Chapter 5

Hermione nearly fell on her knees when she arrived at her Apparation destination. The lawn appeared freshly mown, as if it was cared for every single month by attentive dwellers. Hermione knew better, of course. She was the one who cast the charm on the house, after all.

Her gaze moved upwards to read the address clearly on the front-facing wall: 8 Heathgate. She was back where she grew up, at her parents' home in Hampstead Garden.

As she raised herself from the grass, she felt the dampness of mud on her bare legs from the afternoon sprinklers. She looked down at her feet and realized she must have kicked off her shoes at some point in the forest.

The white door opened without fuss, the wards recognizing Hermione and letting her in.

She walked through the foyers of her childhood home, running her fingertips lightly against the striped wall paper.

In her memories she can see herself clearly, running down the hall, hair in every direction and excited to start the day. Getting ready for primary school, bringing down her luggage for a summer trip, barreling in through the front door to tell her mother she successfully operated a bicycle with no training wheels, McGonagall stepping through her front door to explain to her parents that Hermione was a witch. The space was no more than a few meters long and even less wide and yet it contained so many landmarks of her childhood.

It was a home she saw less and less of after starting her studies at Hogwarts. Instead of an everyday dwelling, it became a retreat for the summer, a cozy return for the winters, and then eventually, one of her few ties left in the Muggle world.

When she arrived at the entryway in the living room, she stopped short. This had been where she'd done it, where she erased herself from her parent's lives. In a way, she'd erased them, too—taking away their memories of being a mother, a father, taking away their real names, ripping them from their friends and relatives and placing them on the other side of the world.

It will only be for a little while, she told herself back when she thought they would win the war soon.

How naive she had been.

"Have faith in us!" Ron had pleaded to her.

Where was faith? Where was hope?

Sometimes she thought she felt it with Harry and Ron. With them, faith was a warm embrace, somewhere safe, constant, and steady—holding you tight to your beliefs. Faith was believing in the Order, believing there was a better world to be had, to be won. Over the years, she found that if you weren't careful, faith could suffocate you without you realizing it.

Hope was the foolishness to believe faith could save you.

And now even being home couldn't console her. She didn't exist here anymore, yet it was the only thing she had left of her family.

Along the fireplace were framed photos, some of them blank or missing Hermione. She wanted to laugh at how her parents must have reacted to such strange pictures. Then she glimpsed one she remembered well— Dr. and Dr. Granger's wedding photo. How her parents would laugh when she, as a precocious four year old, dubbed the photo as such.

Said photo currently stood in the middle of the mantle, where a family photo of their trip to South Africa had previously been. They must have moved it, confused as to why the happiest day of their lives wasn't the centerpiece.

Tears fell from her eyes slowly at first and then in rapid succession. She felt her airways tightening, her chest caving in as if all the sorrow of the past two years finally caught up and engulfed her like an ever-expanding frisson.

Every face of every person they'd lost since the war began flashed in her mind. All at once, she could see the bodies lining the walls of the Great Hall. Remus' eyes closed forever, Fred's last smirk fading. And then, Seamus in his coffin, arms crossed and his wailing mother beside it. The last memory of her parents were of their backs to her. She disappeared before they could turn around.

If she closed her eyes, she could see the chandelier hanging from the ceiling at Malfoy Manor and feel the Cruciatus Curse coursing through her body.

Her knees buckled beneath her and she fell to the floor becoming a mess of strangled cries and weak limbs.

She cried so hard she thought she could choke. Wished, maybe, that she would.

She wished with so much fervor to be gone from the world, willing her despair to collapse in on her and extinguish her finally from a future that had nothing but death and loneliness. At least then, the war would be over for her.

Please, she prayed to the universe.

Please, I cannot bear this any longer.

Then suddenly the world shook—the walls giving way to slight debris, picture frames on the mantle falling, and the rattling of light fixtures becoming all too loud. The all-too-familiar cracking sound of an Apparation came. It was like thunder in her ears.

Hermione turned around to face the new shadow looming now over her.

There, in the middle of the Granger residence was a Death Eater. And this time, he didn't have his mask on.

Time froze.

Hermione's instincts, drilled into her from endless battles, experienced an uncharacteristic delay.

Before her was Draco Malfoy, his eyes wild as if he was disoriented himself.

For a few fleeting seconds, all she could hear was both of them breathing heavily, all the blood rushing to her head.

