one week later
Over a year ago now, Draco had gone to a Ravenclaw party with Goyle. Fucked a blonde haired girl the night he'd met her. He'd been dating Pansy at the time, rather unofficially, and made sure that Tracey Davis and Theo had seen the girl sat on his lap beforehand. He knew Tracey wouldn't hesitate to bring the news back to Pansy, itching to get under her skin.
For a while, Draco contemplated against it– worried that it would fuel whatever kept her from eating for weeks at a time. He determined that the choice of starvation was entirely her own, seeing as he'd spent that whole year coercing her to join him for breakfasts and suppers.
He'd picked up smoking because of her and loved it. Made him feel warm. Made his lungs hurt. He'd justified that there must be something in starving that felt the same to Pansy.
If he cheated on her, she'd make the choice to leave him on her own accord. It narrowed the chances that he'd ruin her and, instead, he'd live beneath the knowledge that she'd likely hate him forever.
It was better than having to admit that he'd never marry her. Never love her in the way she wanted him to.
Fucking the Ravenclaw girl was nothing worth while. Fucking Pansy was great– on occasion and when she was in a good mood. She was fun and reckless and loved to have him all over her in sneaky corners of the castle. She liked the thrill of it all, he could tell.
Pansy liked hard drugs and screaming. Draco followed her lead without hesitation– he was quick quick to indulge in whatever muggle drug Montague smuggled into the school. She made a habit of holding his hand and dragging him to the covered bridge in the dead of winter. Seeing how far she could lean over the edge before she'd have him screaming back at her.
Fucking Pansy was great on occasion and when she was in a good mood.
It was bane for them both.
Fucking Granger was different.
It was warm and welcoming. Bodies pressing together and molding against the other. She was fiery without being in a rush. Her lips were perfect and soft against his jaw. His neck. She was getting more comfortable with him– eager in the best way.
Draco had began stealing glances at the Gryffindor table during breakfast and supper, entirely unable to stop himself. He would twist his stomach into knots, wanting her desperately, without daring to stare for more than half a minute.
He found himself flicking through the memories of his past hookups and feeling sorry for every single moment he would now compare to being next to Hermione. Fuck. The ways he could make her purr.
He took a long breath, filling his nose with the scent of her, before opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling. Hermione shifted beside him, turning so that she laid on her belly and propped her chin into her hands. Draco let his head fall to the side, staring up at her.
"I thought you might fall asleep."
Draco loaned her a halfhearted grin. He honestly might have. He let his eyes close again, then pulled his hands beneath his head and settled into them. He was too tired to try to dance through conversation with her. Out of nowhere, it had become significantly harder to lie to her curated questions. She was carefully pointed and, he could not deny it, incredibly smart.
"More dreams, Draco?" Two of her fingers feathered over the near side of his forehead. With his eyes closed, he wasn't sure whether she was brushing away loose hair or tracing a line in his skin. In the last few weeks, she'd made a habit of doing both.
"No." He lied quietly.
"Nightmares?"
"Yes, Gryffindor." He responded after a moment in which she'd held her breath. "I'm just haunted by the image of Filch in a short dress. Truly. It keeps me up every night."
"Oh, you poor boy!" She groaned and, even though his eyes were still closed, he could hear the smile in her voice.
"Not so badly as the thought of Crabbe in tights, I'll admit.... Or being sorted into Gryffindor and having to live up here. Snape's long pointed nose. McGonagall on a broom. The cats in Umbridge's office."
"Detention in the Forbidden Forest?"
"Oh, absolutely horrified. And.... Sitting too close to that Irish boy- Finnigan? and having my head blown off."
"Buckbeak the hippogriff?"
"That old beast? Of course not." Draco replied with a scoff in that same low voice.
"You're joking. You cried like a little girl!" She laughed, then, and Draco opened his eyes to stare up at her. She was smiling and glowing in the color of the lit torches nearby.
"No, no, Granger. Had you been more observant, you would have realized that I am just a very talented actor."
"Liar!" Hermione bit back, playful and truthful at the same time. Then her spirit faded away from her face and she tilted her head an inch towards his. "Had you been a better actor, maybe your plan to have Buckbeak killed would have worked."
Draco felt his eyebrows knit together. His father, of course, had told him that the animal had not been executed. While he didn't quite understand how Hermione knew such a thing, it seemed fitting that she would be involved. She'd slapped him across the cheek that very night, actually.
