Chapter 9
It had to matter, didn’t it?
If that didn’t matter– the moments where they felt whole and true and seen– then how did anything?
“But how could it?” She whispers to no one, to everyone, to Draco, to Fate.
If it changed nothing– if the end is the same, if they are still standing on opposing sides with wands trained at each other’s throats– did it matter at all?
“Of course it mattered, Hermione.” He speaks to her alone.
If it changed everything– if they would never be the same, if they saw each other again and before the terror struck they felt a missing piece of their soul slot into place– how could it not?
“It mattered more than anything.” Her voice shatters as she nods at him through her tears.
His shoulders relax, he smiles back.
“And yet, somehow, still not enough.”
—
Year Four
Hermione ran as quickly as she could through the castle corridors. She didn’t know if she should expect him to show up at all, but she also couldn’t stomach the idea that he wouldn’t. Harry hadn’t been able to sleep a wink; he had been alternating between pacing the common room and collapsing in sobs the entire night. She was right by his side, trying her best to console him, but eventually he left the common room for the boys bunks to be able to sit alone. She didn’t know how to be useful to him at that moment, and she had a knot in her stomach constantly reminding her that she was also needed somewhere else.
It was much later than they typically met, but he would wait for her, wouldn’t he? They always waited for each other. Would things be the way they always were, or would everything be different now?
She rounded the corner and felt the air leave her lungs as she deflated. The classroom door was closed. It wasn’t left ajar waiting for her to slip through with music and snacks. He wasn’t waiting just inside to crack a joke and roll his eyes, or to try and fail to mask his concern for her. The door was closed, and he wasn’t there. Her heart sank through to the dungeons of the castle.
Whatever they had been, it was over.
Voldemort was back, and Malfoy was gone.
The weight of the day fell on her chest and wouldn’t let up.
Cedric was dead. Harry was hurt. Moody was a fraud. Voldemort was back. Malfoy was gone.
She sank down to the floor, rocking on the balls of her feet as she wrapped her arms around her calves. She dug her teeth into her kneecap to keep from screaming and waking every portrait in the hall. She squeezed her eyes shut but no tears came out; apparently, she had drained her tear ducts in the hours after she had seen Cedric’s body. The thought forced her to dig her canines even deeper into the skin underneath them.
Cedric was dead. Harry was hurt. Moody was a fraud. Voldemort was back. Malfoy was gone.
Time surely passed but Hermione had no concept of it, she just sat there rocking and gasping and biting as wave after wave of thought and subsequent feeling passed through her. Everything she had suppressed to be there for Harry and her friends and younger Gryffindors came rushing back to her. All of the books in her mind that she had closed and carefully shelved to pull out and review another day came crashing suddenly to the floor until she couldn’t make sense of any of it.
Cedric was dead. Harry was hurt. Moody was a fraud. Voldemort was back. Malfoy was gone.
Her head felt like a broken record repeating these realities over and over; she had no control over it and no way to make it stop. They would find her like this in the morning, she was certain, and haul her off to the hospital wing. She would rot there, nearly comatose, with these being her last thoughts.
Cedric was dead. Harry was hurt. Moody was a fraud. Voldemort was back. Malfoy was gone.
The air around her slowly transformed, bringing her back to the stands of the tournament. She could smell the freshly cut hedges of the elaborate maze along with the ancient texts she had borrowed from the restricted section and hid in the bag in her lap. She heard the humming of the crowd as they eagerly awaited the final event. She felt the warmth of bodies on either side of her, all pressed together in the stadium seats. Her stomach rolled as she waited for the shift; for the scent to be tinged with sweat and dark magic the way it was when Harry returned, for the hushed conversations to turn to panicked shrieks, for the warm bodies beside her to turn to frantic brushes and cold wind. She waited for that moment when anticipation turned to terror.
The moment when she would realize that Cedric was dead. Harry was hur–
“Shhh.” The record in her mind scratched as her mind reconnected with her body. The hum of the crowd was just one single voice. The warm bodies she felt were not her classmates sitting beside her, but one person whose body wrapped around hers. The scents she remembered from those last moments of peace– the grass and the parchment– were here, in this hallway, entirely the same but entirely different.
