Voyager's End
Sep. 15th, 2006 10:33 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tamingthemuseWell--I've been asked repeatedly when/if there is another part to the story that I wrote for the Mecca prompt, "A Wizard's Pilgrimage". At the time, I didn't really think that there was any more story to tell. However, with the prompt this week, this story suddenly came to mind and I was forced (yes, forced, I say--my muse is very, very strong, and she knows exactly how to twist my arm, damn her anyway) to write this ending to a story that I thought would be a one-shot. Without further ado--
Title: Voyager's End
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikespetslayer
Rating: PG-13 for language
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Warnings: Post-Hogwarts; HBP compliant (in a way, I suppose)
Summary: After apparating from Mecca, Hermione takes Draco to her Unplottable cottage in the Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. Reading of letters and a diary, talking, and deep personal thoughts ensue...
And if you haven't read part one--
A Wizard's Pilgrimage
Voyager’s End
Adrift. That’s how he felt around her—adrift on a sea of unexplainable emotions and unsaid words. Aimlessly floating on a sea of actions and words that had been said for her own protection but never explained, never expounded on until now. A castaway from the wreckage of his life, that never-ending horror that ceased long ago but kept alive by lies and deception.
She locked herself in the bedroom of the Unplottable cottage with the wards set around it in layers and the doors and windows locked with complex spells that would require a mage of far greater talent than he to unlock. She left him in the sitting room alone and he browsed her books and picked up little trinkets to glare ineffectively at them before replacing them carefully.
He looked at the door and thought about how long she’d been inside. Too long. Much too long. It didn’t take that long to read all those rambling letters or that diary, but she had been in there long enough for the sun to sink and the stars to blink in and out of existence before the sun peeped over the horizon again. At least sixteen hours, if he could calculate that closely by the length of time he’d been pacing. Considering sixty worried steps could equal an hour, and he’d paced the whole of the room—not counting the miniscule amounts of time it took for him to use the loo or scrounge something to eat in the tiny kitchen. Sixteen hours of waiting for her verdict, which to him was more important than any other, even the Wizengamot's. Sixteen hours of needing to see her face, wanting to hear her voice, even craving a slap on the cheek from her small soft hand.
He’d stepped up to the door once and listened closely but heard nothing. She must have put up a silencing charm on it or something; he should have at least been able to hear the turning of pages or the pounding of her fist into the mattress. Nothing. Not a sound. Disappointed, he turned away and resumed his pacing.
She had been right about one thing—it was cooler here. He had never pictured her as a country girl, but here he was in her cottage in the Hebrides (at least that’s where she said it was). It was on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean; he could hear the waves crashing and the loud sounds of birds somewhere outside, but he couldn’t see them from the windows. Maybe he didn’t want to see them; from the sound of it, there were thousands of the little buggers, waiting to dive-bomb him or shit on his head.
Merlin knew he deserved it, though. He’d been running for so long it was hard to sit still, harder yet to wait. Wait for her to finish whatever she was finishing, wait for her to talk to him, yell at him, whatever she was going to do to him. Waiting was hard; wondering was harder.
He heard a creaking noise behind him and turned to see her coming out of her room and into the sitting room. Her nose was red and her eyes were swollen like she had been crying, but he was still too schooled in the ways of polite society to mention any of that. She didn’t look at him as she deftly skirted around him; in fact, she didn’t even acknowledge his presence. It was like he didn’t exist for a moment; here, cast away on a secluded island with the girl of his dreams and she was acting like he wasn’t there. How bloody perfect.
She made her way to the kitchen to light the old stove, tossing a couple of pieces of wood inside to bring it to a respectable heat. Her movements were ruthlessly efficient and economical as she took out the ingredients for a light supper and put them on the countertop. Eggs, butter, cheese—he had no idea what she was making with them, but he liked to watch her move about the kitchen, fantasizing that she was in his kitchen, fixing something for him.
He should have known the storm would break soon. He should have seen it coming but he was too wrapped up in fantasy and watching the soft sway of her skirt as she moved to see the jerky arm movements or the tears that began to leak from the corners of her eyes. He didn’t see the lightening strike before the thunderous boom of the skillet hitting the opposite wall from where he stood and then her voice, her beautiful voice cutting into the silence between her silent sobs.
