Life in an Alien Land 1: In the Land of My Enemy

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Special thanks to Jiliane for your input on this chapter.


Life in an Alien Land

Chapter 11

Hermione approached Draco at the gates. Draco was struggling with his overlarge trunk, an expensive looking cloak and the new robes, no doubt purchased by Lucius Malfoy for his son. Today was going to be Draco's second first day of his Hogwarts education. The Constable's office had found a ready replacement in one of the Murcheson boys, according to Draco. The day he ahd told her about the replacement, he had said the name with a little sneer, as if he thought the man was not up to his standards. Hermione remembered that expression well, and had remarked that at least that look was still part of his repertoire. Draco had pouted while she kissed him until his lips were cherry red.

Hermione giggled as he dropped the trunk and picked up his robes, unaware of her presence as he flapped the hem, revealing a good deal of golden and muscular leg and a bit of his pants. She thought he might be wearing boxers or those longish y-fronts that she had seen advertised in a Muggle magazine. He was in profile until he heard her footsteps on the path. He whirled around, robes still around his waist. Definitely those long y-fronts. Hermione decided she liked them.

He hastily dropped his robes with an oath, his cheeks stained scarlet. "You need to tell a body you're about."

"I came to help you with your trunk." Hermione said, and with a titter added, "I was just captivated by the dance you were doing. Is it something peculiar to Yorkshire?"

"Yes, it's called the Stupid Berk Who is Wearing Too Many Clothes. How can you stand to wear so much clothing? It's positively medieval." Draco said, heaving one side of his trunk with a grunt. "Well, if you're going to help, there's the other handle."

"We are magical, Draco." Hermione waved her wand and the trunk shrank to the size and weight of a wallet.

"It would be nice if I knew the spell," he retorted as he fidgeted with the collar of his robes. "Jesus, it's hot for October."

Hermione wanted to concur, but for different reasons as he picked at the top buttons of his robe, letting two loose and exposing a bit of pale-haired chest. She cast a Cooling Charm on him, remembering his complaints of warmth in the winter they had spent together. He immediately ceased his efforts to disrobe on the path, much to Hermione's chagrin and relief.

"The Shrinking Charm will be covered in your fourth-year curricula." She scooped the trunk into her pocket and offered him her hand. "The headmaster wants to see you for your Sorting."

"Sorting?" Draco stopped on the path. "I thought that whole house thing was over and done with."

"It is, but the Headmaster still sorts into to Houses because that's one of the covenants of the school and also because it let's us keep our Quidditch teams." Hermione backtracked and took his hand. "Come on, Severus gets testy when he's kept waiting."

"Will I go in Niamh's dorm, since I am going to attend first year classes?" Draco looked rebellious at the thought as he ran a hand through his freshly-shorn hair.

Hermione considered her words before speaking. If this were the mad Draco, she would never have dared to tease him, but with this new man, she said dryly, "Yes, you'll be in with the first year boys. We planned to let you sleep in the Young Married's Quarters, but thought you might benefit from being around people your own mental age."

"Oh," Draco answered with a scowl, then dragged Hermione to a halt. "Hey. That wasn't funny, you wretched, wretched girl."

He spun her into his arms with a smooth motion and with an answering smile, kissed Hermione. They were within view of the main doors and Hermione gave a token struggle before she relaxed into his embrace, succumbing to his drugging caresses and heated kiss. He opened her mouth, delving erotically with his tongue, making the action a sensual conquest to which she gladly capitulated. They finally broke the embrace when they heard several wolf-whistles coming from the direction of the Greenhouses.

Hermione hid her face against his chest. "We can't carry on like this Draco."

"Why, because you're my teacher?" Draco drew away from her, placing his hands on her shoulders and peering into her eyes. "It didn't stop us before, when it was just you and me."

Hermione laughed. "I mean, not in public. We'll scar the poor students for life."

"Sod them," Draco laughed. With a mocking look at the huddled mass of students on the path he added, "But I see your point. Should I walk ten paces behind you too?"

