They're Probably Right
"Tripped over a tree root," growled Ron, scrambling to stand again.
"Well, with feet that size, hard not to," said a low, cocky voice. Hermione turned to see Draco Malfoy standing alone, relaxing against a tree with his arms folded across his chest.
"Go fuck yourself, Malfoy," Ron sneered, and Draco's pale blue eyes gleamed with delight as he said lightly,
"Language, Weasley. Hadn't you better be hurrying along, now? You wouldn't like her spotted, would you?" He jerked his chin toward Hermione, who felt a flush of indignation at once. Suddenly there was an explosion like a mortar blast from the campsite. A violent flash of jade green light burst all around them. Hermione stayed focused on what Draco had said - that they wouldn't want Hermione spotted.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, and Draco laughed viciously.
"Granger, they're after Muggles. Do you want to be showing off your knickers in midair? Because if you do, hang around... they're moving this way, and it would give us all a laugh."
"Hermione's a witch." Harry's voice was like ice.
"Have it your own way, Potter," said Draco with a very mean-spirited smile. "If you think they can't spot a Mudblood, stay where you are."
"You watch your mouth!" shouted Ron. Hermione's stomach twisted as Draco's voice using the awful word reverberated in her head.
"Never mind, Ron," she said, grabbing Ron and yanking him back from Draco. There was another bang, louder and closer, and then several shrieks of terror. Draco gave his characteristic smirk and laughed a little.
"Scare easily, don't they?" he said, sounding amused. "I suppose your daddy told you all to hide? What's he up to — trying to rescue the Muggles?"
"Where're your parents?" demanded Harry, his snarl accusing. "Out there wearing masks, are they?"
Draco grinned wider than ever at Harry. "Well... if they were, I wouldn't be likely to tell you, would I, Potter?"
"Oh come on," said Hermione, feeling flustered and irritated and hurt and angry. She glared at Draco and told her friends, "let's go and find the others."
"Keep that big bushy head down, Granger," Draco Malfoy sneered in a terrible voice.
"Come on," Hermione said again, pulling at Harry and Ron as they made their way toward the path.
Hermione jolted awake, panting softly where she lay beside Draco in her soft bed. She stared at him in the moonlight, shaking like a leaf as she watched him sleep peacefully. Her heart was racing as she remembered the awful way Draco had behaved that fateful night at the Quidditch World Cup. Hermione gulped, studying Draco's face as she remembered all sorts of terrible things he'd done. She turned and snatched at the necklace he'd given her, the Australian opal pendant that she'd put on her bedside table for safekeeping.
"Hermione?" His voice was soft and gravelly beside her. "You all right?"
"Get out of my bed, Malfoy," Hermione whispered, so softly she could barely hear herself.
"What's the matter?" she heard Draco ask, and when he sat up and put his hand on her shoulder, she wrenched away and growled,
"Do not touch me."
Draco looked confused, and then an expression of realisation came over his face.
"I'm a different man than that boy was," he murmured, and Hermione knew he recognised the look of someone awakening from a nightmarish memory. She shook her head fiercely, throwing the necklace at him, but he said carefully, "Hermione, I love you, and I more sorry than I could ever properly express for -"
"Get out of my bed!" Hermione yelled, shoving at his shoulders. "There are some things that don't just erase themselves from your mind once an apology's been made, Draco. Get out. Get out now!"
He did, scrambling out from under her blankets. He reached for his wand and quickly Transfigured his pyjamas back into denims and the jumper they'd originally been. He cleared his throat softly and said,
"I don't suppose there's anything I could say right now. I suppose I haven't earned the right to anything more than your anger. But I do love you."
"Get out of my house." Hermione stared at him, and her mind was flooded with one memory after another. Nobody asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood. Hermione tossed the opal necklace toward Draco and mimicked his voice as she quoted something he'd once said in Madam Malkin's. "If you're wondering what the smell is, Mother, a Mudblood just walked in. Then Madam Malkin told Harry and Ron to lower their wands, and I told them it wasn't worth a fight, and you taunted them, and you asked who had blacked up my eye, because you wanted to send them flowers."
Her eyes overflowed then, and she made absolutely no effort to stem the tears like she usually did. She didn't even wipe them away; she just sat there in her bed, glaring at Draco as he bent and picked up the opal necklace from the floor. He tucked it away and raked his fingers through his hair, and he whispered,
"I never actually expected you to accept my apology that day in the Leaky Cauldron, Hermione, and I still respect your right not to accept it. But I am sorry, and I am in love with you, and I have changed. I'll go now."
"Yes, do go now." Hermione's voice was thick as she shook her head and spat, "What a bloody stupid fool I was to let myself get drawn in by the horrid likes of you. Harry and Ron were right. They were right."
Draco just stared at her for a moment, his own eyes glistening, and he nodded once.
"Yeah. They're probably right. I did and said the worst things a person can do and say, and a lot of them I did directly to you. But I was very wrong then, and I'm very sorry now, and it's perfectly all right for you to go ahead and tell me fuck off."
Hermione shut her eyes and whispered, "Please just leave."
There was a soft crack, and when Hermione blinked her eyes open through the tears, Draco had Disapparated.
"Mum, Dad… why did you let me sleep so long?" Hermione rubbed at her eyes with a fist as she walked into the kitchen.
"Well, you took the day off for a reason, didn't you?" Her father grinned from the stove, where he was making up some eggs.
"A great load of owls came with letters and parcels. Birthday cards and gifts, I expect?" Her mother gestured to the table, where a little stack of envelopes and a few brown paper wrapped boxes sat. Hermione sank down into a chair, and she mumbled her thanks as her mother put a mug of tea before her.
