Disguised Affections
folder
Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Snape/Hermione
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
27
Views:
25,546
Reviews:
144
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
1
Category:
Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Snape/Hermione
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
27
Views:
25,546
Reviews:
144
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
1
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.
Chapter Fifteen
A/N: For your reading pleasure, I present to you chapter 15. It’s a bit of a transitional chapter, but it deals with some pretty important themes and plot points.
Let me know what you guys think! Love ya!
Chapter Fifteen
Lucius Malfoy looked at the Potions rack before him. It was all that remained of the Dark Lord’s supply, and every single bottle contained the spidery scrawl of Severus Snape. He smirked, pleased at the irony of having taking down the powerful dark wizard using one of the man’s own concoctions.
The aristocrat didn’t know too much about Potions. He considered himself above such quotidian details. If he wanted a Headache Potion, he’d have one sent around from the apothecary. If he wanted to poison an enemy, he’d hire someone to do it. He was a Malfoy, after all. It wouldn’t do to sully his hands.
Lucius had made an exception for Severus Snape, though. The blond gritted his teeth. The Malfoy name had suffered dramatically upon the fall of the Dark Lord. They’d linked their fortunes to his rise quite literally as well as figuratively, and when that Potter brat had killed him, working on information provided by Snape the Traitor, Lucius had found his head on the chopping block. It had taken half his remaining fortune to grease the wheels of the Wizengamot, and he’d still had to serve six months in Azkaban for his kidnapping and pleasures with Potter’s Mudblood slut and his girlfriend.
Well, no use crying over spilled blood, after all.
It had been one of his more inspired ideas to coat his blade with a deadly poison. Snape had always been a crack duelist, and Lucius knew that he didn’t even have a fifty/fifty chance to beat him one-on-one. So, of course, he had stacked the odds. He’d waited on the dark-haired wizard in Hogsmeade, knowing that he’d have to make a run for Potions ingredients before the start of term. He’d brought McNair with him – a Death Eater who’d always had a hard on for killing Snape even before he’d been outed as a traitor.
He also coated his knife with the deadliest-sounding poison he could find in the remnants of the Dark Lord’s Potions chest. With a name like “Death’s Oblivion,” Lucius figured even a small cut would drastically have increased his likelihood of ending the Potions master’s life. And he’d gotten much more than a small cut on the man. The wound had crossed from shoulder to hip and bled profusely.
Malfoy shivered slightly, remembering the pulse of blood that grew weaker and slower as the traitor bled out on the ground in front of him.
His only regret was that he hadn’t gotten to see the man die. The meddling auror Nymphadora Tonks had Apparated him to the gates of Hogwarts before his end came. Lucius licked his lips. It was a big regret, really. He’d have liked to watch those beady black eyes as the life drained out of them. Maybe cut him up a little bit.
Did he go easily? Was the poison painful? He hoped the symptoms were delightful – vomiting, voiding of the bowels, delusions, hysteria. Anything to steal the blasted spy’s dignity. Did Albus Dumbledore hold Snape’s hand while he shit himself?
Malfoy chuckled at the thought and poured himself a glass of Ogden’s 100 Year Reserve Firewhiskey. He deserved a bit of entertainment and crossed to his bookshelves to read of Severus Snape’s final moments. 1,001 Dark Potions probably contained the details for which he was searching. Groaning under the weight of the massive tome, he settled into his leather wingback chair and opened to the “D” section.
He skimmed the entry, and then went back and read it again to make sure that he hadn’t lost his mind entirely.
Death’s Oblivion – Invented in 1372 by Antonio Bellacruza. A Grade III memory suppressor, this Potion is no longer in common circulation. With the invention of the Obliviate spell in 1412, a cheaper and easier memory modifier, Death’s Oblivion fell into disfavor.
Malfoy ground his teeth together in frustration and threw his glass against the wall, letting forty-five galleons worth of liquor trickle down his family’s residence.
Where was he, then?? If Nymphadora Tonks, his charming niece-in-law, had managed to get him back to Hogwarts, there’s no doubt that Albus Dumbledore would have taken a hand in hiding Snape.
