Water

Water
Chapter Two
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sexual References, Strong language

Thank you to my wonderful betas, Jen (http://jenl3227.livejournal.com) and Dina (http://dianoram.livejournal.com), for correcting this chapter.

Disclaimer: All these characters belong to JKR. I own nothing, much to my dismay, and make no money whatsoever out of this story!


Chapter 2.

The sound of clashing silver and a body thudding down to the ground.

Draco knew he was scarred from it all. It wasn’t every night that his father would hurt him, but some nights – most nights – he would back up into a corner and cower.

Lucius Malfoy was stunning. He would turn heads in the street, send hearts racing, leave mouths dry. He was everything Draco aspired to be and all that he wasn’t. He was a worthless child, a dishonourable boy. He didn’t deserve to be a Malfoy, because Malfoy wasn’t just a name, it was fucking rights to royalty.

When Draco was fourteen he arrived home for Christmas. His mother was away and the welcome had been short. His father made him practice incantations for three hours before sending him to bed. Draco remembers that night in particular because he didn’t sleep – he just read under the light of his wand, swallowing every time he heard the moans of Lucius fucking some other witch into the floorboards above him.

And when the young boy asked his father why it wasn’t his mother who was sleeping in that bed last night, he finished the question crying into the wall with blood gushing from his head, screaming—

sorrysorryfathersorry

Lucius Malfoy swung his fists with a purpose to teach his son the art of destruction. Play, destroy, win. It was a game, he told him, every bruise and every cut was there to show him that you don’t ask questions, you don’t have morals, you live and let live the Malfoy tradition. His father was showing him, teaching him.

Draco understood and he hated not knowing why but he did, he understood – completely – because that was what a Malfoy did. He knew of nothing else.

One night he came downstairs to screams. Loud, raw, ripping screams that scolded his ears and tore through his brain. His mother was crying for him, calling for him, begging for him to come, stop the bleeding, stop the pain, stop his father. She was always hit, often through frustration, want, need. His father almost fucking got off on it.

Draco sat on the stairs and shouted a song in his head to drown her out. It was a song she used to sing to him when he was younger. It was about magic, love, and family. The Malfoys were a family, he thought. Welcome to the family. It’s so fucking bright in here you’ll want to gouge your eyes out.

Then another night – that night – Draco hit back. His mother had crashed through the doorway and down the stairs, lying there battered and still on the ground. And Draco roared. He roared at his father. He ran and ran and ran and swung at him so hard the edges of his vision turned black as his father’s face smashed into the ground.

Is he dead, he asked himself, lying there like that? Do I hope he is dying, he wondered, do I wish he is dead? Yes, maybe, no, maybe not.

The night was a blur after his father rose up, roared back, hit back, pulled out his wand to do even more damage.

Times were dark for Lucius. Draco knew. Of course he knew. He hated his father but he was a Malfoy. They were both Malfoys. Draco would never follow the other side – any other – least of all Dumbledore’s. If that was the way, he would become it, he would be a Death Eater, he would live it, breathe it, steal it away from his father and be better than he could ever be. It was a game, after all. You play to win. Draco only aspired to be what his father was so he could transcend him. Beat him at his own game.

But he had returned home one year ago and his mother had told him the news. She was crying, he remembered there were tears, and he wondered for hours why. He didn’t pretend to cry or grieve. He sat in his bedroom and read books. He read a book about a boy that had fought in a war and another about a man that started one. He would stop sometimes between chapters to see if he felt anything yet, and he didn’t. Apart from the rising sensation of bitter guilt.

And he was angry – because how did he become so destroyed by a man that he thought was so pure? Pure fucking Malfoy or whatever it was, whatever he was taught it was, whatever the hell was so fucking important to him. It was so important to him, to Draco.

The boy in the book he read was bad. He killed his friend, his enemy, he killed himself, and Draco identified with him inside-out. Kill everyone, kill himself. He had come to hate his own existence.

