A/N: I'm still here. Nothing is abandoned, promise.
This is entirely unbetad. Please excuse any mistakes (and politely let me know if you see any).
xoxo, carm
-
While Hermione had what she felt was an intimate relationship with her emotions, a feeling that she was not as acquainted with was dread.
But the way her stomach was churning like a ship on a rough sea as she watched Draco storm dramatically out of Snape's classroom set her teeth on edge. And while she knew that he had a penchant for the dramatics – Merlin knew that she had plenty of examples to look back on – this just felt... different. She couldn't pinpoint it – didn't want to.
And coupled with the way that he had been acting recently, she just knew deep down that it was bad. It just had to be.
Swearing under her breath, she quickly cast both a disillusionment and silencing charm so she could follow him. Not her brightest move, sure, but she was trying her best, okay?
Unlucky for her, she couldn't make out much of his mumblings. He seemed to be heading to the Slytherin common room which helped her even less.
And then, she had the most dastardly diabolical, most Slytherin idea she'd ever had. Turning and nearly sprinting for the Gryffindor common room, she snuck quickly up to the boys' dormitory and snagged Harry's Invisibility Cloak. She knew he wouldn't mind if she borrowed it for a bit. Knowing him, he probably wouldn't even notice. She'd seen the way he'd been looking at Ginny lately.
Heading back down to where she'd seen Draco storm out of Snape's office, she reached into her pocket and ran her thumb over the cool glass of the hourglass in her time turner. She'd been using it for classes all term, but she needed to know what was going on.
Too nervous to go further back in time than she'd ever gone for class, she walked into Snape's office, stood in a far corner, and turned the dial back one and a quarter.
Draco materialized in the chair in front of her, and he appeared to be in an altercation with Snape. It seemed to be nearing the end of the conversation if his body language was anything to go by. His cheeks were already tinged pink, which signified to her that he'd been bottling up most of his thoughts during their chat.
"I love her," she watched him say, and her heart skipped a beat at his confession. He hadn't said as much to her, but she could see it on his face, could feel it in his possessiveness. It felt wrong to hear it yanked from him as though it were painful. Hermione also suspected that he was using it as a defense, a shield. "I don't regret it for a second, and I wouldn't change anything about it."
"That's a bold statement," said Snape, in exactly the tone she'd expected. It seemed that Snape had seen this coming and was completely unsurprised by the outburst. "Tell us how you really feel."
Draco's reply came quickly. "I could, but I suspect that's not what you want to hear."
"You would be right, Mr. Malfoy. I couldn't care less what you're... feeling," Snape stumbled over the word, as if unfamiliar with the concept. "This is about business. When you fail, a whole part of his plan will be severely lacking." Plan? Hermione thought, her mind whirling. What plan? She had known that he was a pawn, being used for something, but this seemed more severe than Draco had ever let on. Unease sat heavy in her stomach, growing with each passing moment.
She was torn between wanting him to reveal more and regretting her decision to eavesdrop.
Draco responded with all the snark she knew him to have. "And don't you think that the fact that the Dark Lord's plan hinges entirely on me is probably slightly concerning for someone so hell bent on world domination?"
And there it was. Hermione's heart nearly stopped. She had known that he was wrapped up in Voldemort's plans in some way, but this? Him being so central to it was not something she had accounted for.
"As I said all those months ago, it is not wise to question his wishes, and I will remind you to mind your tone," Snape was cautioning him as if Voldemort himself was listening.
"No!" Draco shouted, emotions overtaking him as he rose from his chair. "I won't condemn her to this. I may be an executioner, but I refuse to be the one that leads her up to the gallows." He seemed to be incredibly worked up, and there was no question in her mind about exactly who he was referring to. Hermione had nearly stopped breathing in her attempt to reel herself back in.
"Very well," he said. "Lucky for you, some of us happen to have a contingency plan." Snape flicked his wand and ushered Draco out of the room. Hermione forced herself to follow, still invisible. "You're dismissed."
Standing outside of the room, she silenced herself before inhaling multiple deep breaths.
Hermione prided herself on being smart. She knew it, everyone else knew it. But she regretted that she had the means to put what he was implying together. She didn't have the full picture, of course, but she knew that she could get it if she pushed hard enough.
But did she want to?
-
Their next study session would be their last, he knew. He didn't even know why he'd kept up going to them when he knew it didn't matter anyway – nothing did. He internally sighed. He really needed to cool it with the dramatics or Theo and Blaise would never let it go.