“That bastard! That selfish bastard! He knew, all this time he knew and he kept all of it from me! He could have had anyone—hell he did, time and time again, and I never said a thing. It was his choice, his prerogative. He kept my letters, my diary from me because he was a selfish, self-centered, arrogant, hateful prat! Merlin!” She sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands, then doubled over because the pain of Harry's betrayal was too great for her to bear.
Draco stood in the sunny kitchen with the new dent in the wall and wondered what to do. Who was she angry with? Him or Potter? Both of them? He ran his hands through his hair and exhaled slowly, somewhat afraid of the slight form on the floor. He knew the mutable nature of women; they could turn on you in a heartbeat and make you the villain faster than the turn of the hourglass.
His heart won out; he couldn’t stand the heart-wrenching sobs coming out of her throat and shaking her entire body. “Granger, get a grip on yourself,” he said, kneeling on the floor next to her. “Come on, it isn’t that bad.”
There was no response to his words so he tried again. “Granger, come on—get up off the floor. It can’t be that bad, can it?”
He touched her arm and it galvanized her to action. She propelled herself into his arms and wrapped herself around him, clinging like a limpet. “He wasted years of my life telling me that you were evil, a Death Eater, a maniacal Mudblood-killer that would rather see me dead!”
It wasn’t a strain to pick her up and carry her to the small settee in the sitting room. He sat down and cradled her on his lap until she was cried out, the loud sobs becoming farther apart and softer until they were only hiccups and hitches in her breathing. His hand drifted to her hair and stroked it gently as her face rested against his shoulder. Once again, he got lost in his fantasy until she finally raised her head.
If nothing else, Hermione Granger did everything full out, including crying. She didn’t have the pretty ‘crying face’ that he associated with other girls; her face was blotchy red, her eyes swollen and nose running clear snot in huge amounts. He was sure that there was a large wet spot on his shirtfront, but he didn’t care about his shirt, he cared about her. That had always been his downfall, according to Snape—he cared about Hermione Granger.
She scrubbed at her face with her fist and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she managed to choke out. “I shouldn’t have—”
Draco looked down into her earnest face. “What was all that about?” he asked, still too confused to understand the half-spoken sentences and half-allusions that she’d made in the kitchen.
She climbed off his lap and paced back and forth, wringing her hands and trying to choke out words in coherent sentences. “I don’t know where to start. Beginning? Middle? End? There isn’t a good place. I guess the end you know—me grabbing you and running back here with you. The middle? Well, that had to be Harry and me, chasing you all over the world and then some. Me always crying in my beer about the one that got away, and I’m not talking in a criminal sense. Because somewhere along the beginning, I…well, I liked you. A lot. Before you hurt me by calling me mudblood. Before you picked on me and called me names and know-it-all. Before I found out that you wouldn’t look twice at me. And then back to the middle, when I figured out that nobody would look twice at me. When I threw myself into my job and forgot all about love and sex and crushes that were never returned.”
She rounded the end of the couch and he wanted to turn around and watch her, but he didn’t dare. He knew her, better than she knew herself; years of studying Hermione Granger had given him a peculiar insight into her behavior and this was one of the ways that she hid from the world. Hiding behind couches, behind words, behind knowledge like it was a ten-foot tall fence that no one could see over. Hiding in plain sight from everyone that she knew, because she couldn’t find anywhere else to hide.
“And then there was Harry. Good old Harry. Harry who would carry me home and help me undress and hold my head while I puked my guts out like I puked my heart out. Harry, who was always good for a little pity fuck because poor Granger, she doesn’t have anyone. Harry, who kept me from finding out the truth about you, about your letters and diary, about everything because he knew the minute I did, his secret slap and tickle would be a thing of the past. Harry. I hate that bastard.”
Draco was almost afraid for Harry Potter at that moment. He hoped in his heart that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to show up here in the near future, but he would deserve anything and everything that he got from this woman.
He cleared his throat lightly. “What does all this have to do with me?” he said, still confused.
Her laugh tore from her throat like wet silk. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know, do you? See, I might as well be drunk now, because I can’t remember who does know and who doesn’t.” She rounded the end of the couch so she could watch his face for the disgust that she knew would be there once she got the words out.
