Paper Faces on Parade
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Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Draco/Hermione
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
11
Views:
20,490
Reviews:
36
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Draco/Hermione
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
11
Views:
20,490
Reviews:
36
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Section 11
Section 11:
“This is… hard for me to say,” he continued, giving her a brief, somewhat pained smile. “I’m not brave, like you.”
Hermione shook her head. “I’m not—” she began, but Draco cut her off with a soft kiss pressed against her lips.
“Please, I need to tell you. Let me say it? Without interruption? You can say whatever you like after I’m finished. You can yell at me, if you want, or… or throw things, or decide never to speak to me again—”
“Never speak to you again? What on earth!” He cut her off with another kiss, this one a bit firmer, continuing to kiss her until she stopped struggling against him. When she gave into the kiss and opened her lips under his, he pulled away abruptly. If he let himself fall into kissing her again, he’d *never* say what he needed to say.
“—but you need to let me say it, first. Alright?”
Hermione looked ready to argue, but when he lifted his hand to trace impossibly gently over her cheek, her eyes slid closed, and when they opened again, they held understanding. “Alright,” she said softly. “Tell me whatever you need to say. I won’t interrupt again. I promise.”
Draco gave her one last, soft kiss as a thank you, savoring its sweetness for a long moment before forcing himself to pull away.
“I’ve come up with a million and one ways to tell you this, and now that the moment is finally here, I have no idea what to say. I guess I might as well start at the beginning.” He smiled faintly, looking away from her and settling himself on his back so that he could stare at the ceiling. It was easier to say this when he didn’t have to look her in the eye.
“I’ll bet you think I’ve forgotten the beginning, but I haven’t. I’ll never forget the first time that you spoke to me, even if I wasn’t very nice about it at the time. I was embarrassed, and being rude was how I always dealt with embarrassment back then. After all I had been told, by my tutors and my parents throughout my childhood, I think I expected to be able to rule Hogwarts,” Hermione gasped and her eyes grew comically wide, but she kept her word and didn’t interrupt, “from the moment I walked in the doors, with everyone automatically understanding and appreciating just how important I was.”
He paused for a moment, waiting to see if she would respond, curious as to whether or not she had connected the dots just yet and realized who she was talking to. Knowing her, she probably had. She was brilliant like that. But now that he had started, he had no intention of stopping, regardless of whether or not the explanation was still necessary. He had promised himself that he’d tell her the truth, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like her figuring it out on her own stop him from being honest with her.
“Instead,” he continued, “there I was on the first day of classes, completely lost on my way to the Great Hall for breakfast, and with Peeves following after me, making fun of the ‘ickle firstie’ about to ‘go crying for his mummy.’” Draco took a deep breath before continuing. He had played this memory over and over again so very many times in his mind, with a dozen different variations on how he *wished* it had gone, from the vantage point of years and experience. But there was nothing he could do to change the past, and the eleven year old spoiled brat that he had been at the time had no idea what a lonely man he would one day become, thinking back on the moment that could have changed the direction of his life.
“And then, there you were, chin jutting forward like you were daring anyone to ask you something just so you could prove that you knew the answer.” He smiled softly in spite of himself. Always knowing the answer had been one of her qualities that had driven him mad when they were enemies. But now, he couldn’t help but think of it fondly. She was such a little know-it-all. *His* little know-it-all. “But some of that defiance faded when you saw me,” he stated. “I imagine I must have looked pretty pitiful because you were instantly sympathetic, asking me if I needed any help, and if I was heading to the Great Hall, since you were going there yourself, and we could walk together. I told you—” Draco’s voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat harshly, aggravated with himself for getting so torn up over this.
“I told you that a Malfoy would never need help from a *Gryffindor* and that you’d better run along and stop wasting my time. You went off in a huff, muttering about how you were just *trying* to be helpful, and I let you get about a dozen paces ahead of me before I started following you, so you could lead me to the Great Hall. When I finally got there, I sat down next to Pansy and pointed you out, asking if she knew who you were. Pans always was a gossip hound, I knew that if anyone would know anything about you, she would. She said she didn’t recognize you, which probably meant that you didn’t have any wizarding blood in you at all. She then changed the subject, like you didn’t deserve our attention, and I went along with it. I wanted to believe that she was right: that you weren’t important or worth my notice, because that would make me better than you, and I needed to feel better than someone when Hogwarts was so much bigger and more frightening than I had ever expected.”