His eyes flashed to his writing desk which contained the most recent letter from his disappointing progeny.
“…I made a few discreet enquiries, Father, and it does not appear that Constantine Prince is any relation to Severus Snape. And even if he was, he hardly seems worth your time. He’s a dreadfully dull sort, always working on Potions experiments with his mudblood girlfriend, Granger…”
Lucius had known Snape as an eighteen year old, and Constantine was his spitting image. That combined with his interest in Potions, his last name, his acerbic wit, and his love for mudblood Gryffindors seemed like too much of a coincidence. Could it be?
Could Constantine Prince actually be Severus Snape in disguise?
If anyone could affect that level of disguise on the traitor, it would be Dumbledore. Lucius laughed lightly. The Headmaster really was losing his marbles. Surely, if he’d wanted to hide Snape, it would have been more effective to send him to Europe or America. Why would the codger hide the man amongst the student population with a face he was bound to recognize, and a name that set off alarm bells? His eyes suddenly narrowed.
Dumbledore was either a senile old fool, or he was laying Snape on the sacrificial altar. Maybe both. He looked back at the letter.
“…always working on Potions experiments with his mudblood girlfriend, Granger…”
Malfoy remembered how protective young Snape was of the frizzy-haired harridan. He smiled slowly. Perhaps he should extend another invitation to Ms. Granger.
Con had taken to sleeping in Hermione’s room most nights. He found that lying wrapped around her slim frame tended to keep most of the nightmares away, although it could do nothing against the memories that encroached upon him. The air he breathed was thick with them, filling his lungs with remembered tears and beatings and the terror of the full moon. But even those nights when he remembered something were easier if he was at Hermione’s side.
Sometimes she would hold him and stroke his hair and tell him that she loved him. Sometimes she would slide down his body and take his limp cock in her mouth and suck him down her throat until he was so focused on her hot mouth that it drove every other thought from his head. Sometimes she’d distract him by telling the boy of her own childhood before she’d lost her parents to Voldemort’s madness.
Con hadn’t told her that he loved her yet.
Although he thought it fairly obvious that he did. He thought he might very well expire from the sheer quantity of love for his curly-headed Gryffindor that was crammed into his slender chest. But he hadn’t told her that.
It wouldn’t be fair to her.
He had no idea who he was and what he’d already seen of his past was so horrible that to afflict her with it would make him half a man.
But gods, he loved her. And so, knowing that this couldn’t last forever, he reveled in every touch she bestowed upon him. He inscribed every kind word on his leprous memory. He curved his arm around her waist in possession that wasn’t possession at all but instead a farewell.
At that particular moment, they sat in the Gryffindor common room on the couch that was turned to soak in the fire. Hermione’s head was on his shoulder. Their hands were entwined. Dissatisfied at their distance, he reached over and picked the slight girl up and placed her in his lap.
Hermione allowed Con to pull her into his lap and wrap his arms around her. She’d take every crumb of affection he’d give her, because she knew it would all end the minute he realized he was Severus Snape.
She supposed that she should feel some sort of existential moral crisis about the situation in which she found herself. First, she was in love with and physically intimate with her professor. Most people would find that reprehensible on both of their parts. Mentally, she batted the thought away. She would feel no guilt for perpetuating love in a world that knew far too little of it, especially coming on the heels of such a dark and cancerous war.
Second, and she believed that this was the issue that Con would find much more difficult should he find out about it, was that she knew who he was and she really should tell him. If she was honest with herself (and she always tried to be), she did feel guilty about that. However, Hermione knew that she wouldn’t have him for long and the evil that had already been perpetrated against both of them at Dumbledore’s hands would be made no worse if she kept him for herself the week or two she had left with him.
Hermione was rather surprised at herself. She had never expected that she would act as selfishly as she was right then. By all rights, she and Con should be marching into Dumbledore’s office with all the righteous fury they could muster. Constantine had stated flat out that Hermione was his girlfriend, and the Headmaster hadn’t batted an eye. The girl surmised that he had hidden Severus Snape amongst the student population to offer him some small measure of protection from whoever attacked him.