“Well,” she started, plopping down on the ottoman across from him, “It starts by telling you that Harry married Pansy—did you know that? Yeah, Harry married Pansy. Pansy is and always will be associated with you. Pansy and I became friends. One day, your name came up, as it is wont to do when Pansy and I are getting drunk together. We do that a lot, you know? Get drunk together. And I happened to mention—now, don’t take this the wrong way, but really—I happened to mention that I wanted to shag you silly when we were in school. Because I was drunk. And Pansy, being Pansy of course, proceeded to tell all our friends and anyone within gossip distance that I, Hermione Granger, Auror extraordinaire, wanted to shag Draco Malfoy, notorious Death Eater.”
She waited in vain for the face. The grimace of distaste, the moue of disgust, anything. Waited patiently, and only got a look of mild curiosity. “All right then—what happened?” he asked, and she looked at him with her own brand of disgust.
“What do you think? I was a classic joke then. I turned in to the Ministry’s version of a groupie in their eyes. They started sending me out after all the fugitive Death Eaters to see if I wanted to shag all Death Eaters or just Draco Malfoy, Death Eater. It became the running thing—did she or didn’t she? By then, I was so heartily fed up with it all that I never spoke another word to Pansy and I was assigned Harry as my partner. Which sucked, by the way, because I didn’t know about his little kinks then—or his need of backdoor affairs. Or the fact that he’d slept with all his partners, male and female. I thought I was so lucky to have my best friend for a partner.” She dropped her eyes and stared at the floor, all talked out.
Draco looked down at her from the little height that his position gave him. “I wasn’t a Death Eater, Hermione.”
Her head snapped up and she glared at him hotly. “I know that now. I read the diary, the letters, all of it. Page to page, beginning to end, cover to cover. I read it. Can’t you tell I read it? Now I’m not just a joke but a fool to boot. Typical.”
“What’s typical about it? You aren’t a joke or a fool to me. You’re…” he wanted to tell her she was beautiful, smart, witty, talented, funny, but he didn’t think that’s what she needed to hear. “You’re you.”
“Yeah, I’m me. Pitiful, isn’t it?”
Somehow, her angsty reply touched a raw nerve inside him. “You are not pitiful! What the hell, Granger—when did you ever care what anyone else thought of you? What happened to the brightest witch of our class? I don’t see her here—I see someone else entirely, and it isn’t the girl that I spent years to protect.”
She stood up, her eyes snapping. He wanted to laugh; she barely reached his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. You spent years trying to protect me? By running and hiding and what, Draco? Not being there? Good one. I need to remember that next time.”
He didn’t realize he moved until her arms were in his hands and he was close to shaking her senseless. “I couldn’t let anyone know! Don’t you get it? What’s the best way of getting a muggle-born witch killed—fall in love with her! Especially when you’re Lucius Malfoy's son! Merlin’s balls, Granger, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
It was only after the words left his mouth that he realized what he was saying to her. He had finally disclosed the last secret, the final key to the diary, the letters, and the desperate running that he’d been doing for so many years. He knew it and so did she, by the stunned look that crossed her features.
“You…fell in love with me?” The stunned look melted into a soft smile. “Then it all makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” he demanded, totally thrown by her smile.
Hermione looked up at him and he forgot his question, but she answered it anyway. “Why you sent the letters and stuff to me in the first place. And why Harry hid them from me. And why Pansy thought it was so fucking hilarious to spread all that shit around about me wanting to shag you. Did everyone know?”
“Pansy did. I would imagine that she shared it with Harry, if she married him. Anyone else, I don’t know.” He realized suddenly that he was still holding her arms tightly and let her go, stepping back to run his hands through his hair. “Shit, Granger, shit. I didn’t want you to find out.”
“Why not? Never mind—I know. You can’t be seen with a mudblood—they’ll revoke your pureblood status.” She was shaky on her feet when she got up and headed to the kitchen. She kept her face turned away from him but he knew that she was crying by the sniffs that came from under the curtain of hair.