"Happy birthday, dear. You've always been at school for your birthday; we haven't celebrated with you since you were very small," Mrs Granger said. Hermione tried to smile, but it didn't work. She hadn't smiled for almost a week now.
She opened the first card, which was a hand-drawn creation from Hagrid. There were cards from Bill and Fleur Weasley, from Ginny and George, from Mr and Mrs Weasley, from Neville… there was a little crystal with a note from Luna saying it would bring serenity in Hermione's 'useful but undoubtedly stressful work.' There was a book on the many uses of Alihotsy with a letter from Ron and Harry that said,
We'll find our way back to one another. We always have, and we always will.
Hermione tried not to cry at that. She flipped through the book and tried again to smile, thanking her father when he put down eggs and back bacon and toast on a plate before her. She opened the last envelope, which was thick and lumpy, and her heart sank when she recognised the writing on the outside.
When she opened the envelope, the Australian opal necklace came tumbling out. Hermione set it silently on the table, and her mother breathed,
"Oh, this looks just like that opal they sold in Australia! I remember it. How lovely. Who's that from?"
"It… it doesn't matter," Hermione mumbled. She pulled out the stiff card of parchment inside and read the neat writing.
Hermione,
Vanish it if you want, or throw it into a river, or flush it down a toilet. I'll keep my dream that one day you'll wear it. In any case, it belongs to you, so do with it whatever you please.
I am sorry. For all of it. And I really did fall in love with you, Hermione. I really and truly did. I'll never stop being sorry, and I don't suppose it'll be easy to fall out of love with you, either.
Happy birthday.
Draco
"Hermione, dear… are you all right?"
Hermione ignored her mother and Vanished Draco's letter. She stuffed the necklace into the pocket of her denims and said roughly,
"I ought not to have taken the day off work today. I have so much to do. I need to go into the office. Sorry."
She grabbed a piece of toast from her plate, and as she quickly walked from the kitchen, she heard her mother say in a resigned voice,
"Wouldn't be our Hermione if she could stand the thought of actually taking the day off."
"No reporter from the Daily Prophet here this time," Kingsley Shacklebolt noted as he signed one page after another of Hermione's Squib Rights legislation. She tried to smile. Again, it didn't work. This was day sixteen of not smiling. She finally said,
"Probably for the best, Minister. I apologise for what I said to the reporter last time."
"Your intentions are good, Hermione," Kingsley said as he signed the last page, "but the wizarding world just isn't ready to start holding hands and pretending we all like one another. There's a lot to be done before everyone plays nicely. Reform. The type of reform we're doing with legislation like this."
"Trust me; I've learnt my lesson," Hermione huffed. "I can see plainly now that nobody's actually ready to start throwing forgiveness around. That includes me."
Kingsley gave her a knowing look. He wrapped some twine around the bundle of documents and then sealed it with the wax seal of the Minister of Magic. He pressed a little brass circular button on his desk, and a moment later, his secretary walked in.
"Please file this new legislation with all appropriate records and offices and issue a brief statement to the Prophet." Kingsley handed the legislation over. Hermione had gotten everything she'd wanted; it was now optional for parents and Squibs themselves to remove all records once Squib status was discovered. She swallowed hard, knowing she should feel victorious and instead feeling defeated.
"Thank you, Kingsley," she said, dropping the formality once the Minister's office was empty. He just nodded at her and assured her,
"You're doing good work."
"That's what everyone keeps saying," Hermione nodded. She left his office without another word and got into a lift to Level Four. She walked silently into her own office and slumped into her chair, touching her fingers to her forehead.
She hadn't spoken to Draco in sixteen days, but it felt like an eternity. Every time she remembered something terrible he'd done or said, she was met with the feeling of him being warm and kind. She'd tried telling herself that he was inherently wicked, that he was a bully to his core. Some other part of her had insisted that he'd been trained to be terrible, that he was like a dog taught to fight. He'd sat alone in the Leaky Cauldron and apologised, probably fully expecting a punch like the one she'd given him in their third year. Instead she'd given him her body, and he'd given her his, and they'd laughed together and had found areas of genuinely shared interest.
So now she couldn't decide if she had been an idiot to forgive him at all, or whether she was being heartless in refusing to recognise that a poorly-raised child could become an independently good-hearted adult.
It didn't help that there was something sitting on her desk in his handwriting. She picked up the little card and read it.
H, Absolutely no obligation to come, but I've a craving for fake butter, so I'll be at the seven o'clock show tonight. I'll save a seat just in case. - D
Hermione picked up the cinema ticket that had been sitting with the card. She scanned her eyes over it. It was for a showing tonight for a film called Boys Don't Cry. Hermione huffed out a breath and tried to imagine sitting in a dark theatre with Draco Malfoy, their greasy fingers brushing against each other in their shared popcorn. She could see his face in the blue-grey light from the projector. She could hear him laughing afterward about how they'd chosen a bad film yet again.
But don't touch my hand now. I've just washed it, you see; wouldn't want a Mudblood sliming it up.
Hermione's fingers shook around the ticket as she remembered the look of delighted hatred in Draco's blue eyes when he'd held out an anti-Harry Potter badge to her at school.
She tore the ticket up into ten little pieces and then aimed her wand at them, Vanishing the shreds and then the card he'd delivered to her desk. She cleared her throat and folded her hands on her desk, and she whispered aloud,
"No, Draco."
Author's Note: Uh-oh. Maybe Ron was right, after all. Maybe certain things can't really be forgiven. Or will Hermione realize that Draco was basically a parrot for the bigotry and hatred that surrounded him in every imaginable way growing up? Can he convince her that he's really repentant? Does it matter? In real life, many people are raised by bigots and wind up saying and doing terrible things before coming to their senses. Their victims are under no obligation to forgive, but they do have the right to forgive. What choice will Hermione ultimately make?