Nobody’s Daughter

The next hour of Hermione’s life went by quickly.
Draco ushered her back to her bedroom to get dressed. He told her not to worry about packing a bag and just to take what she wants to wear from the drawers. Hermione chooses her own clothes, the black sweater and jeans, and braids her hair back into two neat plaits. Her wand is safely in her back pocket; to have it back feels like reconnecting with an estranged friend. When she steps back into the hallway to walk back to Draco’s room, he’s already waiting for her, dressed in black robes with silver fastenings that look suspiciously goblin-wrought. Rich prick.
Hermione pulls her notes from the pocket of her jeans. “Everything I know is here. Really, there’s not much. Romania is a deduction—it’s what makes the most sense, but I have no idea where in Romania he is. It’s roughly the same size as England by land mass, it could take… forever to find him. And there’s glamours, wards, protections…”
Draco reaches a crooked arm towards her. “Stop worrying, Granger. The first priority is getting you the hell out of here.”
Hermione stares at his arm for a moment, worrying at the inside of her cheek. What other option does she have? She takes it.
The familiar pull of apparition behind her navel doesn’t shock her, but she still goes sprawling into the floor of their destination. She coughs and lifts her head to look around. They’re in a dusty cellar; there’s boxes and glass bottles scattered all around them. Their landing appears to have kicked up a thick layer of dust. Hermione sneezes until her face hurts and Draco’s face is fixed in an expression of disgust as he attempts to wipe dust from his robes. Hermione gets to her feet and looks down at her own clothes, also hopelessly dusty. She reflexively reaches for her wand and her heart jumps when the feel of it in her palm reminds her that she has custody of it once more. Two Scourgifys later and they’re good as new. Hermione raises an eyebrow and looks pointedly at Draco; Draco spreads his arms as if to ask her what she’s chastising him for. Hermione simply rolls her eyes.
“Where are we?” She looks around, eyes tracing along the slatted ceiling above them. Feet rattle against it from the level above and she wrinkles her nose as more dust releases itself into the air.
“Pub,” Draco replies at length. Hermione cuts her eyes towards him. He offers a crooked grin that makes her want to hit him…again. Silently, he leads the way up the stairs. The stairs are rickety and unstable and Hermione has to resist the urge to crawl on all fours as they ascend the treacherous distance. The door at the top opens into a busy pub, dark and moodily lit, crammed to the brim with patrons. Hermione realizes she doesn’t even quite know what day it is; it’s either a holiday or a weekend with as many people are crammed into this place. And they’re Muggles, she realizes with a start. Not a wand, mysteriously spinning spoons, or set of robes in sight. Her eyebrows draw together as her eyes sweep across the bar and booths. She cranes her head and realizes that she can’t see Draco anymore. As her entire body spins to look for him, she feels a hand on her elbow. “Here,” Draco’s voice murmurs into her ear, and she shivers. He’s Disillusioned himself so the Muggles don’t wonder whether they’ve missed Halloween. Of course.
Draco’s hand moves to the small of her back and he guides her through the place. She offers many repeated rounds of “excuse me!” and “oh, sorry!” as Muggles bump shoulders with a figure they can’t see. He must hate this, she thinks with some irony. Completely hidden to spare the Muggles their confusion. She has to confess that she’s enjoying the concept.
Finally, Draco stops pushing her and allows her to stand still. He’s clearly been leading her towards something, something he’s elected to keep a secret, and she takes a visual catalogue. She’s about to irritably ask him what she’s supposed to be looking for… but then she sees it. Two Muggles sitting at a small, round table, a couple. The man, salt and peppered haired with kindly brown eyes, holds a pint and a newspaper. The woman with familiar thick brown curls sips from a glass of wine and laughs at his joke, unheard to Hermione. A desperate warmth spreads through her body as she watches them. Her parents.
Every cell in her body screams to run towards them, wrap her arms around them, and press a smattering of kisses into their heads. With a wrench of her heart, she knows it won’t do any good; they have no idea who she is or that they have a daughter at all. Her eyes well with tears and she rests a hand over her mouth. They’re safe. They’re happy.