"Clever girl...." He hummed. He lifted a hand into the air and took the end of one of her braids between his fingers. He stared at the ends of her brown curls in order to speak. "That fall, my father made it my responsibility to have Dumbledore in trouble with the school's Board.... Hagrid had proven to be a source of concern for the Board and Ministry before. So, I thought that he would make a good place to start."
"That's horrible, Draco."
"I never argued that it wasn't."
"No– Draco." Her hand found his. She wrapped her fingers around his own, forcing him to stop playing with her hair and look up at her. "Not you. Your father. That he asked you to do something like that."
Her brow was furrowed in concern. Her deep brown eyes searched him, slow and thoughtful. He fought the urge to shrug away from her and discard the conversation. He felt like an entirely different person. Felt like the boy who fucked all those girls and loved the thrill and partied until his atoms ached was somewhere far away.
Draco's mouth felt dry and empty. He felt himself pale. He wanted to be angry with her, but her thin fingers were still wrapped around his and all irritations evaded him. He watched as her gaze landed on their hands and, slowly, felt her fingers flatten against his palm and open his hand.
There was day-old torn skin on the ball of his palm. Four scabbing crescents lined into the thick skin. A bad habit he'd only just picked up.
"How did you free the hippogriff, then?" He questioned in hope that she wouldn't ask about the tiny lacerations.
"What gave me away?" She was grinning, even though her eyes still hovered on his palm.
"You did, just then."
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you.... Besides, I think it's supposed to be a secret."
"Didn't you know? I'm fucking fantastic at keeping quiet." He wasn't sure why his voice was low and teasing or why he'd continued to allow her to stare at his palm. In all fairness, he wasn't even sure when such an interaction became acceptable. He tried not to stare at her as he deduced that it was just what happened when you spent so much time with someone– they'd met in the Room for work on the cabinet almost every evening that last week. They'd grown comfortable.
Things had been different since the night she cried. He realized that she knew much more than she was supposed to. They'd been interwoven all these years in ways he'd never thought to notice. She was intuitive and diligent. When she wasn't being intrusive and abrupt, he'd likely even call her kind.
He'd fucked her and she laid right next to him, their sides pressed together for minutes without motion afterwards.... Now, she was in her underwear and her thin tee shirt. He wondered if she was cold.
"Did he–" Hermione stopped herself short, and Draco watched as her teeth sunk into her bottom lip for a moment. "That doesn't make much sense then, does it?" She said it more to herself than to him.
"Go on."
"I thought maybe your father had asked you to suture the Vanishing Cabinet. But you haven't seen him since– and I can't imagine he was aware of it's presence here when he was in school."
"I surmise you are correct about that one."
"Your aunt, then. She'd know about it. Something slightly ominous and mysterious within Hogwarts. She's wealthy enough and has the resources to find it's missing counterpart, I'd assume."
Draco's stomach suddenly ached. He fought the urge to reel away from her, as if she'd slapped him in the face all over again. She'd been doing her research on the Cabinet. He was entirely aware that she would start asking questions that he didn't have good answers for, but he didn't think it'd be tonight.
"Why do you assume that?"
"I've been reading about your family. The Black family, actually. You're the last descendant on the family tree."
"Is that right?" Draco studied his lineage with a tutor as a boy, but had been quite removed from the Black family since the LeStrange's imprisonment. His father had always said they were the last Pure Black's– nearly everyone else was a blood traitor and a burn to their name.
"Mhm...."
"We don't have to talk about our families, Granger. That's not what we're here for." He couldn't have her get too close.
Her gaze darted up from his hand, then, and stared flatly at him. Her brown eyes were hooded with sleepiness and the tip of her nose was lightly red. Her head fell to one side, inspecting him before she sat up onto her knees, and took hold of his hand one more time.
"Episkey." She said with direction, eyes locked on his skin as it rapidly recovered his scabs and any reminder of what had been there faded away. He turned his palm to himself to inspect the area for a moment.
Draco could feel that she was staring at his face, now, but didn't have the nerve to look back at her.
They both knew he'd hurt himself intentionally before. It wasn't anything new. He would do it again. She must know that, Draco thought to himself. He felt ashamed and small as she knelt next to him. Felt uneasy in his own skin.
He was only half clothed– laying in his unbuttoned dress shirt and boxers. Again, he was suddenly rather aware that he'd lost much of his muscle tone. He could use a work out regimen and a bigger diet, but he'd always been exceptionally fit and never had to work very hard for it. He weighed less than he had in years and could feel it in his face.