Why did he scold himself, scratch himself, bleed himself when nothing would ever be good enough for the one person he would never be good enough for? A fucking excuse for a life – so full of shit and so full of fucking faith in unadulterated evil when, really, life couldn’t be like that. It wasn’t designed the way his father wanted it to be – IT WASN’T MADE FOR HIM. He would fucking spit on his father’s grave when the time came because he had had enough – he was enough. He was more Malfoy than his father ever was because he was ALIVE.

Draco could taste it. Finally, after all these years, he loved his father. The feeling was strange, new, almost comic. Draco Malfoy loved him. He loved him for being dead.


*


He awoke suddenly and everything was still. The tree outside his window was still coated in orange, carpeted in crisp dying leaves, looming over him in the reflection. His mirror was still smudged, smeared, marked with hands, legs, arses, the shags, the fucks, the bitter sex. His wand was still beside him, poised, ready, waiting for one thing more than anything and waiting with hatred.

Everything was the same, exactly where he left it. Robes folded neatly, broomstick tucked away. Everything in his room was the way it should be, and as he lay there, shivering and sweating in the darkness, he breathed it in to calm himself. He didn’t shut his eyes for worry of falling asleep again. And he couldn’t fall asleep again. Not into those thoughts of his father. Not tonight, at least.

Draco tapped the candles with his wand and moved to the edge of the bed. His arm was bleeding a little from nail marks he had made just above a scar. He had been dreaming again. He grimaced as he touched the broken skin and thought how simple it would be to heal it, yet so hard to know why he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

The stillness of the room stayed still but it was too dark. He wanted to leave it a little, wander off down the stairs, wander out into the night because somehow, outside, it seemed brighter. He wasn’t so troubled that he couldn’t, he didn’t care that much for a walk, but he cared enough to grab his grey slacks and pull them over his boxers to leave the room. The common room was always bright, always warm, the fire was always burning and he liked to lie on the sofa before it.

The stone steps were cold under his feet but he didn’t mind it, it cooled him from growing warmer as he always did. He was always growing too warm, his mother said it was the Black-blood running through him, strong and hot. He always denied it. He was more Malfoy than anything else, he said, he shared no other blood.

The staircase led through the archway and the brightness of the common room impaired his vision suddenly. “Fuck,” he muttered, stumbling a little towards the sofa, a hand across his eyes.

“Is that all you ever say?”

His eyesight adjusted just in time for him to see her sarcastic expression. “Fuck,” he repeated. “Granger.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry,” she sighed. “I’m leaving soon.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Why are you even awake?”

She stared back at him over a couple of heavy books laid out on the desk before her. “I have things to do,” she answered coldly. “Prefect duties haven’t left me much time this week.” She said the last part as she turned back to her papers so as not to make it too obvious why exactly that was, though Draco knew already so it was a little pointless.

“What time is it?” he asked her, falling back onto the sofa with his head lulled back. He turned slightly in her direction.

“One o’ clock?” she murmured. “Two?”

“What’s that supposed to tell me?” he scoffed.

“That I don’t know the exact time.”

Draco grumbled something and put his feet on the table in front of him. “Bit keen, aren’t you?” he asked. “Shouldn’t care enough to stay up this late. Thought your bedtime was never past ten o’clock, Granger.”

“Seeing as we have to patrol until eleven thirty some nights, that can’t really be true now, can it?” she answered, meeting his eyes as she closed a book loudly. “Why are you awake?”

He shrugged. It was obviously his decided way of expressing himself this morning.

“Bad dream?” she asked.

Draco frowned. “Fuck off,” he snapped. “Get on with your work and get out.”

She might have been slightly shocked by his reaction, but the remarks, tone, and expression were all been-there-and-seen-that material. “I’ll leave when I’m finished,” she replied.

“I think you’re finished already,” he corrected her, his hands reaching behind his head. “I want to be alone.”

“Why not go back up to your bedroom then?” she asked. “Why be such a…” She trailed off.