He was behind her in a flash. “Granger—Hermione, wait. That isn’t why—”
It shocked him when the kitchen door slammed in his face, nearly breaking his nose. He tried the door and found it wouldn’t move so he was forced to shout through the carved wood. “Hermione, you have to listen to me! I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want you to have to start running too! Don’t you see? That’s my life now—running from place to place to stay one step ahead. That isn’t the life that I wanted for you, for us. I wanted the white picket fence—the home that I could come to after work every day. We’ll never have that, Hermione, and you deserve that and so much more.”
The door was yanked open and he stared down at the petite brunette with her sparkling eyes and her hands on her hips. Her hand left her hip to poke in the center of his chest to punctuate her words. “What I deserve is the chance to be with the man that stole my heart years and years ago. I don’t want to chase him across the continents for the rest of my life.”
He rubbed his chest; there would be a bruise there tomorrow, he was sure of it. “You’re right,” he admitted.
She stared up at him. “I’m right?” Instead of the happiness that he expected, she frowned. “You’re just humoring me, aren’t you?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Mother of Circe, Granger, have I ever humored you? I don’t humor anyone, not even my own mother.” He leaned against the doorframe, more to prevent it from being slammed in his face than the need for something to lean on. “So, you going to be nice to me now?” he asked with a smirk.
A sly smile curled her mouth. “I was being nice. Do you want something to eat, or are your words enough to fill you up right now?”
Now, that was the Granger that he knew and loved. He threw his head back and laughed for the first time in what seemed like years and it made him look boyishly young again. “See, that’s why I fell like I did—always ready with the witty repartee. Dinner would be nice. I would have fixed it myself, but I was a little preoccupied, not to mention I didn’t want to be accused of prying into your personal belongings.”
“Yes, because a kitchen is so damn personal anyway. Get your flighty ass in here and help me.” She let the door go and it banged against his funny bone, drawing a hissing gasp from his already breathless lungs.
Always the bossy type, she pointed to a chair and handed him a knife, then dumped a fistful of vegetables in front of him to chop up. He watched her while he cut them into small bits, smiling at the graceful way she wandered in and out of the kitchen table and chairs, around the stove, over the woodbin and the cat that hadn’t registered on his consciousness since his arrival. With every passing minute of companionable silence his smile grew wider and his lanky form relaxed into the chair.
After so many years of wandering and running, he felt like he had come home. Cast adrift onto the seas of the fugitive life, he had found his way to a safe port, albeit a possible haven from the storms of accusations that always seemed to follow. He could have never imagined the peace that filled him or the yearning that disappeared after so many years of unrequited need. Tomorrow didn’t feel as important as it did before; his life had always been full of temporary solutions for the problems that never left him, but he let the urgency go as he watched her through half-lidded eyes.
She turned and saw him looking at her; the depth of devotion that he’d buried was shining out of his gray eyes and she paused in her rush to cook them something edible to just look and admire him. Impulsively, she walked over to stand in front of him, looking shyly from under her lashes.
“Draco, I know that…well, this is all so sudden, but…how would you feel about staying here for a while? Just…getting to know each other instead of…well, we never were friendly at Hogwarts. What do you think?”
He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “I think that is a splendid idea, Hermione. I’d really like that.”
“Good. I have lots of time off coming to me—I think that I’ll floo the Ministry and take it all at once. And request a change in partners as well.” She started to turn away and he stopped her with the pressure of his fingertips on her hand that he hadn’t yet let go. “Was there something else you wanted?”
“Only this.” He pulled her closer, gently and slowly. When she was in reach, he dipped his head and kissed her softly. Just once, just a press of lips against lips, but it was all he had ever dreamt it would be.
The blush that stained her cheeks charmed him. “What was that for?” she asked, and he shrugged his shoulders and quirked his mouth to one side.
“I have always wondered if your lips were as soft as they looked.”
“Are they?”
His smile changed his face entirely. “Oh yes, Hermione. Softer.” He dropped his hand and let her move away from him, still blushing furiously.
He leaned on his fist and watched her moving, content and sated in a strange, unfamiliar way. He didn’t want to move from this spot, sitting in her kitchen and watching her work her magic on the vegetables that he’d been chopping moments before. He didn’t curse the wasted time; they had found each other at the perfect moment, the exact time they were supposed to. So many years, adrift and castaway and discarded by the ones that loved them, hated them, hunted them. Being here seemed right now. It felt like home. It felt exactly like coming home.