She drew her wand at the exact moment he drew his.

Their spells connected, exploding like a firecracker, the force sending them both reeling.

Hermione found her footing and raced to the dining room, making sure to keep her back to the pathway and her eyes on him. Shooting spell after spell, he deflected with even more speed than the last time they clashed.

How had he gotten past the wards? Hermione made sure no one other than herself would be able to be let in. Had he somehow been able to break through them?

Malfoy was here in her childhood home and she noticed, again, that he hadn't sent a single offensive spell her way. Rather than merely blocking her spells, he seemed to have anticipated them just as fast as she thought to conjure them.

When she fired again, there he was in tandem, their spells continuing to meet in midair before fulminating into noise and nothingness.

"Make this easy, Granger," Malfoy threatened.

She didn't listen.

She's not sure how long this went on. It feels both like seconds and hours. Hermione grew worn, her arm tired and her legs about to give out as they raced around her house, meeting and darting and hexing and blocking.

She sent random objects in the house—books, frames, vases—hurtling towards him and he dodged them effortlessly. Just like that, her sanctuary was desecrated.

But she could not mourn that now, she had to subdue Malfoy and she could not give up, even when a large part of her knew it was futile.

Out. She needed to get out.

Hermione scrambled as she thought of a plan to escape.

But how could she escape? If he found her here, who's to say he can't find her again? With so many unknowns, there was no way she could Apparate back to the Burrow without guarantee that he couldn't follow.

There was nowhere to run or hide. She had to face him here. Now.

"Don't you see what's happening?" Malfoy said mockingly, a dragon playing with his food.

She ran to an adjacent room around the corner and when she turned he was already there, mere inches from her. "Or will you let that Gryffindor pride blind you?"

"Fuck off!" She backed away, throwing another hex aimed at his face, which did not land on its intended target.

"You know why I'm here don't you?" he called after her as she raced to get to the stairs. "Stop running, Granger! You'll only tire yourself out."

He ran from around the other room and trailed her, his long legs carrying him with ease as she felt her own calves burn from the exhaustion.

"And I need you as sharp as possible."

He meant to kidnap her, torture her. Hand her over to the Dark Lord and have her memories pried open, the Order's secrets there for the taking.

It seemed she might have to say goodbye to the world after all tonight. By her own hand. Because she'll be damned if she lets the likes of Draco Malfoy be her doom.

Right as she got to the landing, Hermione felt a stunning hex come her way. Without thinking, she whisked around and was able to block it effortlessly before it even got halfway. She looked at him, knowing shock was painted all over her face. Not just because it was the first offensive spell he'd shot at her, but because she knew he was going to. She was able to anticipate it.

The movement caused her to face him. Her at the top of the stairs, him a few steps below. Her breathing was ragged, tired from the encounter, but she kept her wand trained on him.

"Are you done fucking around now?"

She sent another spell at him. He blocked it and countered with another hex ripping through the air like a bullet—which she blocked perfectly in turn.

She didn't even have to think about it and that reflex felt both so foreign and so natural.

"I'll take that as a no."

She regarded him now as he stood opposite from her. It had been a whole two years since she'd seen him, really seen him. In the tunnels, he was cloaked in darkness, donning his metal mask. The last time they'd been this close—had it been that day at Malfoy Manor?

Thanks to the incandescent lighting of her house, she could see him plainly. He appeared much more intense in real life than she remembered in the grainy moving photos on the cover of The Daily Prophet weeks ago.

The last time she'd seen Malfoy in real life, he was rather gaunt, almost sickly. She vaguely recalled the image of him standing with the Death Eaters near the end of the Battle of Hogwarts shortly after Neville died and everyone else fled.

But in recent years he appeared to have filled out, now appearing a hardened version of the boy she remembered at Hogwarts. He stood taller, as tall as Lucius had been.

With his blond hair neatly pushed back at the sides, broad shoulders, and the all black Death Eater uniform pressed neatly against his body, she saw a soldier, one who served Lord Voldemort and would do anything he was asked. A touch of boyishness in his face remained, threatening to disappear with the severity in which he carried himself with.

It crossed Hermione's mind, with startling awareness and austerity, that Draco Malfoy was striking.

And it made her ill at ease.

Enemies may employ beauty as a distraction, an intimidation. After all, hadn't it been sirens that could demolish entire fleets of men?