Draco fought the urge to lift the covers up over his head, the way he used to do when he was a little boy and wanted to hide. The kneazle was very thoroughly out of the bag now, and in spite of himself and his former resolution to stop after his initial confession, he found more pouring out. “I didn’t realize that the lines were drawn on that day, and that I had given up the chance of making you my friend. There were times when I wondered, especially when seventh year rolled around, what would have happened if I had acted differently. You weren’t friends with Weasley and Potter yet at that point. If I had accepted your offer of help, if I had let you show me how to get to the Great Hall, then we might have been friends right away. You might have liked *me* instead of Potter and Weasley. *I* could have been what they were for you. And when you fell in love with Potter, you might have fallen in love with me, instead.”
Finally working up the courage, he rolled back over onto his side to look at her face. He couldn’t quite tell her reaction to the news. She seemed… shocked, mostly. Realizing that his odds at shocking Hermione Granger speechless ever again were slim to none, he took advantage of the opportunity to continue without fear of interruption. “Because I fell in love with you. I hadn’t… hadn’t known I could ever care about anyone that much. As long as you were happy and in my life, nothing else mattered. But then that whole mess happened with Potter and you weren’t happy anymore and you left me and our friendship behind, and I didn’t know how to live without it.”
He reached over and grabbed his wand from the bedside table, dispelling his glamour charms and removing the earring that kept the voice charm in place. “I searched high and low for you, looking everywhere I could think of to find you again. And then I found you here. I didn’t know if you would want to see me. I didn’t even know if you wanted to remember that you were Hermione Granger at all, so I didn’t dare come as myself. I invented Leo Smith, and was Leontes to your Paulina, hoping that if I was very patient and very lucky, I might someday be able to bring my Hermione back to life, back to *my* life, where she belonged. Last night, I… I asked if I could bring you to life. You seemed to like the idea. Now that you know who I really am, has that changed?”
Draco nervously awaited her response. He had absolutely no idea what to expect. Would she be pleased? Or angry, would she be angry? Would she slap him? Yell at him? Berate him for lying to her and seducing her under false pretenses? Or would she be hurt instead of angry, gathering up her things in a hurry so that he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes before she ran for the door? Would she feel hurt that her image of Leo was ruined? Would she be ashamed that she had so willingly climbed into a Malfoy’s bed?
Her response was not at all what he had expected. In one quick bound, she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him in a bear hug. “I missed you so much,” she whispered in his ear before burrowing her face in his shoulder. He felt a few warm tears trickle down onto the spot she had so recently flagged and claimed. Tentatively, he allowed his arms to wrap around her as well, stroking her hair gently and murmuring soft, soothing nonsense words to calr dor down.
Finally, she pulled away, just as abruptly as she had thrown herself into his arms in the first place, though he was very pleased to note that she contented herself with pulling back her head so she could look him in the face and *not* pulling her body out of his arms. “You reminded me so much of… well… you,” she said, half wonderingly and half impishly, tracing his features with the tips of her fingers, as if trying to pull together the pieces of Leo Smith and Draco Malfoy that she had known.
“Do you think you could care about me?” he asked his heart in his throat. “Maybe someday even love me, as *me* and not as Leo Smith?”
She giggled a little, a radiant smile on her face even as a few, final tears slipped from her eyes and down her cheeks. “You weren’t listening,” she scolded. “I said that you reminded me so much of *you*.” When Draco’s look of confusion didn’t change, she tugged the wand from his hand and accioed her own, swishing and flicking her appearance back to the Hermione Granger that was.
“I’m taking off my masks, too, Draco,” she said softly. “I’m not going to hide behind them ore.ore. I’m ready to come back to life. I’m ready for you to *bring* me back to life. And I’m ready to admit that I love you.”
It took Draco a few moments to realize that the reason that Hermione’s image got so suddenly blurry was that his own eyes had filled with tears. He had dreamed about this, he had dreamed about *exactly* this, but… he always woke up at this point. Now that he had the girl of his dreams, he didn’t know what came next. Fortunately, Hermione had all the answers, as usual. Planting little butterfly kisses all over his face to rid him of the tears, she guided him back onto his back so that she could climb on top of him.
“Just relax, love,” she said, her voice warm with affectionate teasing. “I just have a bit of housekeeping to take care of. I claimed Leo Smith, but I haven’t claimed Draco Malfoy; an oversight that will shortly be remedied.” Laying her body on top of his to give him another sweet kiss, she pulled away just enough to speak one more time. “You saw through all my masks, my love, and you brought me back to life. Now it’s my turn to show you how to live it.”