"Don't be daft." Hermione shot back. "Now let's hurry. Severus really will be a bear if we make him late for tea with Ginny and Valerie."

&*&*&

Draco looked forward to meeting the Headmaster with some trepidation. He had only seen him the once, the night of his rediscovery. The man made him nervous with his glittering black eyes that had seen too much, and cruelly formed mouth. Draco got the feeling the man was just as uneasy with him. The Headmaster sat behind the ornate wood and marble desk now, hunched over a parchment, his long, hooked nose almost dragging on the page. Hermione stood behind Draco and gave him a push with a whispered, "He won't bite, Draco."

Draco was not reassured as the man opened his mouth in a tight smile, revealing jagged and yellowed teeth. He had the air of a predator about him. "Sit, Mr. Malfoy."

He waved his hand, and tea appeared. He said to Hermione, "Ginny has been held up at the Ministry. Join us?"

Hermione sat gracefully in the chair opposite Snape, Draco followed. He answered with his best police-trained voice, "Thank you, sir."

Snape gave him an long assessing look before pouring strong, black tea in the cups. Draco took his as Snape asked, rather too sharply, "How much do you remember of your past, Mr. Malfoy?"

Draco stirred sugar into his brew and a dollop of milk. "Not much, sir. I remember flashes that don't make much sense."

He did not add that being in his father's presence made him uncomfortable. There was no reason that he could discern for the unease. The man had been nothing short of doting on Draco's visits to the mausoleum-like Manor. It was simply a feeling accompanied by flashes of red and a pleading woman's voice that caused the discomfort. He remembered more of Hermione, or maybe not, since his memories were composed of dreams. But if anyone asked him to identify her, he would tell them to look on her hip for an almost bear-shaped blotch, to smell her musk, a combination of flowers and woman or the exact weight of each breast. Draco shifted uncomfortably as Professor Snape added, almost to himself, "It's probably just as well."

"Sir?" Draco asked, looking up from his tea. "What do you mean?"

"He means, Draco, that any discoveries you make should be on your own, without prompting from anyone." Hermione cut in. "Don't you, Severus?"

"Hmfph." His grunted reply and raised brow spoke volumes about his thoughts on the matter. Draco decided he liked the dark man even over the uneasy undercurrent he felt. "Well, tuck in. I've got duties after we get you Sorted. Professor Granger, I trust you can show him to his quarters."

Hermione smiled sweetly at the Headmaster. "Certainly, Severus."

They ate in silence while Draco fidgeted, wondering what Sorting would entail, and if it would be painful. His gaze darted around the room, taking in the whirring and whistling objects, wondering what each one was for, while he balanced the fine china cup on his knees. Once finished, the Headmaster pulled away from his desk and retrieved an ancient, pointed hat bearing signs of a recent burning. Hermione took his cup as Snape bade him to set on a three-legged milking stool. Draco cast around for Hermione, but she had retreated behind the desk. He just hoped there would be no explosions. He doubted his already taut nerves would stand such an event.

Draco sat as bid and flinched as Snape placed the disgusting hat on his head. He almost bolted from his seat when the hat spoke to him. "Let's see, this one was sorted before long ago when he was a different person. He was not brave when he sat under me then, but now... it's almost as if he were a new person... He has bravery, cunning, a good and loyal heart, intelligence to spare and... Ah yes, there it is, ambition...

"This one would suit every house," the hat purred. "But since he was sorted before, he will be..."

Draco held his breath in anticipation of the announcement, as if he were waiting for the correct answer that would define his path. The hat said aloud. "Slytherin."

&*&*&

Draco's first week at Hogwarts was spent in a flurry of activity with which he struggled to cope. Some things brought back vague memories, but most were completely foreign to him. He spent a great deal of time with the Care Of Magical Creatures Professor, Luna Zabini. He appreciated her calm demeanour and love of the animals. He loved to listen to her flights of fancy and whispery-voiced wisdom. Hermione had warned him that Luna had a belief in the fantastical, and not to believe everything she said, but he found that there were kernels of truth in the fantasy. He learned a great deal from her.