Title: Voyager's End
Author:
spikespetslayerRating: PG-13 for language
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Warnings: Post-Hogwarts; HBP compliant (in a way, I suppose)
Summary: After apparating from Mecca, Hermione takes Draco to her Unplottable cottage in the Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. Reading of letters and a diary, talking, and deep personal thoughts ensue...
And if you haven't read part one--
A Wizard's Pilgrimage
Voyager’s End
Adrift. That’s how he felt around her—adrift on a sea of unexplainable emotions and unsaid words. Aimlessly floating on a sea of actions and words that had been said for her own protection but never explained, never expounded on until now. A castaway from the wreckage of his life, that never-ending horror that ceased long ago but kept alive by lies and deception.
She locked herself in the bedroom of the Unplottable cottage with the wards set around it in layers and the doors and windows locked with complex spells that would require a mage of far greater talent than he to unlock. She left him in the sitting room alone and he browsed her books and picked up little trinkets to glare ineffectively at them before replacing them carefully.
He looked at the door and thought about how long she’d been inside. Too long. Much too long. It didn’t take that long to read all those rambling letters or that diary, but she had been in there long enough for the sun to sink and the stars to blink in and out of existence before the sun peeped over the horizon again. At least sixteen hours, if he could calculate that closely by the length of time he’d been pacing. Considering sixty worried steps could equal an hour, and he’d paced the whole of the room—not counting the miniscule amounts of time it took for him to use the loo or scrounge something to eat in the tiny kitchen. Sixteen hours of waiting for her verdict, which to him was more important than any other, even the Wizengamot's. Sixteen hours of needing to see her face, wanting to hear her voice, even craving a slap on the cheek from her small soft hand.
He’d stepped up to the door once and listened closely but heard nothing. She must have put up a silencing charm on it or something; he should have at least been able to hear the turning of pages or the pounding of her fist into the mattress. Nothing. Not a sound. Disappointed, he turned away and resumed his pacing.
She had been right about one thing—it was cooler here. He had never pictured her as a country girl, but here he was in her cottage in the Hebrides (at least that’s where she said it was). It was on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean; he could hear the waves crashing and the loud sounds of birds somewhere outside, but he couldn’t see them from the windows. Maybe he didn’t want to see them; from the sound of it, there were thousands of the little buggers, waiting to dive-bomb him or shit on his head.
Merlin knew he deserved it, though. He’d been running for so long it was hard to sit still, harder yet to wait. Wait for her to finish whatever she was finishing, wait for her to talk to him, yell at him, whatever she was going to do to him. Waiting was hard; wondering was harder.
He heard a creaking noise behind him and turned to see her coming out of her room and into the sitting room. Her nose was red and her eyes were swollen like she had been crying, but he was still too schooled in the ways of polite society to mention any of that. She didn’t look at him as she deftly skirted around him; in fact, she didn’t even acknowledge his presence. It was like he didn’t exist for a moment; here, cast away on a secluded island with the girl of his dreams and she was acting like he wasn’t there. How bloody perfect.
She made her way to the kitchen to light the old stove, tossing a couple of pieces of wood inside to bring it to a respectable heat. Her movements were ruthlessly efficient and economical as she took out the ingredients for a light supper and put them on the countertop. Eggs, butter, cheese—he had no idea what she was making with them, but he liked to watch her move about the kitchen, fantasizing that she was in his kitchen, fixing something for him.
He should have known the storm would break soon. He should have seen it coming but he was too wrapped up in fantasy and watching the soft sway of her skirt as she moved to see the jerky arm movements or the tears that began to leak from the corners of her eyes. He didn’t see the lightening strike before the thunderous boom of the skillet hitting the opposite wall from where he stood and then her voice, her beautiful voice cutting into the silence between her silent sobs.
“That bastard! That selfish bastard! He knew, all this time he knew and he kept all of it from me! He could have had anyone—hell he did, time and time again, and I never said a thing. It was his choice, his prerogative. He kept my letters, my diary from me because he was a selfish, self-centered, arrogant, hateful prat! Merlin!” She sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands, then doubled over because the pain of Harry's betrayal was too great for her to bear.