“It’s okay, you’re okay.” Her rocking slowed as the person holding her continued to whisper in her ear, their hands wrapped in her hair and rubbing small, soothing circles along her scalp. Eventually, when her body remained still, she loosened her jaw, feeling a dull ache in her teeth where they dug into her bones. She was sure that if she hadn’t been wearing jeans, there would have been blood dripping down to her ankles. Her eyes remained dry, though they now ached from the strain of compression. She slowly pulled back and lifted her head, feeling her body finally fully relax as she opened her eyes and her mind registered who sat with her.
“Are you okay to walk?” Malfoy asked, his eyes briefly leaving hers to look towards the classroom door in a silent gesture. She nodded back at him in response. He untangled his fingers from her curls and raised from his knees to the balls of his feet, holding his hands out to her for assistance. She took a steadying breath, then placed her hands in his open palms. He lifted his body perfectly in time with hers, never applying pressure against her wrists to hurry her up or reminding her to take it slow. He let her rise at her own pace and mimicked the action in solidarity.
Once inside the classroom, he turned to cast the silencing charm on the door while Hermione walked to their spot on their floor. She sat down and counted her breaths, carefully reshelving all of the books that had fallen out of place during her meltdown in the corridor. When Malfoy joined her, she brushed her hair out of her face and smiled at him. He frowned back.
“Don’t do that.” He shook his head, putting his wand on the floor behind him.
“Do what?”
“Pretend everything is okay.” He shook his head, “Pretend that you’re fine so you can tend to me. Put your own feelings aside so you can take on someone else's.”
Her smile fell as the library wall she crafted tilted over.
“It’s bad, Granger.” He gave her a hollow smile, “it’s really bad.”
She looked down at her hands and began picking at a piece of skin along her cuticles. There was no use arguing, it wouldn’t get them anywhere.
“I thought you weren’t coming.” She muttered down to her fingers, “I mean, obviously that wasn’t entirely what was wrong, but… I thought that it– what happened today, I thought it meant…”
“I thought the same thing.” She glanced over at him from the corner of her eye to see he was also speaking to the stone floor, “I came earlier and waited, but you never came. Eventually, I figured you didn’t want to see me. I went back to the common room and everyone was still awake. I heard some bloke saying he knew it was coming– he heard his parents talking. I connected some dots. I’d bet my life my father was there.”
Hermione turned her head slightly in his direction and met his gaze. She couldn’t hide it from him, she knew that the second that Harry told her. Malfoy nodded slightly in acceptance.
“I didn’t think you were coming, but I couldn’t stay there any longer. I had to get out, go somewhere that felt…”
“Safe.” She said, understanding completely what he wasn’t able to say. He nodded in reply.
“Yeah,” He whispered, “Somewhere safe.”
She drew her knees into herself, looking down at the stone between them.
“I wouldn’t blame you,” He said quietly, “if you didn’t want to be around me now, after what my father’s done, with what this means. I would understand.”
She lifted her head and furrowed her eyebrows at him, “Malfoy, I don’t blame you for your father’s decisions.”
“I know that, but you also can’t separate me from them–”
“Of course I can.” She turned to face him completely, dropping her knees to sit cross legged. “You are not Lucius Malfoy. His beliefs, his actions are not yours. You are Draco Malfoy. When you get to make your own choices, those are the ones I will judge you on. Those are the decisions that will dictate how I feel about you. That was true before today and that will be true after today.”
She had decided this the moment that Harry revealed to her who had been at that graveyard. Malfoy couldn’t change the blood in his veins anymore than she could change the blood in hers. It was obvious to her that he held different beliefs from his father, held a different understanding of good and evil, of right and wrong. She knew who he was behind the mask that he wore around everyone else, and she trusted that person.
She waited for him to say something in response to her declaration, but he sat there staring at her, a look of bewilderment in his eyes. She squinted and tilted her head at him in a silent question.
“I–” He swallowed, gathering himself before he attempted his response again, “I’ve never heard you say my first name before.”
She felt her face flush with embarrassment. It almost felt silly; the end of the world started today and she was blushing at a boy in an empty classroom.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to be– I mean, I won’t–”
“No!” He said quickly, turning to also sit cross legged directly across from her. She noticed his own blush rising as he tried to temper his response. “No, it’s okay. It’s good.”