Draco’s head appears next to her and she nearly jumps out of her skin. In his Disillusionment, he’s glamoured his clothes to look like an astonishingly convincing Muggle ensemble of a dark green dress shirt and black trousers. He’s looking at her with a hint of a smirk and twinkling eyes. She can’t tear her eyes away from Wendell and Monica for long, certainly not long enough to engage with Draco.
“They come here every Friday,” Draco tells her. “Drinks and dinner. Your father rather enjoys dramatically narrating—”
“The news,” Hermione interrupts in a hushed voice. She wraps her arms around herself as though she’s been split in half and has to hold herself together. The wound of losing her parents has been carefully cauterized for so long, and she feels as though she’s bleeding out onto the pub floor.
“I thought it was kind,” he murmurs, his mouth so close to her ear that his words ruffle the free curls by her temple. “You were so careful not to take the things they love from them when you altered their memories.”
Hermione closes her eyes and exhales a shuddering breath. Seeing them and not being able to rush to them, tell them what’s happened to her, and seek refuge in her parents’ protection like she did as a child is agonizing. It’s impossible, for so many reasons. But seeing them alive, happy, safe… it’s like being able to breathe after a long stretch of being underwater.
Hermione opens her eyes and tears them away from her parents, looking up at Malfoy instead. Why did he do this? Another cruel reminder of all he holds over her? Another threat, if leading him to Romania is another lie? Is he warning her not to resist?
He must see the distrust and anxiety painted across her face, even in the low light. He sighs and shakes his head, looking out over all of the pub patrons.
“After everything, I could at least give you this,” he explains. Hermione swallows and her eyes fall from his face to her parents again. “I’m sorry for threatening them, Granger. Even for me, it was an uncommonly cruel thing to do.”
“Even for you,” she echoes in agreement.
“We can’t stay.”
“I know.”
When she makes no move to leave, his voice softens. “Granger.”
“Don’t coddle me.”
She irritably turns away, trying to ignore the tearing sensation in her chest at the prospect of leaving her parents behind… again. He’s hot on her heels as she makes her way through the pub and out the front door. She breathes in greedy lungfuls of crisp air. It swirls around her and cools her cheeks, helps the tears abate. She really doesn’t have any energy left to cry.
Draco stands beside her for a moment silently and from her periphery, she can see him rub his palms together.
“Off to Romania, then,” he says, striding a few paces in front of her. When she doesn’t follow, she expects him to turn around, but he doesn’t. Her own unwillingness is tampered by a sudden burning curiosity.
“Hang on,” she says, walking after him quickly. “Draco.”
“Mm?” He doesn’t slow his pace.
“How—how did you apparate us from England to Australia in one go?”
She can hear a faint chuckle, but he doesn’t slow down. It’s getting harder to keep up.
“I wondered when you’d catch onto that.”
Irritating prick. Her arm reaches out and she snatches at his elbow, forcefully drawing him to a stop. She’s finally able to close the distance between them, looking up at him with a demanding sort of glare. Draco rolls his eyes.
“As hard as you’ve tried to build a profile of me since your time in the Manor, there are still aspects of my life yet unknown to you.”
“There’s plenty about you left unknown to me, and I’d like to keep it that way,” she bites savagely. Draco’s face is impassive but there’s something flooding behind his eyes, something she can’t quite place. Maybe it’s that alleged sliver of humanity she’d tried so hard to isolate, slide herself along, convert from inert to reactive. She grits her teeth as she realizes this mental pathway is exactly what she meant.
“You’re so predictable, do you realize that?” He asks in a low voice, his eyebrows drawing together slightly. She exhales a puff from her nostrils, intending to sound irritated, but it comes out shaky. He offers her his arm again with a raised eyebrow and a silent question: are you coming or not?
She takes it, and the tug in her belly comes a few beats before the apparition does.

As the swirl of apparition vanishes, she finds herself standing in a field. There’s a wide expanse of grass that stretches out in front of her, bracketed by high wooden fences and a handful of barns that stand at a distance. She lands on her feet this time, to her relief. The weather is a sharp contrast; outside the pub, it had been nearly chilly, but the sun’s attention on her in this field makes her skin prickle with sweat. Draco must notice it too because he pulls off his outer robes and she can see a flush spreading up from his collar. His eyes settle on hers. “Romania,” he says simply, spreading his arm wide across the field. Her jaw clenches. He really is intolerable.