His gray eyes watched her, unreadable. And she admonished herself for trembling in fear, the apprehension heightened by the strange pull deep in her subconscious that was reaching toward him, calling to him.

Yes, she'd seen horrors for the past couple years, victim to some of them herself.

But here, right now, in the face of Malfoy, she was the most frightened she might have ever been. He could hurt her beyond measure and yet the most horrific part was that something inside her felt unquestionably tied to him—corded by ice cold steel, yet lulling like a gentle fire.

I know you can hear me, a voice called out to her. Just as I heard you.

A shiver ran through her spine.

"Don't!" she screamed.

She didn't know what to make of what was happening, this innate connection she now held with her enemy. She wanted it severed from her consciousness and thrown into the abyss.

Taking in his stature forces her to acknowledge how small she was, how easily he could overpower her physically, and it took everything within her not to panic. How many people had he killed, she wondered. The faces of Michael and Alicia floated in her mind briefly. The only reason they knew what transpired was because Justin happened to have survived.

Disturbing still, seeing him in the house she grew up in. Even Harry and Ron had never been here before; all the times they'd ever seen her parents were in Wizarding society.

Here was her childhood bully, a Death Eater, someone who believed people like her shouldn't exist, who believed Hermione and her kind should be exterminated. And yet this was the first person who crossed over into the part of her she'd all but buried now.

It wasn't fair.

"How did you find me?" she demanded, her wand aimed like a taut bow and arrow, ready to snap.

"I thought you were smarter than that," he answered coolly. "Maybe I overestimated you."

"How did you find me?"

He stepped closer, climbing up the steps one by one. "Stay back, Malfoy—"

"I didn't find you," he interrupted, sauntering forward. "I was called here."

Something hammered in her heart, at a truth she'd been too scared to uncover, so much so that she told herself, willed herself into thinking it was imagination run amuck thanks to a traumatic encounter.

As he approached, she walked backward, her wand fixed at his heart. "By who?"

Her voice was meek, small. It was pointless to ask now. There was no denying what was happening. But Hermioen gripped tightly onto some vestige of desperation that she hoped whatever this was, wasn't true.

"I think you know," Malfoy replied, his voice low.

He was so close now that the tip of her wand dug into his chest. He pressed further and she wondered if it hurt him.

"Just like you know who led me to you the other day."

Her blood boiled as his words danced around in her head.

"I think you know," he had said to her.

And here she was, a mouse trapped by a snake in her own home.

"It was me."

As the words left her mouth, Hermione's world came crumbling down. He had seen her, in a way. Known exactly where to go, even if it was subconsciously.

Just as she'd seen bits and pieces of his perspective, felt the sting of a hex, the coldness of metal cracking against skin, he had seen her. He felt the agony coursing through her heart as she cried on the living room floor, just as she'd felt his anger and determination.

He had manipulated her into finding Theo. Finding the safe-house.

Bile rose in her throat as it dawned on her. "It was my fault," she said, her mind drifting to Dean's accusation. "You panicked and you were angry and I felt it and…I led you to him. To Nott."

He scoffed. "I suspect you felt it the moment I was informed of his capture."

"What did you do to me?" she accused.

"I didn't do anything," Malfoy scowled.

"Stop lying to me!" She swung at his face with her free hand, which he blocked with his arm.

"I'm not," he said, pushing back on her arm forcefully.

Hermione stumbled backwards, creating space between them. "Just Tell me what's going on!" she screamed, pleaded.

He narrowed his eyes. "I don't know what's going on."

"But you have an idea." She felt it then, somewhere in the back of her mind, in the depths of her conscience. She couldn't explain how, but she knew he was telling the truth.

"I might have an avenue to figure it out," he answered icily. "Don't give me that look. How do I know you won't sell me out to Potter and friends and make an example of me—torture me like you did Theo?"

He was angry now.

"How do I know you won't do the same?" Hermione asked, with just as much venom.

"I would have done it already."

Fair point, as much as she didn't want to admit it. He clearly understood what was happening to an extent long before she did. If he acted on his theory after realizing this strange connection, he could have easily found a way to find her, overpower her by bringing reinforcements, and then present her to Voldemort. There was only one reason why he hadn't.

"You want something." It spilled forth like an accusation. She felt no triumph knowing this answer.

"Yes, Granger," he said. "And only you can give it to me."

"And what, pray tell, could that possibly be?"