And so she did.
THE END
*******
“This is… hard for me to say,” he continued, giving her a brief, somewhat pained smile. “I’m not brave, like you.”
Hermione shook her head. “I’m not—” she began, but Draco cut her off with a soft kiss pressed against her lips.
“Please, I need to tell you. Let me say it? Without interruption? You can say whatever you like after I’m finished. You can yell at me, if you want, or… or throw things, or decide never to speak to me again—”
“Never speak to you again? What on earth!” He cut her off with another kiss, this one a bit firmer, continuing to kiss her until she stopped struggling against him. When she gave into the kiss and opened her lips under his, he pulled away abruptly. If he let himself fall into kissing her again, he’d *never* say what he needed to say.
“—but you need to let me say it, first. Alright?”
Hermione looked ready to argue, but when he lifted his hand to trace impossibly gently over her cheek, her eyes slid closed, and when they opened again, they held understanding. “Alright,” she said softly. “Tell me whatever you need to say. I won’t interrupt again. I promise.”
Draco gave her one last, soft kiss as a thank you, savoring its sweetness for a long moment before forcing himself to pull away.
“I’ve come up with a million and one ways to tell you this, and now that the moment is finally here, I have no idea what to say. I guess I might as well start at the beginning.” He smiled faintly, looking away from her and settling himself on his back so that he could stare at the ceiling. It was easier to say this when he didn’t have to look her in the eye.
“I’ll bet you think I’ve forgotten the beginning, but I haven’t. I’ll never forget the first time that you spoke to me, even if I wasn’t very nice about it at the time. I was embarrassed, and being rude was how I always dealt with embarrassment back then. After all I had been told, by my tutors and my parents throughout my childhood, I think I expected to be able to rule Hogwarts,” Hermione gasped and her eyes grew comically wide, but she kept her word and didn’t interrupt, “from the moment I walked in the doors, with everyone automatically understanding and appreciating just how important I was.”
He paused for a moment, waiting to see if she would respond, curious as to whether or not she had connected the dots just yet and realized who she was talking to. Knowing her, she probably had. She was brilliant like that. But now that he had started, he had no intention of stopping, regardless of whether or not the explanation was still necessary. He had promised himself that he’d tell her the truth, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like her figuring it out on her own stop him from being honest with her.
“Instead,” he continued, “there I was on the first day of classes, completely lost on my way to the Great Hall for breakfast, and with Peeves following after me, making fun of the ‘ickle firstie’ about to ‘go crying for his mummy.’” Draco took a deep breath before continuing. He had played this memory over and over again so very many times in his mind, with a dozen different variations on how he *wished* it had gone, from the vantage point of years and experience. But there was nothing he could do to change the past, and the eleven year old spoiled brat that he had been at the time had no idea what a lonely man he would one day become, thinking back on the moment that could have changed the direction of his life.
“And then, there you were, chin jutting forward like you were daring anyone to ask you something just so you could prove that you knew the answer.” He smiled softly in spite of himself. Always knowing the answer had been one of her qualities that had driven him mad when they were enemies. But now, he couldn’t help but think of it fondly. She was such a little know-it-all. *His* little know-it-all. “But some of that defiance faded when you saw me,” he stated. “I imagine I must have looked pretty pitiful because you were instantly sympathetic, asking me if I needed any help, and if I was heading to the Great Hall, since you were going there yourself, and we could walk together. I told you—” Draco’s voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat harshly, aggravated with himself for getting so torn up over this.
“I told you that a Malfoy would never need help from a *Gryffindor* and that you’d better run along and stop wasting my time. You went off in a huff, muttering about how you were just *trying* to be helpful, and I let you get about a dozen paces ahead of me before I started following you, so you could lead me to the Great Hall. When I finally got there, I sat down next to Pansy and pointed you out, asking if she knew who you were. Pans always was a gossip hound, I knew that if anyone would know anything about you, she would. She said she didn’t recognize you, which probably meant that you didn’t have any wizarding blood in you at all. She then changed the subject, like you didn’t deserve our attention, and I went along with it. I wanted to believe that she was right: that you weren’t important or worth my notice, because that would make me better than you, and I needed to feel better than someone when Hogwarts was so much bigger and more frightening than I had ever expected.”