“Such a what?” he asked her. She didn’t reply and he didn’t like that. She could say whatever she liked but ignoring him wasn’t part of the permission package with Draco Malfoy. “Come on, Granger,” he said, looking at her. “Spit it out.”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “A bastard?” She leant back in her chair. “Or would you prefer a dickhead?”

His eyebrows lowered. “And what would you prefer? Disgusting Mudblood, Granger?”

“Disgusting?” She raised an eyebrow. “ Really? Then why is it you’ve been staring intently at this disgusting Mudblood since you got here.”

He felt a sudden rush of idiocy inside and snapped his eyes away. “Fuck off,” he mumbled at the ceiling. “You might make some twats look twice but as far as I’m concerned you’re a filthy—“

“Yes.” She closed her other books and rose from her chair with them neatly in her arms. “Yes,” she repeated. He could feel her looking at him and he didn’t like it. “I wouldn’t want it any other way, to be honest.” She pushed the chair into the desk. “Goodnight, Malfoy.”

He didn’t watch her leave, of course. What did she expect, anyway? It was because of those fucking pyjamas again that he clearly did a worse job of pretending to ignore this time. Her legs were bare where her shorts cut off and her top was stupidly thin. He had certainly learnt something new by finding out that the muddy Granger princess wore things like that. Maybe she really was a whore. And he was a man, after all. They were wired a certain way, animal instincts and all that. If he looked at her it wasn’t because he chose to or wanted to or even liked to, it was involuntary. Thinking about it made him sick. If the Mudblood thought he would even so much as... Draco shivered.

He picked up a book on the table in front of him and buried himself inside it. He would read until sunrise, because he couldn’t go back to sleep tonight. Not tonight.

*

A week passed and October began to die out around the castle. The air was mild but the leaves were whipped up into a frenzy by an incessant wind that kept the Quidditch games under heavy surveillance. The days were shorter, darker, every one dawning with a repetitive wave of anticipation for Christmas. Hermione knew that the shops back home would be decorated already. It was a waste of space and time but it made the festive season last just that little bit longer. She liked that at least, even if the holiday itself was never the same with the disappearing magic of growing up.

Harry and Hermione had barely spoken the past week. Nor had she and Draco. The short conversation the night they couldn’t sleep had reworked and restored any faltering tension between them. She enjoyed the resumed silence before she remembered why it was so difficult in the first place.

Apart from the massive change in prefect rota coming up, the seventh-year Winter Ball was fast approaching with a vengeance that made Hermione feel nauseous whenever she thought about it. It was something all students looked forward to throughout their years at school, always envying the older students who were able to attend and now— Now it was her turn and instead of feeling a buzz of excitement, Hermione couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather avoid.

She felt alone and so pissed off knowing that Harry, idiot or not, was fundamentally right about Malfoy. He was walking all over her. She felt it whenever she drew up prefect plans or meeting schedules, knowing he was in the opposite room fucking some prefect into the bed sheets.

And that was only the tip of the iceberg.

“The sodding tip, I swear,” growled Hermione, chewing on a sweet.

“And what about talking to Harry?”

“Don’t even say it, Ron,” she snapped. Of course she hadn’t told him that she and Draco weren’t talking again, or that she felt trodden on because it was clear she was doing the bulk of the work again, but making out it was simply the ridiculous timing of the events and the prefects and the bloody end of term preparations that will follow straight after.

“How much has Malfoy done?” asked Ron, a slightly quiet wary tone creeping in at the mention of his name.

Hermione shrugged. “Enough.” She chewed harder. “I mean, whatever. Less than enough I guess, but it’s not that simple.”

Ron frowned. “Less than—”

“I’m onto it!” she insisted, knocking the half open packet of sweets off the arm of her chair and onto the house common room floor. They spilt and spun far across the carpet. Some fourth-years looked round. She stared back. “Yes?”