He supposed it was a reason to make sure that Granger was doing okay. He had purposely scheduled it in an empty classroom instead of their usual spot in the library. He knew Granger, and it was clear that she would have questions, and he had a feeling she would somehow coax her answers out of him no matter the cost.
Draco knew that she knew something was up, but had no idea what – or how. Sure, he'd been acting a little crazy lately, but hypothetically, he could just be thinking about breaking up with her. He realized that she was too smart to think he was acting out like this over something as trivial as that.
His eyes were dim as she tried to coax him into looking at her. He didn't want to see his own pathetic reflection in her own. "I'm going home," he tried weakly in response to whatever question he hadn't heard. "For the holidays. I don't know when I'll be back."
Having already started to pack up his books, he had planned on making a quick escape, not wanting to deal with Granger's wrath again. Her hand, however, slapped down on his book as he slammed it shut.
"Ow! What the fuck, Granger?" he seethed as he caught his pinky finger in the process.
"Oh, so he does have emotion! I hadn't just imagined it!" she said irately, shoving his book back toward him so hard it slid off the table. "I thought that you'd perhaps had a lobotomy, or shock therapy, and forgotten yourself."
Biting back a sharp retort, he rolled his eyes and rose from their table. A wave of magic pushed him back into his chair. "What the fuck, Granger?"
She barked out a laugh. "So, his vocabulary is reduced to one measly sentence. You know," she said casually as she leaned against the desk at the front of the room, "of all of the sentences, I'm not really surprised that it's that one."
Draco huffed.
"Good to see that your maturity level hasn't changed from its plateau. I'd planned for that," she said smartly.
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Draco was unable to change his emotional level from what it was, lest he lose his composure entirely. And it was imperative that he hold onto that, since he knew he was about to lose everything else that mattered.
"I'm going home," he finally spoke up. He didn't even try to think of an excuse to give her because he knew she'd see through it. "I don't know when I'll be back."
Deep down, it was an implied if.
"So that's it?" she asked plainly. "No explanation? We're done?" she laughed once, a cynic sound as she read between the lines. "I thought we'd moved past all that, Draco. Was that a lie?"
He pursed his lips, not wanting to give her an answer. Because any answer he gave her would not be good enough.
"We've gone through so much," she whispered, her voice changing, growing vulnerable. "And you can't even dignify me with a response? I thought you'd grown out of your old ways, but I see now that that isn't the case," she said.
Huffing again, he bit back the swell of emotion rising in him. Trying – and failing – to bring up his stars, he instead conjured her face, playing connect the dots with her freckles. It didn't fully work, but it was a sure improvement from before.
"Answer me!" It was a yell this time. His eyes focused, snapping to hers at the outburst, and he wasn't prepared for the onslaught of emotion that hit him when he looked at her. Because when he looked at her, he saw her. He saw how important she was, how capable and passionate she was. How desperate she was to help him. And he didn't deserve any of it.
"I know you have something going on, and I won't pretend to know what it is. I know that it's bad, or you wouldn't be acting like this," she said quietly. "But I'd at least thought that we were making progress. That you were working on getting out of it," she paused, took a breath, and then continued. "But I know you're still meeting with Snape. And I think I deserve to know what it's about."
He scoffed at her, and it was very nearly a laugh. He knew he could lie, say that he was considering a Potions apprenticeship after graduation, but she wouldn't buy it. "It's none of your business."
Hermione threw her hands up in exasperation. "Why won't you just be honest with me? It couldn't possibly be as bad as you're making it out to be. What, are you failing Potions? Keeping your cover? What? What is it that you're not telling me?" Her voice had risen again, and she was almost screaming at him now.
His composure was breaking, he could feel it. The cracks in it were a growing spiderweb, branching out, reaching towards her.
"Answer me!" she shrieked again, her hair sparking with the force of her anger.
Draco slammed his hands down on the desk and rose from his chair so he towered over her. "God fucking damn it, Granger! This wasn't supposed to happen! I wasn't supposed to–" he cut himself off before he could say the words.
His breathing was erratic as he watched her reaction. "What... does that mean, Draco," she asked smally. "What does that mean."
"It means," he breathed, dreading her response, "that we're damned, Hermione." He kept his eyes glued to her. "It means that there is no way out."