For a while, he didn't say anything, just stared at her like he was looking past her. Like he was wondering if he should keep telling her anything.

Out of nowhere, her deep conscience felt like it was spilling into her forethoughts, as if she were in a river and riding along a current.

Suddenly she was there.

Before her laid multiple diverging paths, but she spotted one in particular that was connected by an invisible tether rather than a natural flow. She steered toward it.

She kept riding along the water, the current pushing her further downstream. She thought she could go on forever, floating past thoughts and memories and stories she'd never seen before, that didn't belong to her—

"Stop it."

Then she hit a wall.

The jarring sensation brought her back to the present.

"I—what was that?"

"That was you needing to mind your manners," Malfoy scowled at her with such disdain, she almost apologized.

"What am I doing here, Granger?"

"What?"

"What was it that made you feel such despair that I was summoned here thinking you were dying?"

"That's none of your business!"

"It apparently is because you're the one that dragged me here. You felt it—something so terrible, you couldn't bear to be alone."

Hermione's face reddened with the embarrassment that someone else, someone she so viscerally hated, was able to feel something so intimately her own. "So is this how this works then? Are we to feel each other's horrors and become slaves to it?"

"You think I enjoy this, Granger? To have you witness parts of my life and mind like you have any right to it at all?" he hissed. "You're putting me in just as much danger."

"You're putting me and the Order in danger—what kind of twisted magic is this—"

Abruptly, Hermione's mind traveled to their earlier encounter, over a week ago now, during the mission. One of the last things she remembered was Bellatrix, the curse she spoke before the blue light filled the cavernous hall.

"Bellatrix," Hermione said out loud. "But why? I don't—I don't understand—"

"Believe it or not, I don't think this abomination between us was what she meant to happen."

"Explain to me. Now ."

"No. You're going to have to earn that."

Hermione scoffed. Earning the trust of a Death Eater? Then again, he was in danger now, too. They were at, what you would call, an impasse.

"You haven't answered my question," she said. "About what it is you want."

He looked her up and down. She instinctively tried to back away, acutely aware that she was in a dress and was barefoot.

"You won't believe me if I tell you," he said.

"I'm loath to trust anything you say, but here I am, still talking to you like a madwoman. So try me. What could you possibly want that you say only I can give you?"

He seemed to consider her before answering. And when he finally did, she wondered vaguely if she truly had gone mad. In what lifetime, in what scenario would Draco Malfoy utter the following words to her?

"I'd like to end the war, Granger. I want to see the Dark Lord fall."

Hermione glared at him, angry yet unsurprised. Of course Malfoy would play games. It's what he did best. And if she didn't want to fall into a trap, she had to be as vigilant to his lies as ever.

"As if I would ever believe you."

"You should," he leered, moving closer to her once again. "Because without me, the Order will lose."

To Hermione, the Order's loosening grasp on the war was no secret. It's what she'd been saying this whole time. If they didn't change something, things would only get worse for them.

"And why exactly would you want to end the war? Don't tell me you've suddenly grown a beating heart."

"Only for you, Granger," he drawled.

It didn't make any sense. By all accounts, Voldemort's reign would not end anytime soon. The Order did not have the same luxury.

"Why do you want this?" she asked incredulously. "What's your catch here, Malfoy?"

She thought of the night she woke up choking in her sleep. The ice cold fingers clutching her throat. She thought of Theo's indifference to staying alive, of risking death if it meant he would not return to his Dark Lord as a traitor.

He didn't say anything so she spoke, if only to fill the confusing void left by his request.

"Must be tiresome then?" she asked, trying to gauge his reaction. "Getting tortured every time you disappoint him."

Hermione expected more scathing comments, insults to her intelligence, or even evasiveness.

She was not expecting him to smile, to survey her as if he were a pleased hawk circling over prey, ready to dive and strike.

"You have me all figured out, don't you? They always said you were the brightest witch of our age."

He was as insufferable as she remembered him being.

"If you have so much faith towards your side, why do you care?"

"I don't take sides," he told her and even Hermione could not dismiss the conviction in his voice. "I'll be your informant. Help you defeat the Dark Lord. Take it or leave it."

Liar, her mind thought derisively.

You wish, his answered back.

Her eyes snapped up to him, trying to confirm if what had arisen internally just now actually happened.

His smirk answered that question for her.

"I hate you," she told him.

"I'm willing to bet, Granger, that you don't hate me more than you'd hate losing."