Ron took her hand and she turned to him. “Hermione, I know this is just one of those days were you get extra stressed—” She pulled away her hand so he changed his approach. “You are dealing with this so well,” he began again. “Anyone would feel like you do. Probably worse, especially with him living on top of you all the time.” And then he focused on what was, undeniably, the most important thing needing to be fixed. “You’re the smart one, Hermione. And that’s why you’re the one who has to talk to Harry.” Her eyes rolled but he kept going. “To be honest, I don’t really know what’s been going through his head recently. We’re both worried but you know what it’s like between him and Malfoy. I think he’s just waiting for the guy to try and get to him through you.”

“Not everything leads back to the golden boy,” she grumbled.

“It sounds likely, though. Either way, Harry is being an idiot and I’ve told him,” Ron suddenly felt a lurching feeling in his stomach. “I don’t like it here at the moment. It’s not right.”

Hermione noted the sudden quietness in his voice and her hand traced back to his. “I know,” she said. “It can’t be easy for you with us barely talking. I’ll try and say something. Clear the air.”

“It’s worth a try.”

Hermione sighed, “That boy. Sometimes I just...” She shook her head. “I want to shake him.”


*


“You want to shake me?”

Hermione nodded, her eyes wide. “And more.”

“And more?” A smirk spread across Harry’s face.

“Oh, don’t you dare,” she said. “I’m still being serious here Mr. I’m-incapable-of-making-the-first-move. I’m already annoyed that Ron’s made me do this.”

Harry sighed and zipped up his top higher. “But did we have to come outside?”

“I don’t want people hearing this. I’m supposed to be Head Girl. No problems, no issues, no arguments. Common room, corridors, library – they all have ears. They can probably hear us now actually—”

“Okay, fair point,” agreed Harry. “Your hair keeps flicking me a bit though,” he added.

“I’m so sorry,” she said sarcastically.

He shrugged. “No problem.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ron told me what you’re thinking.”

“I doubt he did.”

“About Malfoy getting to you through me?”

Harry shrugged again. “Maybe.”

“It’s not going to happen,” she insisted. “And even if it could - which it won’t - why have I had to suffer your unsurpassable charm these past few days when I haven’t even done anything?”

“I just know you aren’t telling me the truth and it’s frustrating.”

“How am I not telling you the truth?”

“Admitting to us that Malfoy is making it difficult for you doesn’t make you weak.”

“I know!” she frowned. “But how can I admit to something that can’t even be admitted to since it isn’t even there to admit?!”

“What?”

“I’m fine,” she explained, lowering her eyebrows and taking a deep breath. “I’m fine and you should just accept it. Malfoy isn’t using me for any—”

“We know, Hermione,” said Harry. “We know about you doing the whole chart. All four houses.”

Hermione’s skin was suddenly dyed in characteristic crimson. “The what? I— Erm— I don’t remember doing all four—”

“Look, you don’t have to lie,” said Harry.

“I’m not lying!” she frowned, flustered and frustrated. “I might have done more than my fair share that time around but it’s not like I should be obliged to tell you all about it.”

“I’m your best friend,” said Harry. “Me and Ron. We’re your best mates and you can tell us anything.”

“And you would have done what exactly?” she asked, with a comic expression across her face. “Patted me on the back and told me to plug on?” She shook her head. “You would have gone straight to Malfoy and—” Hermione cut off suddenly, her eyes wide. “How do you know anyway?”

Harry sighed. “We had a run-in with him last week.”

“A run-in?”

“Things were said.”

“Things?”

“Does it matter?”

“Oh, please,” growled Hermione. “It matters just as much as it matters to you knowing about all this irrelevant prefect stuff in the first place.”

“It’s hardly irrelevant-”

“What happened?”

“He mentioned that he made you do it,” said Harry. “That’s all.”

Hermione looked down. The wind had settled a little as the pale light began to sink behind the trees. She felt colder. She felt ashamed. “I didn’t want to do it,” she mumbled. “I would have made him but it was too late and the Professor-”

“You should have said something,” said Harry. “I know it’s just a stupid chart but I could have sorted it.”

“Look,” she breathed, “that’s the problem.”

He waited. “The problem?”

“I’ll tell you how it’s going if you agree not to sort it out every time.”