But why keep it a secret in the face of their affection?
She turned her face into Con’s neck and breathed in his scent.
Hermione was waiting for it all to come crashing down around them. But, in the meantime, she did not falter in her affections.
Draco stood on the edge of the Quidditch pitch, and watched Ron test-flying his Firebolt 2X. He sighed, watching the red-head lurch awkwardly around the field. It was like letting a one-armed imbecile handle a priceless family heirloom. Weasley galumphed around the field, and Draco finally understood why Potter never let his friend out of the Keeper’s goal. Where Ron, with his repellent, tentacular arms topped with enormous fan-like hands, was a superb Keeper, he wouldn’t even be able to keep up in any other role.
The boy landed finally and handed Draco back his broom. His face was flushed with pleasure, and Draco felt a painful warming in his cold, Malfoy heart. He pounded his chest, misdiagnosing the pain as heartburn. How was he to know it was affection, after all?
“Thanks, mate. That broom is brilliant.”
“It’s a good broom, but you are truly an atrocious flyer. Ginny would have mopped the floor with you.”
Ron’s face fell. “Yeah, she was a superb Quidditch player, wasn’t she?”
Draco just nodded, and the two walked over to sit in the stands.
“So, you and she…” Ron looked at him expectantly.
“Gods, no. We were just friends, Weasel. But… I was quite fond of her. And not that I would have minded more, you know. Quite the looker, your sis.” Draco made a somewhat crude gesture in the air to denote that she had massive breasts in which he would have loved to bury his face. He did it simply because he knew it would irk the redhead.
“Oy! Watch it!”
Malfoy smirked, and the corner of Ron’s mouth twitched slightly.
“So how did you two ever become friends, anyway?”
“I overheard her arguing with Milicent Bulstrode about the Holyhead Harpies and what a rubbish team they were. I thought that was a particularly unfair assessment and very politely – Malfoys are always polite, you know – showed her what a completely moronic and poorly-developed statement that was. We got so wrapped up in it, we didn’t even notice that Millie had slunk away and it was approaching curfew. She looked at me, and she had those piercing eyes, you know? She looked at me and said, ‘Well, Ferret. Looks like we don’t have time for you to admit defeat and perform an act of contrition for your blasphemy. Same time tomorrow so we can finish this, then?’”
Ron laughed lightly.
“Eventually, we argued less and less and talked more and more. She was just… I felt like sometimes she was the only one who saw me for me. With her, I was just a berk who liked Quidditch, and it was such a relief! Lord, I don’t think I can explain how good that felt.” His mouth turned down. “I miss her a lot, you know. I didn’t love her, but I always felt the potential was there. Not that it mattered. I’d never have done anything because she just would have become a target for my father.” Draco’s eyebrows pulled together as he pondered the bitter irony in that statement.
“I miss her, too.”
“You’ve got the Boy-Who-Lived-to-Snog-Her at your beck and call. Why don’t you ever talk about her to him? You’ve got a built-in audience.”
“Harry is trying to bury the hatchet between the two of you. Why won’t you let him?”
“Touché, Weasel. I’ll spill my guts, but you have to spill yours, first.”
“Right. I guess there are a couple of reasons. The first is that you hear all the time how people die. Husbands and wives get left behind. They mourn, and it’s sad, you know? But they always move on. People get remarried. Harry’s like that. He’s still young, and I know that he’ll sit and cry with me, maybe wrap an arm around my shoulders, but the day will most likely come when he fancies another girl. Could be Katie Bell. Maybe one of the Patil twins. Who knows? But it’s not like that for me. She was my only sister, and that can’t be replaced.” Ron swallowed tightly, and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“That doesn’t mean his grief isn’t real. Whoever he ends up with, he’ll probably love in an entirely different way than he loved your sister.” Draco rolled his eyes. “Ugh, listen to me defend The-Boy-Who-Has-A-Hygiene-Problem. You’re absolutely right. It’s not the same. Harry can rot in hell. What’s the other reason you won’t talk about this with him?”