She'd ruminated on this so long, coming up empty handed when finding possible ways they could win. And now, an opportunity presented itself to her in the form of a snake in the garden.

Here were her options: reject Malfoy's proposal and risk him retaliating through whatever this fucked up connection was between their minds. Risk rejecting the only funnel of information into the Death Eater's camp that the Order had.

Or.

Accept his help. Nevermind that she didn't fully understand why, just that he had declared it as though it were the only truth. She could find ways to test his loyalty, use the benefit of time to dig into what his motivations were.

Not to mention that when she subconsciously questioned his honesty, she found something startling in return.

By all intents and purposes, it would seem that Malfoy was telling the truth.

God, she was so fucked.

She was about to pry for more information—ask him how the fuck he thought this whole arrangement was going to work, why the hell he's even asking her for help—when he flinched slightly and grabbed his left arm.

As soon as it happened, Hermione felt a strange tingling on her forearm on the same side. Funny, because her scar was there, too.

"Your master's calling you," she said, putting two and two together easy enough. "Run along now."

That earned her a glare; and if the circumstances weren't what they currently were, she would have laughed in his face.

"It seems our lovely meeting must come to an end," he said, putting his mask on. Her pace quickened. He might very well be leaving to get reinforcements, bring them to this house and trail her to the Order. She gripped her wand.

He seemed to have sensed her apprehension.

"Don't worry your pretty little head, Granger. I won't tell a soul."

It wasn't until he took a step back from her did Hermione notice they had continued to stand so close to one another.

"I'll be in touch."

Hermione scoffed, arms crossed. "Am I supposed to wait for you to have an emotional episode before I unintentionally materialize in Malfoy Manor?"

With his mask on, his expression lay hidden. But if she could guess, he was most likely wearing a smug smile on his face.

"Maybe you'll hear me in your dreams."

Then he was gone.

What on earth had she gotten herself into?

She couldn't seriously be considering allying herself with Malfoy.

Could she?

Hermione rummaged through her parent's closet for something to wear (and shoes because she'd just spent most of the night running away from Malfoy barefoot). She settled on her father's old University of Glasgow pullover (one of the few items he'd left behind) and a pair of her mother's old jeans and shoes.

Hermione had gotten rid of all her belongings after Obliviating her parents so they wouldn't question why a teenage girl's things were in their house.

After spending God knows how long sitting in her old bedroom, bare and stripped of all history of her, she mustered up enough will to go back to the Burrow. She arrived very late in the night, exhausted and not at all sure how to process the information.

How did this connection to Malfoy work? Could he feel her confusion and hesitancy through whatever magical machinations that had somehow tied them together?

With frustration, she entered the Burrow in a fit of frustration. Thankfully, it appeared everyone else was asleep.

She walked straight to her room, climbing up the stairs as quietly as possible so as to not signal to anyone she was home. When she got to her room, she was surprised to see the light on.

She turned the knob to find Harry sitting on her bed.

"Hey," he said, setting down whatever book he was reading.

Hermione darted from the doorway to him, relief welling in his eyes as she approached.

She tackled him with an embrace, grateful to see someone who she trusted and had a place in her life.

"Woah, okay," he said. Pulling away, he held her by the shoulders and watched her apprehensively. "Are you alright? Where were you?"

"I—"

She almost told him everything, ready to share the bizarre burden she now found on her shoulders.

"I just needed space to think."

"Oh," Harry said. "Where'd you go?"

"Just around London," she lied, turning away from him, moving to sit on the couch so she wouldn't have to look him in the eye.

He raised an eyebrow. "You went shopping?" he questioned, referencing her outfit.

"Oh!" Hermione's ears felt warm. "No, I—I always carry spare clothes in my beaded bag."

Not a total lie, she often kept lots of spare things in her beaded bag. This outfit wasn't one of them, but Harry didn't have to know that.

He seemed satisfied with her answer because he only nodded.

"We were worried about you."

"I'm sorry, yes, you must've been," she apologized, untying her shoes as she moved to sit on the bed next to him.

Harry went on to recant the events at the wake. Right after she Disapparated, Ron gave Dean an earful, to which Dean actually seemed to look ashamed.

"He was out of order," Harry reassured her. Her guilt doubled tenfold hearing that Ron defended her and that Harry agreed. Now that she knew with certainty that it was her that led Draco and whoever his partner was to Crimble House, her stomach tied itself in knots.