“I just—”

“It’s that or I tell you nothing. We return to how it is now. I can’t worry about stirring trouble
between you two. There’s enough to think about as it is.” She spoke slowly, clearly. Harry knew the tone, knew she really meant it.

“As long as he doesn’t hurt you,” he muttered.

“Malfoy is a bastard, but I don’t think he’d hurt a girl.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“I think I do.”

Harry looked down at his shoes and shuffled some dead leaves about. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gripped the contents inside. “So is that all?”

“I don’t know,” replied Hermione. “Is it?”

“I guess.”

“There’s nothing more you want to say?” she asked him. “Because you should say it now. I don’t
want this to drag out and keep upsetting Ron.”

“Was he whining to you?”

“Are you surprised?”

“No. He was whining to me too.”

“So are we alright again?” Hermione noticed he wasn’t looking her way. She paused slightly and then lowered her voice. “Harry?”

His head rose. It was the first time he’d heard his name on her lips in a while. A warm feeling rose inside him and he smiled slightly. Hermione always said his name. It was always slipped into questions, answers, conversation. He felt uneasy hearing it so much from anyone else but her. He didn’t realise that he’d missed it.

“We’re okay,” he nodded.

“Although there is something,” she smiled.

Her smile- Merlin- he’d missed that too. “Yeah?”

“An apology?”

“Go ahead.”

“Oh you little—”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“How sorry?”

Harry rolled his eyes. It was the age old question with Hermione. How sorry? How much? “So sorry I would do your laundry for the next week. So sorry I would keep you company in the library and carry all your books. So sorry I would buy you forty of those stupid little chocolate bars you love so much from Honeydukes. So sorry I could—”

“Alright, that will do,” she smiled, raising an eyebrow. “Apart from I wouldn’t want your company in the library, thank you very much. You’re nothing but a distraction. Oh and thirty chocolates are enough.”

“Fair enough,” answered Harry, as they wandered back up the path to the door. Something felt lighter within him. The feeling of resentment towards Malfoy and the whole bloody situation was quieter inside him for the moment. It was a matter of four minutes and then Hermione was back. She seemed calmer and more comfortable and he almost wanted to grab her hand.

Because it was so strange without the three of them. Harry used to notice it in the earlier years whenever he left on holidays without them. It felt right and household – just the three of them. It was family, the one he never had, the one he almost did have. He was afraid - that was all - scared that her being so busy, being Head Girl, being with Draco Malfoy would change it all.

He felt close to Ron and Hermione. He felt almost a part of them. And Hermione’s ridiculously righteous principles and spiteful bitter tongue was a part of that too. Her relentless pride and bloody determination to prove them all wrong was just there. It was natural. He fucking hated it for being so natural. But he needed it. He needed her. Hermione and Ron were his basic requirements. He often thought of how terrifying that was.

Maybe he would live to see the day when one of them would stop breathing. He thought about that, thought about Hermione mostly, and how sickly likely the possibility was of him seeing that, seeing her suffer. It could happen being the time that it was, the place that it was. It could happen simply because of him, and he never let himself forget the danger Hermione and Ron were in just by merely being his friends. Voldemort was still out there. Somewhere. They were tools.

Tools. That was what Malfoy looked for. It brought Harry almost full circle. He was so sure the bastard would use her as a tool. And that day, that day he thought about when she might stop breathing, Harry knew it would destroy everything inside him.

Hermione didn’t know the horrors Harry did, neither did Ron. They would be aware on the outside, they would listen and sometimes glimpse them, but they would never know. Harry even thought that he didn’t know himself, not yet, he wasn’t old enough to understand. He never wanted to be old enough to understand. Ignorance was fucking gold dust.

So why, he cursed himself, thinking back as he walked through the castle doors, why had he let himself say so little these past weeks to the only girl in his life he couldn’t do without?

He really was so sorry if he hurt her. But he knew that he couldn’t deny the reasons behind it. He knew it would come up again and he almost hated himself for it already. But for now he would just be sorry. So sorry he could kiss her. Almost. Not quite.

Maybe.


*