“Where to now?” The question is all she can muster, looking around to see if she can glean any information about this place based on where they are. It’s hot, the grass is lush, and there’s a whisper of a breeze. Not much to look at, if she’s honest, and even less to learn.
“I’ve rented a room in town for us to stay in while we work,” Draco explains, pointing through the treeline to the east. “Should be a short walk that way.”
Hermione doesn’t waste time in setting off for the trees. She has to admit that the feeling of her sneakers on grass and sun on her face are comforting, invigorating. It’s been so long since she’s been able to roam around outside. She absolutely does not ask the man at her back when he had the time to book a room in Romania, of all places, considering that the period of time between her revealing this information to him and him rushing her out of the Manor was frankly confoundingly small. Even though she’s wildly curious, she stays her path of silence.
Draco ought to have been leading the charge, considering he’s the one who knew where they were going, but she walks in a straight line through the woods from the direction he’d pointed. He never stops her to correct her trajectory, so she figures she’s on the right path. After about ten minutes and a sizable amount of grousing from Draco about the dirt accumulating on his shoes, they break through the trees and find themselves at the crest of a hill. A town is laid out before them. It’s increasingly unfamiliar the more she looks around.
“Straight down the hill,” Draco says from behind her, “hotel with the green roof.”
She catches sight of the green gable and rolls her eyes. Draco Malfoy and the Color Green. Someone should write a romantic comedy. He prods lightly at her back to encourage her to continue walking and she does, carefully scaling down the incline and watching her step so that he has no reason to put a hand on her again.
The inn is small and quaint and smells like old fabric. It’s quite comforting, she realizes. Draco has a brief conversation with the woman at the front desk. The attendant is a bit older than them with a pile of dark waves gathered at her crown and a glittering smile that she flashes to Draco superfluously. The woman’s eyes dart to Hermione briefly and then back to Draco; there’s a tilt of her head, an upwards inflection to indicate a question. She can’t make heads or tails of what was asked, or Draco’s annoyingly impassive response to it. The woman slides the room key towards him and scribbles something down on a piece of paper. She presents the paper to him carded between her index and middle fingers; when he reaches to grab it, she tauntingly pulls it away, and even with the distance between them Hermione can hear Draco’s low laugh as he plucks it from her hand.
She’s filled with more resentment than ever, but she can’t place why. Draco leads her towards the room. The door swings open to reveal a small bedroom with an en suite, a single bed sitting in the middle with a sofa cradled in an alcove afront the window. There’s a desk fashioned of rich, warm wood and a chair.
Hermione turns her head to glare at him. “One bed? Really? Isn’t that a bit… trite?”
“Yes, it is,” he agrees, draping his robes over the desk chair and loosening his tie. He must see the expectant look on her face because he rolls his eyes. “Relax, Granger. Take the bed. I’ll be on the sofa.”
Hermione looks him up and down, frowning. He’s rather lanky and one look from him to the sofa tells her that he’s not going to sleep on it comfortably.
“All of the Malfoy wealth at your disposal, and you couldn’t have booked two rooms?”
“You are a flight risk.” His eyes fall on her as he slides his tie out from his collar. “Besides, it wasn’t exactly intentional. It’s the only inn in town and they were booked full.”
“You could’ve picked a different town,” mutters Hermione as she kicks off her shoes. Draco raises an eyebrow.
“Why do you think I picked this one?” There’s a challenge in his voice. She doesn’t meet his eyes and instead walks into the en suite with the powerful urge to wash her hands.
“Because you’re a prat?” She offers from the bathroom, over the running water. His responding snort tells her that he heard her.
“Come on, Granger. Think it over. I’ll be surprised if you do manage to guess, though. It’s fairly obvious to me, but may not be to you.”
Hermione rounds the corner of the bathroom, toweling off her hands. Did he really just insinuate that she’s not smart enough to understand why he’d chosen their location?