He also spent much of his free time in the library. He was allowed greater latitude than most first years, but was still kept out of the Restricted Section. It was just as well. The place gave him an unquiet feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was a Hogsmeade Saturday and he had spent the day studying recent wizarding events. He had found a picture of his father as a young man with a pale and beautiful woman named Narcissa whom he could only guess was his mother. It was a wedding announcement, but instead of joy radiating from the couple, it seemed more like they had just merged a company. Their gazes and joined hands were more business-like than loving. Draco stared at the photo, fascinated by the implications, wondering if he had loved the cool woman in the picture the way he loved Maeve. He could not picture it. He had decided to go year by year, and had come across a great deal about the first war. He stopped when he read that Lucius Malfoy had been on trial as a Death Eater, but had claimed innocence as a vicitim of the Imperius Curse. Draco snorted as he looked at the picture of his father, a little older in this picture, a little worse for wear as he raised his hand in a large, gothic courtroom. He knew that look from the miscreants he dealt with in Little Hangleton. If Lucius Malfoy were innocent, Draco was a bleating sheep.

He certainly didn't feel like baaing at the moment as he considered the implications of his father's guilt.

He turned to the next newspaper, wondering once more about the man that he was before the accident. He skipped several years to the one he would have been in when he started school. Most of the year was mundane, about a scandal over cauldron thickness and the like. He continued to the second, then third and so on, until he came to 1996. It was then that he saw his name in print and what he read, he did not like.

He forced himself onward through the years, wishing he could stop, but unable to do so.

&*&*&

Hermione waited for Draco impatiently. He was already half an hour late for dinner, and the children were hungry and she was beginning to worry about him. Scorpius pulled on her skirt, "Mummy, 'm'hungwy."

Hermione scooped him in her arms, bidding Delphine to take her hand, "Well, let's find something to eat while we wait for Draco."

Delphine settled herself on the stool set aside just for her in the kitchenette as Hermione placed her brother in the highchair. Scorpius began singing, "Hungwy, hungwy, Scorpus hungwy."

Delphine whined while her brother sang. "Mummy, when wiw we eat?"

"I'm fixing something, dear." Hermione said, wondering once more at the role of genetics in shaping personality, as she made two jam sandwiches and poured milk into two cups. She placed them before the children, hoping the small snack would not ruin their appetites. She heard a knock on the door, and prepared herself to blast Draco for inconveniencing the children.

It was a harried looking Ginny that greeted her. "Hermione, Severus needs you in the library. I'll watch the children. It's Draco."

Hermione did not need to be told more than once as she rushed from the room, forsaking her teaching robes in her haste. She by-passed the main hallways in favour of the less crowded and easier to negotiate back ways, cursing softly as she realised she would shave only seconds off her dash. She came to the Library doors, and hastily patted her hair into a semblance of order as she gulped air into her seriously depleted lungs.

She opened the door and was assaulted by the ozone-smell of strong accidental magic. Her skin tingled as she progressed through the room and saw a group of students, gap-jawed and nervous. Behind them was Snape, clutching his left arm to his chest. Hermione gave him a cursory once over with her wand ascertaining that he had no serious damage and then rounded the corner of the bookshelves behind which Draco knelt.

The magic in the air was tangible as she approached him tentatively. "Draco?"

His response was an almost feral growl as Hermione reached for him. She knelt beside him, noting the newspapers strewn by his body. "Darling, please, tell me what's wrong."

He lifted his ravaged features to her gaze and she was glad not to see the madness swirling in his eyes. His eyes were dry, but it was obvious he had been crying.

"I was a monster," he moaned as he clutched at Hermione's arms. She held his head against her breast, as another strong vortex of magic swirled about them, lifting Hermione's hair in a static-charged current.

She rocked him, whispering, "Shh... Draco."

Snape approached still clutching his arm to his chest and holding out a phial of liquid. Hermione raised her eyes questioningly to the Headmaster's. "Calming Draught."