“I know it’s illogical, but… He was good enough to defeat Voldemort. Why couldn’t he save my baby sister?” Ron’s mouth quivered as he tried to control his emotions. “It’s the same reason I can’t talk to Hermione about it. I’m so glad she made it home safe, but how come she survived when Ginny didn’t?” Tears rolled silently down the red head’s face, and his nose turned a shade of red that Draco thought clashed horribly with his coloring.
The two sat in silence together as they watched the sun go down. Draco didn’t look at Ron while the Gryffindor composed himself. It’s not because I’m being polite, he told himself. It’s because I think I’ll retch if I look over at him and see him all blubbery and snotty. He told the lie to himself quite successfully, and gave himself a mental pat on the back. After all, haven’t Malfoys always excelled at self-delusion?
“So, why won’t you let Harry bury the hatchet between you two?”
Draco shifted his weight and tucked his right ankle over his left as he lay sprawled over several seats. Ron waited patiently for his response.
“Sometimes, I think our rivalry is the only thing that keeps me going. I wake up in the morning and just go through the motions. Get dressed, eat, act the prat, you know. Crabbe and Goyle are dead. My father’s a lunatic. My mother’s an alcoholic. Ginny’s gone. The only part of my day where I feel alive is when I spar with Potter. I spar with Potter for the same reason I befriended you. It makes me feel a little closer to her.”
Ron clapped the Slytherin on the shoulder.
“Don’t pity me,” Draco snarled. “You’re just as pathetic, you know!”
Ron was surprised. “Of course I am. And don’t I know it?” He settled back into his seat. “Too bad we didn’t get to see Ginny play this year. She’d have whipped our sorry team into shape. She was a right harridan last year, you know. Thought people weren’t putting forth enough effort.” He put on a high-pitched, girlish voice. “Just because some people are focusing on fighting an evil megalomaniac, doesn’t mean they should play worth rubbish! Honestly, Harry! Have you got elbows instead of hands?”
Draco breathed deeply through his nose before responding. “Trust me, I know. I heard all about it.”
A/N: And there you have it. I do think Draco might be in a bit of denial about his feelings for the late Ginevra Weasley, but I\'m not going to tear his security blanket from him in this fic. Maybe one day I\'ll write a follow up fic where Draco Figures. Things. Out. Just a thought.
Like it, love it, hate it, review it!
Let me know what you guys think! Love ya!
Chapter Fifteen
Lucius Malfoy looked at the Potions rack before him. It was all that remained of the Dark Lord’s supply, and every single bottle contained the spidery scrawl of Severus Snape. He smirked, pleased at the irony of having taking down the powerful dark wizard using one of the man’s own concoctions.
The aristocrat didn’t know too much about Potions. He considered himself above such quotidian details. If he wanted a Headache Potion, he’d have one sent around from the apothecary. If he wanted to poison an enemy, he’d hire someone to do it. He was a Malfoy, after all. It wouldn’t do to sully his hands.
Lucius had made an exception for Severus Snape, though. The blond gritted his teeth. The Malfoy name had suffered dramatically upon the fall of the Dark Lord. They’d linked their fortunes to his rise quite literally as well as figuratively, and when that Potter brat had killed him, working on information provided by Snape the Traitor, Lucius had found his head on the chopping block. It had taken half his remaining fortune to grease the wheels of the Wizengamot, and he’d still had to serve six months in Azkaban for his kidnapping and pleasures with Potter’s Mudblood slut and his girlfriend.
Well, no use crying over spilled blood, after all.
It had been one of his more inspired ideas to coat his blade with a deadly poison. Snape had always been a crack duelist, and Lucius knew that he didn’t even have a fifty/fifty chance to beat him one-on-one. So, of course, he had stacked the odds. He’d waited on the dark-haired wizard in Hogsmeade, knowing that he’d have to make a run for Potions ingredients before the start of term. He’d brought McNair with him – a Death Eater who’d always had a hard on for killing Snape even before he’d been outed as a traitor.
He also coated his knife with the deadliest-sounding poison he could find in the remnants of the Dark Lord’s Potions chest. With a name like “Death’s Oblivion,” Lucius figured even a small cut would drastically have increased his likelihood of ending the Potions master’s life. And he’d gotten much more than a small cut on the man. The wound had crossed from shoulder to hip and bled profusely.
