I am not JK Rowling. None of this is mine.

So as usual, mega thanks to Kabg01 she is just too good for words.

Thanks to everyone has reviewed so far, this is now my most reviewed story ever. Particular thanks goes to 27 who reviewed the last chapter twice! So this one's for you.

The night before the wedding had arrived all too soon. Hermione had asked Ginny and Luna to stay at her house with her, the night before the wedding, as much to stop her from running away as to keep with tradition. It had been a pleasant evening, drinking champagne and talking about happy memories from school as they painted each other's nails.

Hermione had popped into the kitchen to find a box of chocolate biscuits for them to snack on while they gossiped but suddenly there was a commotion in the living room and she could hear Luna, sounding almost sharp for once, "I don't think that you should –" the door burst open and there was Draco sodding Malfoy. His hair was dishevelled and his eyes were bloodshot. A dirty blonde stubble shaded his jaw. Hermione's heart skipped a painful beat at how much his dishevelled appearance aged him. He looked just like Lucius, just like he had looked that day in the ballroom. Her breath came in shallow pants as she forced herself back to the present day, forced herself to remember that this was Draco and he wasn't the one who planted his pointy toed boot on her hair as she writhed uncontrollably on the ground so it was yanked out by the roots. Ginny stepped forward to usher him from the room but Hermione stopped her,

"It's ok," she murmured to her protective bridesmaid, "leave us a minute, I'll be alright,"

With a roll of her eyes, Ginny swept from the room, leaving the pair of them alone.

"You look like shit," Hermione folded her arms and eyed him appraisingly.

"Zabini, Goyle and Nott took me out on a bender last night. To stop me moping, they said. I managed to give them the slip just now," he grinned, wobbling slightly on his feet.

"You've been out for twenty four hours?" Hermione asked, horrorstruck.

"Ain't no party like a Slytherin party," Draco grinned, looking a little bemused, "Or at least that's what Goyle keeps singing," he rubbed the back of his neck, mussing up his hair even further, "don't know what he's on about really,"

"What do you want Draco?" By unspoken agreement, they hadn't seen each other since the night of her birthday meal, and any communication had been limited to potion making talk, on the occasions that he had not sent her owls back with her letters still attached, unopened, to their legs. She hadn't liked to admit to herself how much she had missed his company, particularly the conversations that had meandered between acerbic and flirtatious and had felt almost like playing chess.

He thought for a minute, looking around as though surprised to find himself in her kitchen, "Just wanted to say hi," none of his normal wit seemed to be present today. Whereas Harry grew loud and raucous on firewhisky, and Ron was prone to grandiose romantic statements when drinking mead or dancing after imbibing too much of his father's nettle wine, drunkenness did not seem to suit Malfoy. It dulled his sharp edges and slowed him down.

"Hi," Hermine huffed, waving at him, "Now do you want to go back and find your friends? I'm sure they'll be looking for you," she took his arm to usher him back to the fireplace. She could hear the girls' hushed whispers in the other room and she wanted to get rid of this version of Malfoy as quickly as possible.

"I miss you!" he exclaimed dramatically, shaking her hand away and slumping down in one of her kitchen chairs, dejected. Hermione's irritation fell away.

"I know," she sighed, sinking into a chair next to him, "I miss you too."

"Don't marry him Granger," Draco grasped her hand tightly.

"What?"

"Don't marry him! We could run away together,"

Hermione stared at him for half a beat before bursting into surprised laughter.

"What?" He asked, looking hurt that she had laughed at his suggestion.

"Oh come on Draco! Run away together where? You forget, I've spent a year on the hideout before and it isn't fun. We'd end up hating each other within ten minutes flat!" he looked like he was going to protest, "Trust me, you really wouldn't like my stewed mushrooms and hedge berries, or sleeping in a tent that smells of cats and mildew,"

Draco shuddered, "Perhaps not. Well, we could elope? Come back married?"

Hermione allowed the tantalising idea to wind its way into her mind, pretending for just a moment that all of the difficulties that Draco presented when he wasn't wasted didn't exist. Then she folded all the imaginings away in a little box and shut the lid, "You're drunk. You should go. It's my wedding night. We can't elope,"

"Why not?" a belligerent tone crept into his voice.