Her breathing sped up, close to what he sounded like when he'd panicked, but she still looked present. "What did you think I was meeting with Snape about?" he taunted, knowing that she would put the pieces together. "You already know that I have a task, something that I have to do before the end of the year. You know that our relationship seemed too out of place, especially at the beginning."
Draco continued, unable to stop himself from rubbing it in. "You're the Brightest Witch of Our Age, Hermione. Surely you can figure it out without me having to say it." Pathetically, that was his way of begging her to figure it out without him having to confess to her.
"So– when you say that– you didn't mean anything?" she was stumbling over her words in her angst. "None of this was real?" He could see that she was losing her grip on her control.
He laughed, leaning into his delirium, a cruel sound, and she flinched. "Why did you think I was so adamant about seeking you out? Realistically, what did you think had changed?" He pressed on, unable to stop the words from falling from his lips. "Why did you think I withdrew after the holidays? Come on, Hermione, you can't tell me you didn't already know what I was up to." Draco was baiting her, taunting her. He wanted her to snap, to yell, scream, hex him, kill him. His heart was thrashing in his chest.
"You couldn't possibly have thought that my views had changed so drastically on their own, could you?" his voice grew softer now as he neared her, waiting for it to dawn on her. "You knew, I think. You always did. You just didn't want to see it."
"Draco," she whispered, anguished. "Spit it out."
"Don't make me say it," he pleaded, demeanor changing, unwilling to say the words. "I can't admit it, not to you."
"What was I to you?" she asked, pleading. "Tell me."
A breath left him as he considered his options, and there weren't many. He knew that Granger was going to make him spit it out, if not only to make him say it to her face. "I was... tasked with you," he said, and left it at that.
And he watched her heart break as she put the pieces together.
"So that's all this was? All I was? A fucking test? A task?" her voice broke, her anger giving way to harsh pain. "Did you mean any of it?" A cold laugh bubbled up out of her chest as she paced the floor. "How much did he see?" she asked as she correctly inferred that Voldemort would have used Legilimency on him. "Did he get his kicks watching us fuck in your head, Malfoy? How did he feel about you soiling yourself with the likes of a Mudblood?" she spit the word viciously, mocking him. She missed the way he cringed at the ugly word falling from her pretty mouth. "Well congratulations, Malfoy, I hope you're happy with your success. The Dark Lord's new right hand. Must be a fantastic promotion, I'm sure Lucius is very proud."
Draco whirled then, grabbing her wrists in his hands tightly. "No! No– well, yes. It was. But it's– it's not anymore. Not for a while."
"Get– off me!" she yanked her hands out of his grip. His hands had been biting into her so hard, it stung as the blood flowed back into them. "Gods, I can't even look at you right now, you fucking disgust me. The things we– I let you– oh God, oh fuck." One hand flew up to cover her mouth, the other pulled through her hair. "I can't believe you. I can't believe this. I thought– I really thought you'd changed. Fuck, I'm so stupid."
His eyes hardened, "Granger – fuck, I did, I did. I did change. You, you did that. That was all you. Please believe me. By the time I realized how deep I was, it was too late for me to find a way out, not even with the Order's help. You don't understand, he– he threatened my mother if I didn't– if I couldn't–" he grew angrier, losing his bearings as he searched for the words that could just make her see.
"Granger, no, please don't–" he followed after her, begging, grasping for her hand. "I wasn't supposed to actually fall in love with you!" The words slipped out before he knew what he was saying.
She turned quickly back to face him and, in a quick flash of movement, slapped him across the face. "Don't," she whispered. "Don't you fucking dare throw that in my face right now." Her pointed, accusatory finger stabbed his chest. "Those words are not a fail-safe for you. What, did you think that would change things? Fix what you did? Alter all the shitty decisions you made?" The pure vitriol in her voice was enough to make his eyes sting to match the bite of his cheek.
He was on his knees now. When did that happen? He didn't know, didn't care. "Hermione, please, please. I meant it, I wouldn't say it if I didn't. I wanted to tell you weeks ago, but–" he cut himself off. "I couldn't. Not while knowing–"
"Not while knowing that you were keeping this from me, right. Makes perfect sense to me." She scoffed, fighting back tears and bile, "I don't understand how you could sleep at night."
He chucked once, an ugly, humorless sound. "I wasn't, Granger. I haven't slept in weeks."
She turned her back on him, and it was a sight that churned his stomach. Her parting words to him were, "Good. And I hope you never do again."
He was right, all those months ago. He knew that he hated the sight of Granger walking away from him.