Draco stood in the sunny kitchen with the new dent in the wall and wondered what to do. Who was she angry with? Him or Potter? Both of them? He ran his hands through his hair and exhaled slowly, somewhat afraid of the slight form on the floor. He knew the mutable nature of women; they could turn on you in a heartbeat and make you the villain faster than the turn of the hourglass.
His heart won out; he couldn’t stand the heart-wrenching sobs coming out of her throat and shaking her entire body. “Granger, get a grip on yourself,” he said, kneeling on the floor next to her. “Come on, it isn’t that bad.”
There was no response to his words so he tried again. “Granger, come on—get up off the floor. It can’t be that bad, can it?”
He touched her arm and it galvanized her to action. She propelled herself into his arms and wrapped herself around him, clinging like a limpet. “He wasted years of my life telling me that you were evil, a Death Eater, a maniacal Mudblood-killer that would rather see me dead!”
It wasn’t a strain to pick her up and carry her to the small settee in the sitting room. He sat down and cradled her on his lap until she was cried out, the loud sobs becoming farther apart and softer until they were only hiccups and hitches in her breathing. His hand drifted to her hair and stroked it gently as her face rested against his shoulder. Once again, he got lost in his fantasy until she finally raised her head.
If nothing else, Hermione Granger did everything full out, including crying. She didn’t have the pretty ‘crying face’ that he associated with other girls; her face was blotchy red, her eyes swollen and nose running clear snot in huge amounts. He was sure that there was a large wet spot on his shirtfront, but he didn’t care about his shirt, he cared about her. That had always been his downfall, according to Snape—he cared about Hermione Granger.
She scrubbed at her face with her fist and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she managed to choke out. “I shouldn’t have—”
Draco looked down into her earnest face. “What was all that about?” he asked, still too confused to understand the half-spoken sentences and half-allusions that she’d made in the kitchen.
She climbed off his lap and paced back and forth, wringing her hands and trying to choke out words in coherent sentences. “I don’t know where to start. Beginning? Middle? End? There isn’t a good place. I guess the end you know—me grabbing you and running back here with you. The middle? Well, that had to be Harry and me, chasing you all over the world and then some. Me always crying in my beer about the one that got away, and I’m not talking in a criminal sense. Because somewhere along the beginning, I…well, I liked you. A lot. Before you hurt me by calling me mudblood. Before you picked on me and called me names and know-it-all. Before I found out that you wouldn’t look twice at me. And then back to the middle, when I figured out that nobody would look twice at me. When I threw myself into my job and forgot all about love and sex and crushes that were never returned.”
She rounded the end of the couch and he wanted to turn around and watch her, but he didn’t dare. He knew her, better than she knew herself; years of studying Hermione Granger had given him a peculiar insight into her behavior and this was one of the ways that she hid from the world. Hiding behind couches, behind words, behind knowledge like it was a ten-foot tall fence that no one could see over. Hiding in plain sight from everyone that she knew, because she couldn’t find anywhere else to hide.
“And then there was Harry. Good old Harry. Harry who would carry me home and help me undress and hold my head while I puked my guts out like I puked my heart out. Harry, who was always good for a little pity fuck because poor Granger, she doesn’t have anyone. Harry, who kept me from finding out the truth about you, about your letters and diary, about everything because he knew the minute I did, his secret slap and tickle would be a thing of the past. Harry. I hate that bastard.”
Draco was almost afraid for Harry Potter at that moment. He hoped in his heart that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to show up here in the near future, but he would deserve anything and everything that he got from this woman.
He cleared his throat lightly. “What does all this have to do with me?” he said, still confused.
Her laugh tore from her throat like wet silk. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know, do you? See, I might as well be drunk now, because I can’t remember who does know and who doesn’t.” She rounded the end of the couch so she could watch his face for the disgust that she knew would be there once she got the words out.