He'd eat more if he could. It wasn't like Pansy's shit– she starved with intention. In the last months, he'd lost any sense of appetite for supper and developed an inability to keep himself from throwing up breakfast.
It was just better to not waste the time.
He used his renewed hand to button his shirt.
Above him still, Hermione frowned. He pretended not to notice. Before he could finish, she laid her hand against the bare skin of his chest. He wrapped a hand around her wrist before looking up at her.
She look like she wanted to cry again.
"Up you get–" He gave her slight nudge. "It's past your bedtime, Prefect."
She stood without a fight and followed him off the bed. Draco grabbed each of their bottoms, sliding into his dress pants before holding her jeans out to her. She sat on the edge of the bed as he pulled the fabric up to her knees. When she stood, Draco slipped the clothing up to her bum and touched his fingers against a purpling hickey on her just below her hipbone.
"Don't worry." Hermione's voice brought his eyes up to meet her thin grin. "You've got one too." Her warm fingers dipped into the collar of his shirt and indicated that she'd left him a bruise just above his collarbone.
"Are you going to fix that, too?" He rose to his feet, flattening the hair on the back of his head as he did. He'd stolen the small smile from her face without even meaning to.
"You know how to heal yourself, Draco. I don't understand why you refuse to." Her voice was serious and shuttering. When he couldn't find a valuable response, she pressed two hands into his chest. "Please tell me. Please."
"Perhaps I just prefer it when you do the healing." his response was cheeky. He knew it wasn't what she meant. She was incapable of leaving anything well enough alone.
It was insufferable. His shoulders tensed and his head ached. He tried not to let his face deceive him too. He didn't want her to see it. The anxiety. She'd called it that on a few occasions.
Draco raked a hand through his blonde fringe and could feel the lack of gel on his fingers and guessed that his hair was ruffled and disorganized thanks to her.
Her eyes were perfectly round, staring up to him in anticipation for his next words. He took in the sight or her standing there looking small, young, like she was dependent on him. Her deep brown irises swirled around dilated pupils, cheeks pink like they always were, and lips that fought a frown.
"You get one question."
Her gaze abandoned their tense eye contact, but he continued to watch her. Her skin looked soft to the touch, tiny freckles dotting against her hairline and cascading down the small shape of her nose. Her thumbs rubbed against the skin that coated his collarbones, raising goosebumps over his arms and back.
Hermione's lips parted, then closed. Draco tried to imagine the ludicrous, invasive question she was concocting. Something he'd have to lie about, likely, he bit the inside of his cheek as he waited.
Hermione's brown eyes flickered up to his again. She tilted her head to the side, her fingertips still traveling against his chest, and her lips parted once more.
"What makes you so tired?"
For a split second Draco was confused. She'd asked him at least a hundred variations of this question since the first night they'd met in the infirmary. There was a clarifying gleam in her brown eyes that reminded him that she already knew about the sleepless nights, the bad dreams, the stress.
She knew everything and, still, nothing at all. How funny it seemed– to feel both comfortable and so estranged. To feel like a book that's been studied, but still a mystery.
"I don't feel like myself anymore." The words slipping out of his mouth without a single thought.
Hermione's gentle stare was ushering him to tell her everything- and he almost wanted to. But his better judgment persuaded him away from the danger of truthfulness.
"People change." She offered in a light tone before he heard her swallow.
"Of course people change. But this doesn't feel– right. It feels like I'm unwell." Again, words left him without his permission.
"And that's what keeps you up at night?"
Hermione's eyes were little windows into her every emotion. So much so that when he stared down at her, he could feel the steady glow of her hope pouring through her fingertips and into his skin. She was delicate kindness and fierce determination at the same time. Her warmth reminded him of everything he was not.
He'd practiced legilimency on her a number of times, but it suddenly seemed like a painful invasion. Her sadness was written on her face in the same way that it was etched into the first layer of her consciousness. He padded through worry, then loneliness, and tried not to eavesdrop of the conversations that filled the next section of her thoughts. Her memories played in flickering light.
Potter and the two younger Weasley's. Secret conversations about the Dark Lord and whispers of Death Eaters. Draco realized that they were talking about him. Arguing over what it meant that Draco had abandoned his post as Slytherin prefect. Even in memory, Granger's voice was pursed in defense. "He's not of age, Harry. Draco Malfoy is not a Death Eater."