"Because of all of the reasons that you told me! Because in a few hours all my friends will be arriving at the Burrow to see me get married and I don't want to let them down. What about Ron?"

"What about him?" Draco exploded, knocking the chair backwards as he stood up, "What's that bloody Weasel got that I haven't? You're going to go mad married to that….that…dunderhead! Is it because he's rich now? Here, I'm rich," he started turning out his pockets, spilling knuts and sickles on to the floor.

"He didn't fuck about for nearly a year before he agreed to marry me, that's what!" Hermione shouted, her temper snapping cleanly in two, "he stood up to the plate when it counted! And he didn't show up drunk and upset me on my wedding night! And he didn't - he wouldn't ever - think I was marrying him for his money."

"Every time you fuck him you'll be thinking of me" He sounded so smug, so self assured, that Hermione almost felt embarrassed for him. Embarrassed that he could be playing the situation so badly. There had been a time where, if he had tried to sweep her off her feet, she would have let him. But this drunk, bumbling Draco - who lacked the humour that normally sweetened the insults he made, and who hadn't even tried to understand the situation she was in, even after all the months of living through it with her – made her question what she had ever seen in him.

"Malfoy, you're drunk. You need to go home!"

Ginny and Luna made no attempt to pretend that they hadn't been listening on the other side of the door, and at Hermione's screamed order to Malfoy, they bustled into the room.

"He's too drunk to apparate or floo on his own," Hermione sighed, eyeing the wizard who had seemed to accept he was beaten and was staring sullenly at the floor, "can someone take him home?"

"I'll do it," Luna said brightly, "I know where the Manor is – I stayed there," Hermione couldn't help but smile at her friend's curiously optimistic remembering of her time in the Malfoy's dungeon.

"Thank you," she said gratefully, as Luna put his arm round him and steered him to the fireplace, telling him about how he would need a gurdyroot infusion in the morning.

oOoOoOo

Using a mixture of hugely expensive muggle make up and just the lightest touch of glamours, Ginny managed to cover up the dark shadows and red rims that told of Hermione's sleepless, tearful night.

"There," she smiled in satisfaction, standing back to survey her handiwork, "that's the best I can do, and it's pretty good, even though I do say so myself. Honestly, I could kill that Malfoy for coming over and upsetting you."

"It wasn't all his fault," Hermione gestured to her face as Ginny quirked a questioning eyebrow at her, "Nightmares," she elaborated. Ginny didn't ask any more – she had her own share of nightmares. Seeing Harry lying broken in Hagrid's arms, the tantalising tease of Voldemort taking over her mind, Fred's smiling face. They all had nightmares. Hermione tried not to dwell on the fact that hers was the same one each time, a predictable slideshow of horrors that jerked her awake, sweating and gasping.

"Glass of champagne?" Luna asked, passing a crystal flute to Hermione and sipping from one herself.

"Oi, where's mine?" Ginny demanded, only half joking, as she poured herself one.

"Oh sorry Ginny, I didn't think you'd want one, what with the baby and all," Luna's protuberant eyes focussed on a point around Ginny's midriff.

Ginny's glass paused half way to her open mouth, her eyes narrowed. Her head bobbed almost imperceptibly, giving Hermione the impression that she was counting backwards in her head.

"Well bugger," Ginny said in the end, sounding almost like Ron, "Don't say anything to Harry, either of you," she warned, dividing the contents of her glass between Luna and Hermione.

"Congratulations?" Hermione tried but failed to hold back the smile that was threatening to split her face in two. Ginny started sobbing, half crying and half laughing, wiping her eyes frantically to stop her make up from running.

"Wow!" she whispered, running her hand over her flat stomach, "a baby…just….wow!" That started Hermione off with the same hiccupping, emotional laughter as the three women embraced tightly in celebration. Just at that moment, Harry entered the room, clearing his throat self consciously. The other girls pressed her hands with theirs and said they'd see her at the aisle.