Harry went on to say how Molly was beside herself with worry and screamed at him and Ron to go and find Hermoine. Thankfully, Ginny placated her mother, reminding her that if Hermione wanted to be around people, she wouldn't have left.

"You're very lucky to have such an astute girlfriend," Hermione told him, earning a broad smile from her best friend.

"I don't know how I could stay sane without her," Harry said. "You remember how awful it was during 7th year when we were really in the thick of it. On the run. When that was all over and we lost Hogwarts…I thought I was going to go proper mad, like I'd never be okay again. And Ginny…well she makes it easier to live."

Hermione took a moment to consider this.

"How did you know, Harry?"

"Know what?"

"That Ginny was the one."

Harry shrugged in that easygoing way of his. "Dunno. I just do."

"Is it that apparent to know?"

"Well I could ask you how do you know Ron isn't the one."

Harry's words caught her off guard. If she wasn't sitting down, she might've fallen over.

He'd never really talked to her about her relationship with Ron before, at least not in impeccable detail. She knew them both well enough that Ron probably talked at length about everything to Harry and that Harry had listened, perhaps puzzled, yet always patient. For some reason, it was a barrier Hermione surmised she could not cross.

At the beginning of their friendship, it was obvious to everyone that it was Harry and Ron before it was the Golden Trio. The boys were always together. A set, a pair. Hermione was the outlier. They loved her, but she wasn't one of them.

She didn't share a dorm with them in their formative years, didn't share their confusions about girls, didn't share the wonderment of boyhood, or that familial bond Harry and Ron seemed to have where one came from virtually no family and the other had so much family it could be overwhelming.

And then when things got complicated between her and Ron, the chasm between her and Harry became even more pronounced. When Ron left during their Horcrux hunt, his absence was like a deep cut to their dynamic. Her and Harry were too stressed and preoccupied to think about what their friendship with just the two of them looked like—couldn't fathom it without Ron.

"I just do, I guess," Hermione admitted.

Harry didn't say anything for a while. He didn't even look surprised at her confession (if you could call it that). It was like he'd been expecting her to say exactly this, waiting for her to tell him all this time.

"He told me. About him proposing to you," Harry said.

"If you could call it that," she grumbled before sighing. "I didn't want to hurt him. I love him, you have to believe me, Harry. But I just…couldn't be on board with this."

She said it like a strategic move, as if marriage would be a logical step instead of the declaration of affection and unity she was always told it was.

"I'm going to ask you something, Hermione. If we weren't in a war, do you think you two would have been together?"

Harry's question stunned her. To picture a world where this turmoil didn't exist felt so unfathomable. But she entertained the question anyway because she sensed that he needed to hear her answer. Or maybe he sensed that she needed to be the one to say it out loud.

"I don't know. Maybe for a little while."

"But not forever?"

She mustered up the courage to say it. "Not forever. I don't think so."

Harry just nodded and the guilt rushed through her. She hated putting him in the middle like this and it was one of the reasons she never brought up her relationship with Ron to him. Not since that day in 6th year when he had so publicly chosen Lavender over her. She couldn't bear to be the reason for the conflict.

It wasn't her role in their triad of friendship, she surmised a long time ago. Hermione was meant to be the bearer of knowledge, the voice of reason, the steady head on the shoulders where Ron and Harry served as the mighty arms ready to fight.

"Are you upset with me about it?"

Harry looked at her, puzzled. "Why would I be?"

"Because. Me and Ron being complicated makes everything complicated for you."

"I just want you both to be happy," he said. "And if you're not happy with him but choose to stay, eventually he's not going to be happy with you. I'm just asking you because…I guess I just wanted to know that you were sure. That you're not just avoiding him because you're afraid of being close to people."

Because that's what you do, were the words Harry chose not to add. Hermione was well aware of how people viewed her nowadays, especially with this strained relationship between her and Ron.

"I don't mean to be like that," Hermione dejectedly answered.

"I know," Harry replied. "It's understandable, Hermione. I get it, I do. Just promise me—that you're not going to keep pushing us away."

She couldn't tell him about Malfoy. Not yet.

"Okay," Hermione said. "Okay, I promise."

Notes:

(Lust for Draco 5vr)
As always, thank you for making it to the end of the chapter! :) Hope you enjoyed the much more extensive Dramione reaction. More to come ;)