Malfoy shivered slightly, remembering the pulse of blood that grew weaker and slower as the traitor bled out on the ground in front of him.
His only regret was that he hadn’t gotten to see the man die. The meddling auror Nymphadora Tonks had Apparated him to the gates of Hogwarts before his end came. Lucius licked his lips. It was a big regret, really. He’d have liked to watch those beady black eyes as the life drained out of them. Maybe cut him up a little bit.
Did he go easily? Was the poison painful? He hoped the symptoms were delightful – vomiting, voiding of the bowels, delusions, hysteria. Anything to steal the blasted spy’s dignity. Did Albus Dumbledore hold Snape’s hand while he shit himself?
Malfoy chuckled at the thought and poured himself a glass of Ogden’s 100 Year Reserve Firewhiskey. He deserved a bit of entertainment and crossed to his bookshelves to read of Severus Snape’s final moments. 1,001 Dark Potions probably contained the details for which he was searching. Groaning under the weight of the massive tome, he settled into his leather wingback chair and opened to the “D” section.
He skimmed the entry, and then went back and read it again to make sure that he hadn’t lost his mind entirely.
Death’s Oblivion – Invented in 1372 by Antonio Bellacruza. A Grade III memory suppressor, this Potion is no longer in common circulation. With the invention of the Obliviate spell in 1412, a cheaper and easier memory modifier, Death’s Oblivion fell into disfavor.
Malfoy ground his teeth together in frustration and threw his glass against the wall, letting forty-five galleons worth of liquor trickle down his family’s residence.
Where was he, then?? If Nymphadora Tonks, his charming niece-in-law, had managed to get him back to Hogwarts, there’s no doubt that Albus Dumbledore would have taken a hand in hiding Snape.
His eyes flashed to his writing desk which contained the most recent letter from his disappointing progeny.
“…I made a few discreet enquiries, Father, and it does not appear that Constantine Prince is any relation to Severus Snape. And even if he was, he hardly seems worth your time. He’s a dreadfully dull sort, always working on Potions experiments with his mudblood girlfriend, Granger…”
Lucius had known Snape as an eighteen year old, and Constantine was his spitting image. That combined with his interest in Potions, his last name, his acerbic wit, and his love for mudblood Gryffindors seemed like too much of a coincidence. Could it be?
Could Constantine Prince actually be Severus Snape in disguise?
If anyone could affect that level of disguise on the traitor, it would be Dumbledore. Lucius laughed lightly. The Headmaster really was losing his marbles. Surely, if he’d wanted to hide Snape, it would have been more effective to send him to Europe or America. Why would the codger hide the man amongst the student population with a face he was bound to recognize, and a name that set off alarm bells? His eyes suddenly narrowed.
Dumbledore was either a senile old fool, or he was laying Snape on the sacrificial altar. Maybe both. He looked back at the letter.
“…always working on Potions experiments with his mudblood girlfriend, Granger…”
Malfoy remembered how protective young Snape was of the frizzy-haired harridan. He smiled slowly. Perhaps he should extend another invitation to Ms. Granger.
Con had taken to sleeping in Hermione’s room most nights. He found that lying wrapped around her slim frame tended to keep most of the nightmares away, although it could do nothing against the memories that encroached upon him. The air he breathed was thick with them, filling his lungs with remembered tears and beatings and the terror of the full moon. But even those nights when he remembered something were easier if he was at Hermione’s side.
Sometimes she would hold him and stroke his hair and tell him that she loved him. Sometimes she would slide down his body and take his limp cock in her mouth and suck him down her throat until he was so focused on her hot mouth that it drove every other thought from his head. Sometimes she’d distract him by telling the boy of her own childhood before she’d lost her parents to Voldemort’s madness.
Con hadn’t told her that he loved her yet.
Although he thought it fairly obvious that he did. He thought he might very well expire from the sheer quantity of love for his curly-headed Gryffindor that was crammed into his slender chest. But he hadn’t told her that.