“Well,” she started, plopping down on the ottoman across from him, “It starts by telling you that Harry married Pansy—did you know that? Yeah, Harry married Pansy. Pansy is and always will be associated with you. Pansy and I became friends. One day, your name came up, as it is wont to do when Pansy and I are getting drunk together. We do that a lot, you know? Get drunk together. And I happened to mention—now, don’t take this the wrong way, but really—I happened to mention that I wanted to shag you silly when we were in school. Because I was drunk. And Pansy, being Pansy of course, proceeded to tell all our friends and anyone within gossip distance that I, Hermione Granger, Auror extraordinaire, wanted to shag Draco Malfoy, notorious Death Eater.”
She waited in vain for the face. The grimace of distaste, the moue of disgust, anything. Waited patiently, and only got a look of mild curiosity. “All right then—what happened?” he asked, and she looked at him with her own brand of disgust.
“What do you think? I was a classic joke then. I turned in to the Ministry’s version of a groupie in their eyes. They started sending me out after all the fugitive Death Eaters to see if I wanted to shag all Death Eaters or just Draco Malfoy, Death Eater. It became the running thing—did she or didn’t she? By then, I was so heartily fed up with it all that I never spoke another word to Pansy and I was assigned Harry as my partner. Which sucked, by the way, because I didn’t know about his little kinks then—or his need of backdoor affairs. Or the fact that he’d slept with all his partners, male and female. I thought I was so lucky to have my best friend for a partner.” She dropped her eyes and stared at the floor, all talked out.
Draco looked down at her from the little height that his position gave him. “I wasn’t a Death Eater, Hermione.”
Her head snapped up and she glared at him hotly. “I know that now. I read the diary, the letters, all of it. Page to page, beginning to end, cover to cover. I read it. Can’t you tell I read it? Now I’m not just a joke but a fool to boot. Typical.”
“What’s typical about it? You aren’t a joke or a fool to me. You’re…” he wanted to tell her she was beautiful, smart, witty, talented, funny, but he didn’t think that’s what she needed to hear. “You’re you.”
“Yeah, I’m me. Pitiful, isn’t it?”
Somehow, her angsty reply touched a raw nerve inside him. “You are not pitiful! What the hell, Granger—when did you ever care what anyone else thought of you? What happened to the brightest witch of our class? I don’t see her here—I see someone else entirely, and it isn’t the girl that I spent years to protect.”
She stood up, her eyes snapping. He wanted to laugh; she barely reached his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. You spent years trying to protect me? By running and hiding and what, Draco? Not being there? Good one. I need to remember that next time.”
He didn’t realize he moved until her arms were in his hands and he was close to shaking her senseless. “I couldn’t let anyone know! Don’t you get it? What’s the best way of getting a muggle-born witch killed—fall in love with her! Especially when you’re Lucius Malfoy's son! Merlin’s balls, Granger, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
It was only after the words left his mouth that he realized what he was saying to her. He had finally disclosed the last secret, the final key to the diary, the letters, and the desperate running that he’d been doing for so many years. He knew it and so did she, by the stunned look that crossed her features.
“You…fell in love with me?” The stunned look melted into a soft smile. “Then it all makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” he demanded, totally thrown by her smile.
Hermione looked up at him and he forgot his question, but she answered it anyway. “Why you sent the letters and stuff to me in the first place. And why Harry hid them from me. And why Pansy thought it was so fucking hilarious to spread all that shit around about me wanting to shag you. Did everyone know?”
“Pansy did. I would imagine that she shared it with Harry, if she married him. Anyone else, I don’t know.” He realized suddenly that he was still holding her arms tightly and let her go, stepping back to run his hands through his hair. “Shit, Granger, shit. I didn’t want you to find out.”
“Why not? Never mind—I know. You can’t be seen with a mudblood—they’ll revoke your pureblood status.” She was shaky on her feet when she got up and headed to the kitchen. She kept her face turned away from him but he knew that she was crying by the sniffs that came from under the curtain of hair.
He was behind her in a flash. “Granger—Hermione, wait. That isn’t why—”
It shocked him when the kitchen door slammed in his face, nearly breaking his nose. He tried the door and found it wouldn’t move so he was forced to shout through the carved wood. “Hermione, you have to listen to me! I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want you to have to start running too! Don’t you see? That’s my life now—running from place to place to stay one step ahead. That isn’t the life that I wanted for you, for us. I wanted the white picket fence—the home that I could come to after work every day. We’ll never have that, Hermione, and you deserve that and so much more.”