Outside of her mind, Draco felt himself pale. He looked away. He'd turned her into a liar and suspected she knew it, too. Even if she wouldn't admit it.
"What is it?" She tried to step back into his line of vision.
"Enough, Gryffindor. That's all."
"No. That's not all, you didn't answer me."
"What do you want me to tell you?" Any sense of self regulation left him. "I'm tortured and need your help? Well I'm not. I'm just... I'm just tired, 'lright?"
"I know– Draco–" Her cracking voice felt like a hex to the gut. The sound of her pity was damaging enough to make his knees buckle. He retracted further. Furious. He was suddenly flooded with the need to defend himself.
"No, you clearly don't. Don't pretend like you know me, Gryffindor. I assure you, you do not. You don't want to." He said her name with a leer, forceful and intended to burn. He stepped back, trying to put distance between their bodies, but she held on to his shirt.
Her face contorted into surprise. He watched her intensely, counting the thin lines etched into her mask of confusion as if they would tell him what she wanted.
"I never said that." She snapped back, allowing the tenseness of her face to relax before speaking again. "I only mean to say that maybe you need to stop fighting yourself. Draco... Hurting your–"
Draco's eyes rolled into the back of his head.
"You think I want to be like this?" Draco felt himself grow paler as his chest began to ache as if she had physically stuck him. It was infuriating.
"Just listen to me. Please?" Her eyebrows raised and her face colored with empathy. "In Muggle medicine there is a diagnosis for an ailment called depression. It can be a very broad, but it often displays itself as a change in weight, loss of appetite. Change in sleeping habits, irritability," Hermione was now talking with her hands, using fingers and a concerned face to tick off every point she made. "Anger.... Self-loathing."
It was starting to feel like a obscure test or maybe a sick game. He narrowed his eyes at the girl, trying to understand what she was getting at. Disgust and anger fought for dominance in his stomach.
"Depression– it's complex. And.... Have you seen yourself Draco? You look ill. You look sad and hateful and malnourished."
"You're unbelievable, Granger, truly." Draco barked as he spun away from her. He desperately wanted to walk away from her and to leave her, alone, sad, standing there, but his feet betrayed him and her turned to face her once more. "Your senseless Muggle diseases and ridiculous psychology mean nothing to me. You do not have the authority to come here, accusing me of being ill. Trying to force feed me some prognosis you read in a fucking magazine."
"No! God, no! I'm not trying to diagnose you, I just want to understand!"
They were both yelling now. Screaming really. Draco felt his chest burn and nostrils flare. There was a spit of rage bubbling on the back of his tongue, bubbling to attack her. Thousands of insults raced through his mind from sly remarks to slurs that would leave her in tears.
Say something.
He tried to convince himself to do it-- to pick the most hurtful, degrading, verbal destruction he could muster and hurl it at her. But when he opened his mouth again the words didn't come out, seemingly trapped behind the barrier of his own self-hatred.
Because she was right. He hated her for that. But most of all, he hated himself for it.
"I'm worried for you--"
"No." He snarled with incredulity. "You've hated me your whole life. You don't get to pretend like you care now."
"I.... You... No. No. You can't just say that. I never hated you, Draco. I hate what you believe in– Or what you used to believe in. You can fight me all you want, but I know that it's all an act. Don't you remember when we were kids? You wouldn't come near me without saying something terrible first. You're different now."
What the fuck did she want from him?
She couldn't possibly expect him to apologize for what he had done as a boy. He wouldn't. And she couldn't possibly expect to see him confess every emotion he felt like a cowardly snowflake without any shame.
"I remember when we were kids. I suppose I've just learned to hold my tongue." He shook his head at her. Whatever he was– he was not weak.
"Liar." She whispered into the air between them. Her pointer finger drifted up to him, full of accusation and hostility. "Liar."
"Why do you care, Granger?" He groaned in retaliation, trying to buy himself time before he had to think of an honest reply. His mind was frantically searching for something, anything for him to say that wouldn't prove her right.
There was nothing.
Of course she was right.
"Because!" She yelped in response, matching his force. Her singular finger was now doling out allegations, pricking him in the center of his chest. "I think that when you were little someone told you that you were not enough! That seed in your young head made you harsh and cold and terrible. It turned you into a tyrant. You might act heartless and callous, but even you deserve happiness."
Draco forced his face into stone and bared resentment.
"Fuck you."
There it was again. That hatred that only ran half deep. He didn't even care to grab his jumper before walking away from her.