It wouldn’t be fair to her.
He had no idea who he was and what he’d already seen of his past was so horrible that to afflict her with it would make him half a man.
But gods, he loved her. And so, knowing that this couldn’t last forever, he reveled in every touch she bestowed upon him. He inscribed every kind word on his leprous memory. He curved his arm around her waist in possession that wasn’t possession at all but instead a farewell.
At that particular moment, they sat in the Gryffindor common room on the couch that was turned to soak in the fire. Hermione’s head was on his shoulder. Their hands were entwined. Dissatisfied at their distance, he reached over and picked the slight girl up and placed her in his lap.
Hermione allowed Con to pull her into his lap and wrap his arms around her. She’d take every crumb of affection he’d give her, because she knew it would all end the minute he realized he was Severus Snape.
She supposed that she should feel some sort of existential moral crisis about the situation in which she found herself. First, she was in love with and physically intimate with her professor. Most people would find that reprehensible on both of their parts. Mentally, she batted the thought away. She would feel no guilt for perpetuating love in a world that knew far too little of it, especially coming on the heels of such a dark and cancerous war.
Second, and she believed that this was the issue that Con would find much more difficult should he find out about it, was that she knew who he was and she really should tell him. If she was honest with herself (and she always tried to be), she did feel guilty about that. However, Hermione knew that she wouldn’t have him for long and the evil that had already been perpetrated against both of them at Dumbledore’s hands would be made no worse if she kept him for herself the week or two she had left with him.
Hermione was rather surprised at herself. She had never expected that she would act as selfishly as she was right then. By all rights, she and Con should be marching into Dumbledore’s office with all the righteous fury they could muster. Constantine had stated flat out that Hermione was his girlfriend, and the Headmaster hadn’t batted an eye. The girl surmised that he had hidden Severus Snape amongst the student population to offer him some small measure of protection from whoever attacked him.
But why keep it a secret in the face of their affection?
She turned her face into Con’s neck and breathed in his scent.
Hermione was waiting for it all to come crashing down around them. But, in the meantime, she did not falter in her affections.
Draco stood on the edge of the Quidditch pitch, and watched Ron test-flying his Firebolt 2X. He sighed, watching the red-head lurch awkwardly around the field. It was like letting a one-armed imbecile handle a priceless family heirloom. Weasley galumphed around the field, and Draco finally understood why Potter never let his friend out of the Keeper’s goal. Where Ron, with his repellent, tentacular arms topped with enormous fan-like hands, was a superb Keeper, he wouldn’t even be able to keep up in any other role.
The boy landed finally and handed Draco back his broom. His face was flushed with pleasure, and Draco felt a painful warming in his cold, Malfoy heart. He pounded his chest, misdiagnosing the pain as heartburn. How was he to know it was affection, after all?
“Thanks, mate. That broom is brilliant.”
“It’s a good broom, but you are truly an atrocious flyer. Ginny would have mopped the floor with you.”
Ron’s face fell. “Yeah, she was a superb Quidditch player, wasn’t she?”
Draco just nodded, and the two walked over to sit in the stands.
“So, you and she…” Ron looked at him expectantly.
“Gods, no. We were just friends, Weasel. But… I was quite fond of her. And not that I would have minded more, you know. Quite the looker, your sis.” Draco made a somewhat crude gesture in the air to denote that she had massive breasts in which he would have loved to bury his face. He did it simply because he knew it would irk the redhead.
“Oy! Watch it!”
Malfoy smirked, and the corner of Ron’s mouth twitched slightly.
“So how did you two ever become friends, anyway?”
“I overheard her arguing with Milicent Bulstrode about the Holyhead Harpies and what a rubbish team they were. I thought that was a particularly unfair assessment and very politely – Malfoys are always polite, you know – showed her what a completely moronic and poorly-developed statement that was. We got so wrapped up in it, we didn’t even notice that Millie had slunk away and it was approaching curfew. She looked at me, and she had those piercing eyes, you know? She looked at me and said, ‘Well, Ferret. Looks like we don’t have time for you to admit defeat and perform an act of contrition for your blasphemy. Same time tomorrow so we can finish this, then?’”