"You look nice," Harry grinned, before his face fell comically, "Oh shit. I'm not meant to say things like that. Ginny'll bollock me if she finds out I just said you look nice. You look beautiful, radiant, a vision from heaven,"

"Don't overdo it," Hermione warned, holding up a finger.

"Nervous?" Harry asked, his forehead crumpling into an anxious frown. The panic that had been threatening to paralyse her all morning, that she had managed to keep locked down inside her while she had been getting ready, finally overtook her now it was just the two of them,

"What the hell am I doing? This is going to be an absolute disaster!" Hermione paced the room. Harry just perched on the edge of an armchair, watching her nervously.

"What if we fall out again, what if it's like at the gala again?" Hermione, who was almost hyperventilating with the effort of not crying and smudging her make up, sat down abruptly on the floor, her dress pooling around her. Harry crouched down on his heels next to her, confused at how the happy bride that Ginny had left had descended so quickly into this. He eyed the door and tried to weigh up whether sending a patronus for Ginny to come back would be worth the telling off his wife would surely give him if she saw Hermione now.

"Exactly what did happen between the two of you at that godforsaken gala?"

"What do you remember of it?" Hermione asked hesitantly, not wanting to repeat any of it that she didn't have to.

Harry took off his glasses and polished them on his tie self-consciously, "Well, you know me Hermione, back in those days I tried to lose myself at the bottom of the bottle of firewhisky at shitty events like that,"

"You said it made you feel brave," Hermione grimaced, "Ginny used to hate it. She said it just used to make you talk really loudly,"

Harry huffed out a laugh, replacing his glasses on his nose, "I remember you'd gone all out – for once you'd actually let one of those designers who were always offering you gowns to wear at events to lend you a dress. And your hair looked all…" he trailed off and waved his hand vaguely at her head.

"I had made a bit of an effort, yes," Hermione admitted, blushing.

"And I remember we had to sit on that stupid top table on the stage, the three of us. It was like a show for everyone else to watch us eat our dinner. Godric knows why, presumably the organisers had never seen Ron eat before,"

"When he eventually turned up," Hermione sighed.

"Oh yeah! He didn't arrive until about half way through the starter. At least he got to miss all the speeches. As if we all needed to be reminded about what happened in the war. That's why I got so drunk - I remember now!"

"You were playing a drinking game that you had a shot every time they said your name,"

"Well they shouldn't have those magically refilling glasses,"

"I should have known not to listen to you after that, you always spout rubbish when you've been on the firewhisky,"

"Why? What did I say?" Harry's cheeks reddened slightly.

"You told me that you knew I still loved Ron and that he still loved me. You said that I needed to forget all of the arguments, to wipe the slate clean. You told me I needed to forgive him. And that we were made for each other, and that if I so much as smiled at him, he'd be on bended knees for me to forgive him. You told me to tell him I loved him!" Hermione's tone was accusing.

"Erm, right. Well, just goes to show doesn't it. That's why you're the brains of the operation," Harry took his glasses off again and started repolishing them.

"Oh right, and what does that make you?" Hermione nudged him with her elbow.

"The looker, obviously," Harry grinned widely, "Anyway, I didn't mean that you should try to do it at the dinner table, not with everyone watching us like bloody zoo animals,"

"I'd opened my heart to the possibility of reconciliation!" protested Hermione, "Like you'd told me to! I wanted to let him know that I was ready to talk to him! And he just grunted at me that he'd speak to me later and carried on shovelling beef wellington into his mouth,"

"If it's any excuse, I think he was even drunker than me,"

"Actually, that's no excuse," Hermione sniffed, "well when later came, he had just disappeared. I spent ages looking for him. And then when I found him….he…" even with her unusually large vocabulary, she was unable to find the words to express what it had been like to come across Ron and Lavender snogging on the dance floor, her arms wrapped round him like a venomous tentacula .

"The way you dragged him off her was absolutely terrifying, he didn't know what had hit him," Harry chuckled.

"Hmm," Hermione agreed, tight lipped.

"But then what happened between the two of you that made you decide that it was best that you just never acknowledged each other's presence again?" Harry's voice was gentle but probing, and he touched Hermione gently on the arm to prompt her.

