then he fumbled on his words. "Yes- she uh- yes- she did."
Hermione couldn't help but to be curious. "Is your son here?" Even if he was half Malfoy he was still half of Luna, Hermione felt an instinctual protectiveness for the boy.
Malfoy got up from his seat, and strode over to a cabinet. He pulled 2 glasses down, and began to pour firewhiskey in each of them. He offered her one.
When she took it he said, "Rolfe started Hogwarts last year, he's a second year now. I won't expect him home for a few more days, when they let out for Christmas."
Then Malfoy got that same coy smile from earlier, like he was playing a game with her.
"Certainly you already know that Ms. James, Rolfe absolutely raved about you as a first year. Best defense against the dark arts teacher ever, i recall him saying."
Malfoy took a swig from his glass, and waited as Hermione digested the implication of his words. He knew Sloan James.
Fuckkkkkk.