Ron laughed lightly.
“Eventually, we argued less and less and talked more and more. She was just… I felt like sometimes she was the only one who saw me for me. With her, I was just a berk who liked Quidditch, and it was such a relief! Lord, I don’t think I can explain how good that felt.” His mouth turned down. “I miss her a lot, you know. I didn’t love her, but I always felt the potential was there. Not that it mattered. I’d never have done anything because she just would have become a target for my father.” Draco’s eyebrows pulled together as he pondered the bitter irony in that statement.
“I miss her, too.”
“You’ve got the Boy-Who-Lived-to-Snog-Her at your beck and call. Why don’t you ever talk about her to him? You’ve got a built-in audience.”
“Harry is trying to bury the hatchet between the two of you. Why won’t you let him?”
“Touché, Weasel. I’ll spill my guts, but you have to spill yours, first.”
“Right. I guess there are a couple of reasons. The first is that you hear all the time how people die. Husbands and wives get left behind. They mourn, and it’s sad, you know? But they always move on. People get remarried. Harry’s like that. He’s still young, and I know that he’ll sit and cry with me, maybe wrap an arm around my shoulders, but the day will most likely come when he fancies another girl. Could be Katie Bell. Maybe one of the Patil twins. Who knows? But it’s not like that for me. She was my only sister, and that can’t be replaced.” Ron swallowed tightly, and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“That doesn’t mean his grief isn’t real. Whoever he ends up with, he’ll probably love in an entirely different way than he loved your sister.” Draco rolled his eyes. “Ugh, listen to me defend The-Boy-Who-Has-A-Hygiene-Problem. You’re absolutely right. It’s not the same. Harry can rot in hell. What’s the other reason you won’t talk about this with him?”
“I know it’s illogical, but… He was good enough to defeat Voldemort. Why couldn’t he save my baby sister?” Ron’s mouth quivered as he tried to control his emotions. “It’s the same reason I can’t talk to Hermione about it. I’m so glad she made it home safe, but how come she survived when Ginny didn’t?” Tears rolled silently down the red head’s face, and his nose turned a shade of red that Draco thought clashed horribly with his coloring.
The two sat in silence together as they watched the sun go down. Draco didn’t look at Ron while the Gryffindor composed himself. It’s not because I’m being polite, he told himself. It’s because I think I’ll retch if I look over at him and see him all blubbery and snotty. He told the lie to himself quite successfully, and gave himself a mental pat on the back. After all, haven’t Malfoys always excelled at self-delusion?
“So, why won’t you let Harry bury the hatchet between you two?”
Draco shifted his weight and tucked his right ankle over his left as he lay sprawled over several seats. Ron waited patiently for his response.
“Sometimes, I think our rivalry is the only thing that keeps me going. I wake up in the morning and just go through the motions. Get dressed, eat, act the prat, you know. Crabbe and Goyle are dead. My father’s a lunatic. My mother’s an alcoholic. Ginny’s gone. The only part of my day where I feel alive is when I spar with Potter. I spar with Potter for the same reason I befriended you. It makes me feel a little closer to her.”
Ron clapped the Slytherin on the shoulder.
“Don’t pity me,” Draco snarled. “You’re just as pathetic, you know!”
Ron was surprised. “Of course I am. And don’t I know it?” He settled back into his seat. “Too bad we didn’t get to see Ginny play this year. She’d have whipped our sorry team into shape. She was a right harridan last year, you know. Thought people weren’t putting forth enough effort.” He put on a high-pitched, girlish voice. “Just because some people are focusing on fighting an evil megalomaniac, doesn’t mean they should play worth rubbish! Honestly, Harry! Have you got elbows instead of hands?”
Draco breathed deeply through his nose before responding. “Trust me, I know. I heard all about it.”
A/N: And there you have it. I do think Draco might be in a bit of denial about his feelings for the late Ginevra Weasley, but I\'m not going to tear his security blanket from him in this fic. Maybe one day I\'ll write a follow up fic where Draco Figures. Things. Out. Just a thought.
Like it, love it, hate it, review it!