"I don't want to talk about it," she mumbled, automatically.

"That's all you ever say about it. So does Ron. It's different for him though, he bottles things up. But you - you like to talk about things. You can't help yourself some of the time,"

"I can't," Hermione whispered, tracing the lace pattern of her dress with her finger tip.

"How bad can it be?" Harry urged, "I think you need to get it off your chest,"

Hermione swallowed deeply and nodded but still looked doubtful, "We both said a lot of things we didn't mean, and some that we did. It's hard to know which is which. I'd had a pregnancy scare a few months before it happened. I'd been worried about telling him, but he was great. I wasn't though. I panicked about it. It was all a fuss about nothing anyway, I never was pregnant. He….brought it up there. First we argued about him and Lavender, then back to the same old, him not taking the relationship seriously enough, me working too hard, him leaving the auror department," Harry nodded, he had sat through a number of arguments about that subject, "then he said that he was glad I hadn't been pregnant because the thought of being stuck with a poisonous bitch like me for the rest of his life was like hell, the thought of a child with half my genes was insufferable,"

Harry half rose off the chair, "I'm going to hit him," he growled, before Hermione was able to pull him back down.

"I deserved it. I said some things first Harry," tears at last sparkled in her eyes, "I said that all his fears were true and that you and me could have won the war without him. That Lavender was welcome to him and I didn't care they were together. That he wasn't the man you were. And he said that maybe I'd be better off with you…and I said…that he was right because he certainly wasn't good enough for me,"

Harry looked aghast, "you said that to him? But you don't mean it do you, I mean – you and me?"

"No, don't worry," Hermione smiled bitterly, "you're like a brother to me, but that's all Harry,"

"Then what?" Harry asked bravely although his face betrayed the fact that he didn't want to hear any more.

"That's the worst of it really. I said that I was glad I wasn't pregnant too, because he had ruined enough of my life and I was finally rid of him. He said he was glad and that he'd keep out of my way from then on and I said good and if I ever saw him again I'd hex his balls off. He said then that he thought I'd like that, then I could keep them in my handbag like I'd been trying to do our whole relationship and that I needed to leave him and his family alone and stop coming round to the Burrow bothering them with my problems like I had been. Then I slapped him and ran out into the garden and that was where you found me the next morning," the tumble of words stopped as they both remembered Harry coming across Hermione in the early hours of the morning, soaked in dew and tears, her teeth chattering too much to talk.

"Wow,"

"Still think I should have told you?" asked Hermione and Harry massaged his forehead absently. His scar had stopped hurting but his habit often re-emerged in times of stress.

"I'm glad you've told me. I just wish you hadn't said any of it in the first place,"

"Me too, that's why I didn't want to tell you,"

"But what's going to stop it happening again? I mean, I know Ron has developed a bit of an obsession with reading muggle self-help books. But you two, when you get going…."

"I know, I know. We've got to learn to talk to each other without losing our tempers – it's just Ron, he gets me so… arrrghh!"Hermione growled in frustration, stopping herself just in time from running her hands through her styled hair.

Harry laughed, "And he has from the moment you met him. Didn't stop you falling in love with him though did it,"

"This isn't what's going to happen now Harry, we aren't going to fall in love. This isn't going to be a happy ending,"

"We'll see," said Harry, grinning knowingly.

"No – honestly. Just no,"

"Well let's get you married, then you can take it from there," he looped his arm through hers and started leading her out of the door towards the marquee in the garden.

"Harry, honestly –no," Hermione dug her heels in and resisted like a cat being pushed towards a bath of water.

"Do I have to stun you and mobilicorpus you out there?" Harry grunted as he tried to drag her along, "Merlin, you're sturdier than you look,"

"Just give me a minute!" she shook him off. Harry stood in the doorway, obviously expecting her to bolt but she just stood very still, with her eyes closed, breathing deeply.

After nearly enough time had passed that he was thinking he should ask if she was ok, she looked up at him, a dazzling smile painted on her face and smoothed her hand over her curls

"I'm ready,"