Her nostrils flare as he regards her with a smooth confidence, his hands in his trouser pockets. There’s a smirk drawing at the corner of his mouth. The palm of her hand itches to slap him.
Hermione takes a breath. “The apparition point. It’s the only one you had given the short time period. You didn’t want to be exposed by a long travel, and you’re a bit of a princess when it comes to the outdoors.”
Draco’s mouth opens with offense at the princess comment, but she cuts him off.
“Don’t argue with me. Just say right or wrong.”
Draco’s eyes glitter in a way that’s unsettling as he watches her. “You’re right,” he concedes with a nod. Then, he shakes his head and his next words come out a murmur. “And still so predictable.”

Hermione was correct in her assumption that Draco wouldn’t fit comfortably on the couch. As she lays in bed, his figure is illuminated by the moonlight filtering in through the window. He’s on his back, one arm tucked under his head, with one foot planted on the floor and the other crooked and braced against the rear cushion in a position that appears uncomfortable. They tried not to spare many glances at each other as they readied for bed; Draco ensured her that they’d have the opportunity to get clothes the next day, but that leaving the Manor with a host of belongings would’ve looked suspicious. As it was, all they had to sleep in were their underclothes.
Hermione wonders if modesty is worth much, at this juncture. She’d felt all of the things he’d keep hidden, and he’d seen most of hers. She closes her eyes and tries to push the thought out of her head; the memory is a bit nauseating, even if only certain parts of her body agree. It didn’t take much for her to succumb to the desperate pull of sleep. She’d been so exhausted before they’d even started their journey…
Hermione’s dreams are fast paced, unpleasant, and violent. She stands at Hogwarts and watches green light pulse towards her, Harry quickly stepping in front of it, his immediate death stealing her scream from her throat. She watches Ron crawl through a river of blood, one hand outstretched to hers, pleading her name but she can never reach him. She’s standing in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, surrounded by Death Eaters, and Voldemort curses her before she can even blink. She can feel all of the misery, all of the agony—
Her scream yanks her to the surface of wakefulness and she starts violently in the bed. The room is dark, the bed is unfamiliar. She’s disoriented for a moment and can’t remember where she is or how she got there. Her hands are shaking. She doesn’t know if it’s the tremors from the Cruciatus or her own nerves.
A face swims into view and all she can see for a moment is moonlight. She blinks several times and resists the hands that grab hers, trying to put distance between herself and the moon. How did the moon get in through the window?
The moonlight is holding her face and speaking to her. After a moment, she realizes it’s Draco.
“Granger.” His voice is insistent and low, his hands grasping at the back of her neck. She groans and pushes against his chest. He doesn’t let up. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“Was just a dream,” she mutters, but she shudders with the memory. She can still, distantly, hear Ron screaming her name. Draco lets out a long sigh, his hands finally releasing her head, but they pick up her hands. He’s quiet, just staring at them, squeezing her palms as the tremors run through them. A muscle in his jaw is twitching and for a moment, he looks like he has some confession to make.
“You need to lie back down,” he says after a moment. His voice is drawn tight. He doesn’t look back up at her. “It was just a dream. You’re…”
She can taste the word he’s stumbling over. Safe. But is she? Across Europe in a country she’s never visited, in a room unprotected with Draco Malfoy, beholden to his family by the law that his evil and unrelenting master put in place? With tremors shuddering through her hands from the torture that same master enacted upon her?
As horrifying and decidedly unsafe as the situation is… she doesn’t feel scared anymore. She certainly did when she woke up. Silvery eyes lift to hers through the dimly lit room and she swallows. All of her anger and resentment towards him is about what he represents. Things he’s been complicit in. He’s never hurt her, and has been protective. She hasn’t put much thought into his confessions in his bedroom; she’d decided he was lying, or at least veiling his true intentions. What if he wasn’t lying? What if he truly wanted a better world?
“Lay down,” he says again, his voice soft. Only when she begins to settle back against the pillows does he release her hands. She lets out a shuddering breath and squeezes her eyes closed; she’s freezing now. She shivers underneath the coverlet and Draco lifts the blanket from the couch, draping it over her before sprawling back out against it.
“You’ll get cold,” she manages in a small voice.
“Go to bed, Granger.”