The door was yanked open and he stared down at the petite brunette with her sparkling eyes and her hands on her hips. Her hand left her hip to poke in the center of his chest to punctuate her words. “What I deserve is the chance to be with the man that stole my heart years and years ago. I don’t want to chase him across the continents for the rest of my life.”
He rubbed his chest; there would be a bruise there tomorrow, he was sure of it. “You’re right,” he admitted.
She stared up at him. “I’m right?” Instead of the happiness that he expected, she frowned. “You’re just humoring me, aren’t you?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Mother of Circe, Granger, have I ever humored you? I don’t humor anyone, not even my own mother.” He leaned against the doorframe, more to prevent it from being slammed in his face than the need for something to lean on. “So, you going to be nice to me now?” he asked with a smirk.
A sly smile curled her mouth. “I was being nice. Do you want something to eat, or are your words enough to fill you up right now?”
Now, that was the Granger that he knew and loved. He threw his head back and laughed for the first time in what seemed like years and it made him look boyishly young again. “See, that’s why I fell like I did—always ready with the witty repartee. Dinner would be nice. I would have fixed it myself, but I was a little preoccupied, not to mention I didn’t want to be accused of prying into your personal belongings.”
“Yes, because a kitchen is so damn personal anyway. Get your flighty ass in here and help me.” She let the door go and it banged against his funny bone, drawing a hissing gasp from his already breathless lungs.
Always the bossy type, she pointed to a chair and handed him a knife, then dumped a fistful of vegetables in front of him to chop up. He watched her while he cut them into small bits, smiling at the graceful way she wandered in and out of the kitchen table and chairs, around the stove, over the woodbin and the cat that hadn’t registered on his consciousness since his arrival. With every passing minute of companionable silence his smile grew wider and his lanky form relaxed into the chair.
After so many years of wandering and running, he felt like he had come home. Cast adrift onto the seas of the fugitive life, he had found his way to a safe port, albeit a possible haven from the storms of accusations that always seemed to follow. He could have never imagined the peace that filled him or the yearning that disappeared after so many years of unrequited need. Tomorrow didn’t feel as important as it did before; his life had always been full of temporary solutions for the problems that never left him, but he let the urgency go as he watched her through half-lidded eyes.
She turned and saw him looking at her; the depth of devotion that he’d buried was shining out of his gray eyes and she paused in her rush to cook them something edible to just look and admire him. Impulsively, she walked over to stand in front of him, looking shyly from under her lashes.
“Draco, I know that…well, this is all so sudden, but…how would you feel about staying here for a while? Just…getting to know each other instead of…well, we never were friendly at Hogwarts. What do you think?”
He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “I think that is a splendid idea, Hermione. I’d really like that.”
“Good. I have lots of time off coming to me—I think that I’ll floo the Ministry and take it all at once. And request a change in partners as well.” She started to turn away and he stopped her with the pressure of his fingertips on her hand that he hadn’t yet let go. “Was there something else you wanted?”
“Only this.” He pulled her closer, gently and slowly. When she was in reach, he dipped his head and kissed her softly. Just once, just a press of lips against lips, but it was all he had ever dreamt it would be.
The blush that stained her cheeks charmed him. “What was that for?” she asked, and he shrugged his shoulders and quirked his mouth to one side.
“I have always wondered if your lips were as soft as they looked.”
“Are they?”
His smile changed his face entirely. “Oh yes, Hermione. Softer.” He dropped his hand and let her move away from him, still blushing furiously.
He leaned on his fist and watched her moving, content and sated in a strange, unfamiliar way. He didn’t want to move from this spot, sitting in her kitchen and watching her work her magic on the vegetables that he’d been chopping moments before. He didn’t curse the wasted time; they had found each other at the perfect moment, the exact time they were supposed to. So many years, adrift and castaway and discarded by the ones that loved them, hated them, hunted them. Being here seemed right now. It felt like home. It felt exactly like coming home.
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Date: 2006-09-17 11:37 pm (UTC)Such a wonderful story.
He didn’t see the lightening strike before the thunderous boom of the skillet hitting the opposite wall from where he stood and then her voice, her beautiful voice cutting into the silence between her silent sobs.
LOVE that line.