Hermione placed the phial next to Draco's lips. "Draco, darling, take this It will make it easier for you to talk about everything you've read."

The blond opened his lips and Hermione tipped the phial to them. She was reminded of his earlier addiction to her breasts as he almost suckled the potion from the bottle. She suppressed a shiver not really wanting to see a return to his madness and wishing there was a way for him to remember without the pain.

He calmed incrementally and the magic became less intense finally ceasing as if a stopper had been put in a drain. Hermione rocked him until his breath was no longer coming in shuddering gasps and his fingers relaxed their bruising grip on her arms. She kissed his brow as she would do for the children when they were upset. He moaned. "How can you be so forgiving... After who I served and what my father and I did to you?"

"Draco, remember when I said we all did things we wouldn't have?" Hermione answered. "I wasn't just talking about myself."

He snuffled into his hands and looked at her, his grey eyes red-rimmed and his silver lashes spiky with tears. "Did I... Did I ever hurt you? Did I force... Rape you?"

"No." Hermione said, a half-truth that she could live with if it meant preserving his sanity. At first all sex had been coerced with him but he had never been brutal or repugnant. It had really been the situation which was forced on them. She doubted he would understand that finer point at this juncture. "Draco, I loved you."

"Why?" His tone was dull and uncompromising in its condemnation of his acts.

Hermione shushed him again. "Draco, let's take this elsewhere so we can discuss this without a ring of students and the Headmaster as witnesses. I promise I will try to explain."

She moved as if to stand and Draco pulled her back. "I don't think I'm strong enough to hear what I was. I'm such a coward."

"Then I'm one too." Hermione smoothed her hand over his roughly cut hair. "I never wanted you to find out... I loved the other Draco, but I think I love you more."

Draco laughed darkly. "It's no wonder."

"Perhaps." Hermione said. "Let's go to my rooms and I shall answer any question you have.'

"'Kay," he murmured, his body almost completely relaxed. "I may need some help getting there, though. That drink was strong.'

&*&*&

Hermione half-supported Draco through the corridors, his footsteps plodding from the exhaustion of his magical outburst and the emotional toll of reading the articles. She released the hastily cast wards on her door and opened it to a scene of chaos as Scorpius screamed for more jam sandwiches and Delphine stomped around the room in a snit over something Ginny had forbidden. Ginny was leaning into the Floo speaking to the kitchens. Hermione supported Draco to the small divan in the sitting area of the room. He remained silent as Hermione replaced Ginny at the Floo, ordering dinner for all of them. The redhead turned to him with a frown. "How are you feeling, Malfoy?"

He shrugged noncommittally as she patted him on his shoulder. "It'll be okay, Draco."

Ginny turned to Hermione. "I'll be going now. I'm sure you have a lot to discuss."

The two women hugged by the door as Delphine suddenly let out a wild squeal and threw herself bodily at the new guest. "Uncle Dwaco!"

Hermione returned to his side, with an odd look at him. "Delphine, Uncle is tired, why don't you..."

"No," he said. "She can sit here with me."

He put his arm around the little girl as she scooted into his lap, sucking her thumb for comfort. She turned her cornflower eyes upon her mother, batting her lashes.

"All right, but if she gets to be too much trouble... " Hermione said with a warning scowl to her daughter.

Draco watched as a house-elf popped into the room, bearing a heavily laden tray. It placed it on the small, family dining table in the middle of the kitchen while Scorpius squealed from his vantage as Hermione fixed a plate for him and then his sister. She plopped the food, mostly finger sandwiches and fresh vegetables in front of him. He began eating ravenously. Hermione patted him on the head. "Sorry about the wait, little man."

Draco slipped Delphine off his lap. "I think it's time for you to join your mother."

"You too, Uncle Dwaco." The little girl slipped her hand into his. He joined her with tottering legs and a wooden feeling in his heart.

He could not meet Hermione's eyes as she pushed a plate of roast beef, vegetables and mash toward him. "You need to eat, Draco. It will help you regain your strength."