Draco fought the urge to lift the covers up over his head, the way he used to do when he was a little boy and wanted to hide. The kneazle was very thoroughly out of the bag now, and in spite of himself and his former resolution to stop after his initial confession, he found more pouring out. “I didn’t realize that the lines were drawn on that day, and that I had given up the chance of making you my friend. There were times when I wondered, especially when seventh year rolled around, what would have happened if I had acted differently. You weren’t friends with Weasley and Potter yet at that point. If I had accepted your offer of help, if I had let you show me how to get to the Great Hall, then we might have been friends right away. You might have liked *me* instead of Potter and Weasley. *I* could have been what they were for you. And when you fell in love with Potter, you might have fallen in love with me, instead.”
Finally working up the courage, he rolled back over onto his side to look at her face. He couldn’t quite tell her reaction to the news. She seemed… shocked, mostly. Realizing that his odds at shocking Hermione Granger speechless ever again were slim to none, he took advantage of the opportunity to continue without fear of interruption. “Because I fell in love with you. I hadn’t… hadn’t known I could ever care about anyone that much. As long as you were happy and in my life, nothing else mattered. But then that whole mess happened with Potter and you weren’t happy anymore and you left me and our friendship behind, and I didn’t know how to live without it.”
He reached over and grabbed his wand from the bedside table, dispelling his glamour charms and removing the earring that kept the voice charm in place. “I searched high and low for you, looking everywhere I could think of to find you again. And then I found you here. I didn’t know if you would want to see me. I didn’t even know if you wanted to remember that you were Hermione Granger at all, so I didn’t dare come as myself. I invented Leo Smith, and was Leontes to your Paulina, hoping that if I was very patient and very lucky, I might someday be able to bring my Hermione back to life, back to *my* life, where she belonged. Last night, I… I asked if I could bring you to life. You seemed to like the idea. Now that you know who I really am, has that changed?”
Draco nervously awaited her response. He had absolutely no idea what to expect. Would she be pleased? Or angry, would she be angry? Would she slap him? Yell at him? Berate him for lying to her and seducing her under false pretenses? Or would she be hurt instead of angry, gathering up her things in a hurry so that he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes before she ran for the door? Would she feel hurt that her image of Leo was ruined? Would she be ashamed that she had so willingly climbed into a Malfoy’s bed?
Her response was not at all what he had expected. In one quick bound, she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him in a bear hug. “I missed you so much,” she whispered in his ear before burrowing her face in his shoulder. He felt a few warm tears trickle down onto the spot she had so recently flagged and claimed. Tentatively, he allowed his arms to wrap around her as well, stroking her hair gently and murmuring soft, soothing nonsense words to calr dor down.
Finally, she pulled away, just as abruptly as she had thrown herself into his arms in the first place, though he was very pleased to note that she contented herself with pulling back her head so she could look him in the face and *not* pulling her body out of his arms. “You reminded me so much of… well… you,” she said, half wonderingly and half impishly, tracing his features with the tips of her fingers, as if trying to pull together the pieces of Leo Smith and Draco Malfoy that she had known.
“Do you think you could care about me?” he asked his heart in his throat. “Maybe someday even love me, as *me* and not as Leo Smith?”
She giggled a little, a radiant smile on her face even as a few, final tears slipped from her eyes and down her cheeks. “You weren’t listening,” she scolded. “I said that you reminded me so much of *you*.” When Draco’s look of confusion didn’t change, she tugged the wand from his hand and accioed her own, swishing and flicking her appearance back to the Hermione Granger that was.
“I’m taking off my masks, too, Draco,” she said softly. “I’m not going to hide behind them ore.ore. I’m ready to come back to life. I’m ready for you to *bring* me back to life. And I’m ready to admit that I love you.”
It took Draco a few moments to realize that the reason that Hermione’s image got so suddenly blurry was that his own eyes had filled with tears. He had dreamed about this, he had dreamed about *exactly* this, but… he always woke up at this point. Now that he had the girl of his dreams, he didn’t know what came next. Fortunately, Hermione had all the answers, as usual. Planting little butterfly kisses all over his face to rid him of the tears, she guided him back onto his back so that she could climb on top of him.
“Just relax, love,” she said, her voice warm with affectionate teasing. “I just have a bit of housekeeping to take care of. I claimed Leo Smith, but I haven’t claimed Draco Malfoy; an oversight that will shortly be remedied.” Laying her body on top of his to give him another sweet kiss, she pulled away just enough to speak one more time. “You saw through all my masks, my love, and you brought me back to life. Now it’s my turn to show you how to live it.”
And so she did.
THE END
*******