She nodded, waiting for her face to cool completely before she continued.
“You had no idea?” She asked, almost afraid to pose the question. She didn’t have to elaborate. Not today.
“I had no idea.” He confirmed. She sighed in relief, looking back down at her fingers.
“What’s going to happen this summer?” She asked, hesitantly, “What are you going home to?”
She looked up and saw him with his head tilted back, looking toward the ceiling. She knew now, after two years spent together, that he took this posture whenever he was faced with a question he didn’t know how to answer.
“I don’t know, Hermione.” He shrugged, bringing his chin back down to look her in the eyes. She tried to tamp down the feeling that flowed through her hearing him use her name in turn. “Something tells me it’s going to be different.”
“I think everything is going to be different now.” She held his gaze and he nodded. She bit her lower lip as she looked at him, contemplating whether or not she was really going to ask her next question. It had come to her while she was sitting with Harry, a result of that rock in her stomach telling her she was needed somewhere else. “Would you ever… I mean, if it wasn’t safe, and you had somewhere else… what if– what if you just didn’t go home?”
The corner of his mouth raised in a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Are you asking me to run away with you?” She rolled her eyes at his teasing, and then his face got suddenly serious, “I couldn’t. My father, he has connections everywhere. There’s nowhere on this continent I could hide that he wouldn’t find me.
He released an empty chuckle as he spoke, “And he would find me. Now that You-Know-Who is back, my father will care about nothing more than elevating the family name among His ranks. He wants what he once had, remember? If I betrayed that– if I ran away– he wouldn’t let it slide. He would track me to the ends of this Earth as punishment for disgracing the family name; to prove that the true Malfoys are loyal.”
Hermione felt her stomach flip the way it often did when he spoke of his father. She couldn’t even begin to understand the dynamics of that family, and every time she tried a piece of her heart broke off into another fragment.
“But if I helped–”
“No.” He said firmly, his eyes narrowing at her. “Not an option. I would rather d–”
“Don’t.” She flinched as he went to finish the sentence, but he cut off. “Not today. Please.”
He nodded and continued.
“I just couldn’t risk something happening to you. I wouldn’t do it.”
“I want you to be safe, too.” She said, looking up at him through her lashes. She had so much more to say but couldn’t quite find the right words. She wasn’t sure the right words existed.
“I will be.” He said, reassuringly. He reached across the space between them to grab her hand. She stifled a gasp as it escaped her; he rarely ever initiated physical contact and it still caught her of guard when he did. “I will be safe, and next year, we will meet here the way we always have. Everything out there might be different, but this doesn’t have to be.”
She desperately wanted that to be true.
“Okay.” She said, squeezing his hand. Somehow, this subtle act communicated all of the contradictions of his notion. Everything was different, even them. Especially them. He kept their fingers entwined but shifted his body to be sitting next to her before laying down on his back and pulling her down with him. Their arms overlapped and her head rested comfortably against his shoulder. This physical intimacy was so new for them, but in a way it felt entirely natural.
She wanted him to be safe. This was as true as anything else she knew. She wanted Harry to be safe. She wanted Ronald to be safe. She wanted Draco to be safe. She wanted all of them to have normal, boring childhoods, but if they couldn’t have that, she at least wanted them all to be okay. She felt powerless to make it happen, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.
She stared out the classroom window at the darkness of the sky– a sky that was the exact same as it had been the day before, and would be exactly the same as it is now tomorrow, despite the world turning upside down overnight– and made a silent vow.
There were others who vowed to make sure Harry was safe. There were others who vowed to make sure Ronald was safe.
She vowed that night, staring up at the sea of constellations, to make sure that Draco Malfoy was safe.
“Everyone is always talking about dying for what they believe in.” She broke the silence, continuing to search the stars, “For good or for evil, for right or wrong. We hear it constantly.”
He turned his head at the same moment she turned hers. Their eyes locked in a silent understanding, “I believe in you, Draco.”
“I know you do, Granger.” He squeezed her hand between them and she couldn’t help but see a hint of fear in his eyes as he responded. “For me, that’s all that matters.”