He pushed the meal around his plate, drawing the gravy over the mash with his fork. Draco could feel the heavy weight of Hermione's eyes on him as he poked at his food. After the children had eaten, Hermione drew away from the table expertly scooping Scorpius into her arms and bidding Delphine to follow. "Let's get you cleaned up for bed."

Delphine's cries of outrage filled the room as Hermione took the children to the bath. Draco pushed his plate aside, and began clearing the table, the routine more calming to him than any Draught issued by the Headmaster.

His mind was swirling about the facts he had read about Draco Malfoy from the Daily Prophet accounts. He felt like retching as he remembered the accounts of the Muggleborns used as breeders. He knew Hermione had been that to him and to his father. Her calm acceptance of his caresses disturbed him. How could she stand to let him touch her?

And then, there were the accounts of his madness, released after the war, and written by a vile woman named Rita Skeeter. Draco did not want to lend credence to her ramblings, so poisonous they were almost acid, but he could still feel the weight of the madness sometimes in his dreams or in his infrequent visions of his past life. He could see the careful concern each of his new friends directed at him, he sensed the hesitance in Hermione's teasing. He had been a wreck before he did whatever he did to destroy the Dark Lord. He also felt, when he was found in the wreckage that was Little Hangleton, that he had been burnt clean, that his crimes mattered less than that he survived, and hence his guilt and revulsion.

And then there was little Delphine. His sister by the mother of his son. It was all so gothic in its complexity. How did he feel about having slept with the same woman his father had slept with? Not that he was casting aspersions on her. She, of all of them, was blameless. She had been enslaved, humiliated and raped by them both.

Draco felt the bile rising to the back of his throat, and barely made it to the sink before what little he had eaten returned. This was how Hermione found him, heaving over the sink, his short hair plastered to his head.

She placed a cool hand on his neck. "Oh, Draco."

He leaned his cheek against the cool porcelain of the sink. "Why are you so kind to me?"

"I loved you once." Hemione answered. "I think we've been through this before."

Draco laughed bitterly against the vomit and bile taste in his mouth. "You keep saying that."

He pulled away from her hand violently flinging himself from her reach. "You keep saying that and for the life of me, I can't figure out why... Did you know that I killed my mother? Did Lucius tell you that?"

"Draco, how...?" Hermione leaned against the cabinet, her smattering of freckles across her nose standing out in sharp relief against her white face.

He laughed again, the sound echoing hollowly in the stone-walled room. "I read it. I had to fucking read about my life in a fucking newspaper."

He slammed his fist into the cabinet beside her head. She flinched away from him as he grabbed her by the arm. "Tell me, what you can love about what I was... And don't give me that gobshite about the war."

Hermione remained silent tears streaming down her face, as he screamed, "Fuck!"

He was out the door and running before he could see her tear-streaked face crumple, laying another bit of guilt at his feet.

&*&*&

Maeve was awakened by pounding on the back door to the cottage. Shaking the fuzzy mist of sleep from her mind, she donned a dressing gown, ready to give whatever child had snuck out a piece of her mind. She tightened the sash to the fuzzy flannel as she drew open the door. "Which one of you... Oh, Drew."

He fell into her arms, sobbing like a child, breaking her heart with each tear that fell. He made his confessions in the doorway, the heat of the house leaching out into the dark October night. He said nothing that she did not know or had not guessed about him. When he was finished, she brought him to his room and tucked him in as she had done over four years before on his first night in her home.

Once she was sure he was abed, she moved to the kitchen, trying to decide on the best course of action. Her boy was in pain from the revelations of his past, and she would protect him from all-comers, be they wizard, angel or God himself.

That decided, she went to the kitchen sure in the knowledge that she had some serious business to accomplish tomorrow. The first stop would be that cold bastard that was his father. She had a few choice things to say to him about how he handled his son.

She fixed her steely gaze on the clock on the hob. It was fifteen of four. She would have to do some travelling, so she decided to pack.

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