Seven Times

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Part 3.

The third time Draco Malfoy touched Hermione Granger, was after the war suddenly became reality. Aurors and students alike turned up, and the Death Eaters took the war to the streets of Wizarding London. Safe houses were found and secured, makeshift hospitals set up in each. And by the end of the first week, fifteen people from the good side lay dead.

Sleep became a luxury, and having time to relax in front of the wizarding wireless at the end of the night was forgotten as strategy sessions held in cramped kitchens became normality. Sleeping two, sometimes three, to a bed was considered normal as time stretched on, and more and more people joined the fight.

The unfamiliar became familiar, as did grief, worry and fear, that stunning fragrance that now tainted the air. Faces showed the change that war bought, as cheeks hollowed, eyes became shadowed, and bodies became muscular and lean. And at the head of it all, Draco slipped seamlessly into kinship with Harry and Ron, to the point that the three of them huddled over empty tea cups also became normal. No more house lines, especially when Gregory Goyle and Blaise Zabini showed up, carrying a dead Pansy Parkinson.

Her face showed the strain of torture, the centre of her eyes glowing green as Blaise held a whispered conference with Harry, Ron, and Draco. And in that moment, as Gregory silently wept while cradling Pansy’s body, the whole house saw the final change in Draco Malfoy. They saw the hatred that straightened his spine, and the grief he swallowed as his eyes lingered on Pansy’s broken body. Between the five boys, they buried Pansy, and with her, they buried the last of any lingering animosity.

Draco threw himself into planning and strategy after that, with a fierceness that was shocking to witness. Harry would later tell Hermione, while huddled under blankets in the middle of the night, that Voldemort had let his Death Eaters rape and torture Pansy as revenge for Draco killing Bellatrix. Pansy, his occasional girlfriend, but first and always, his childhood friend, had died screaming.

Blaise and Gregory had been forced to watch, witnesses to the brutality of Voldemort‘s revenge and Draco‘s punishment. Afterwards, they had been released from the bonds that had held them, and had been told to find the younger Malfoy. They had gathered Pansy’s broken body up and bought her to Draco, just as Voldemort had wanted. And as he buried her, Draco’s mind was set on winning the war and extracting revenge for the horrors his friends had been forced to endure. And that attitude, was something Voldemort hadn’t counted on.

Strategies that were planned by Draco and then carried out were short, sharp and violent. No more trying to disarm Death Eaters, he explained in a flat voice. You kill them before they kill you, especially if you are female. What good would you be, if the Death Eater got you on your back? It was cold and brutal, but his explanations made sense, especially after Cho Chang was raped, then left for dead.

She was found by Gregory Goyle, and when Cho fought against him trying to help her, he knocked her out the only way he knew how - he broke her jaw when his meaty fist collided with it, and for him, that was worse than anything else. It would take Cho kissing those meaty knuckles for him to forgive himself, a surprisingly gentle friendship springing up between them that would last the remainder of the war, and all the days after.

Two weeks later, when Cho started letting people into her room, Hermione crept down the corridor, with a burning need to help the girl in any way she could. A few steps from Cho's door, however, she heard a soft sob and the slow creak of bed springs. Gentle sounds of reassurance were murmured as the creaking stopped, only to start up a few minutes later when silence had fallen.

A soft feminine moan echoed one long moment later, and the deeper male groan that answered it sounded deafeningly loud in the quietness of the night as the creak of bed springs quickened slightly. Hermione blushed and stepped forward, only to have a hand cover her mouth and a familiar cool voice whisper in her ear as an arm banded tightly around her waist.

“Shhh…”

She was pulled away from the door slowly, and then let go. Spinning around, Hermione glared up at Draco angrily, and pointed towards Cho’s door for an explanation. He gestured for her to follow him, and once in the kitchen, under the harsh light there, he gave her a brutally honest one. Cho was learning that sex didn’t have to mean violence. That not all men would rape her. That she was still desirable, despite what had happened to her.

“Why aren’t you the one showing her then, if you think you know what she needs?” Hermione spat, and Draco raised an eyebrow.

“Because she doesn’t need a reminder of what had happened, Granger, she needs to be shown she can move past it,” he said coldly, and Hermione’s mouth snapped shut.

“What do you mean?” she asked a moment later, and Draco laughed bitterly.

“I look like my father, Granger.”

When Hermione’s eyebrows drew together, Draco snorted in disbelief.

“Blaise and I are as different looking as you can get. She won’t see her rapist when she looks up at him. She’ll see Blaise.”

Hermione paled as Draco looked away and crossed his arms, and she fought to think of a way to take back the animosity her voice had shown. But then his eyes snapped back to hers, and the anger in his voice made the animosity she had shown pale in comparison.

“You really are fucking innocent in the ways of the world, aren’t you?" he snarled. "Females are raped, Granger, or taken as spoils of war. Shared. The more unwilling, the more they are used. Tell me, what would you do?” he bit out, and Hermione took several steps backwards at the violence in his eyes.

“Do?” she whispered, and then bit back a scream when he moved towards her so quickly that she didn’t have time to avoid him.

His hand closed around her throat, and the table bit into her back when he turned her and shoved her backwards. She felt his feet kick at her ankles, kicking them apart and holding them there when he stepped between her feet. The pressure on her throat grew as he forced her back to bend over the table, and her head rapped painfully on the wooden surface when the two collided with an audible thud.

Even as she twisted, even as she raised her hands to punch out at him, he let her throat go, and caught both hands. Dragged them together and wrenched them above her head, one large hand holding both slender wrists easily as he loomed above her. A thin cry escaped her as he wrapped his free hand around a slender thigh, and jerked her hips upwards, her pelvis knocked by his in a crude gesture of strength.

Holding her down, pinning her in place, Draco lowered his head as he rested his groin so intimately against hers. She whimpered when the bones in her wrist's ground together under his grip, and turned her face away when he let go of her thigh and ghosted his hand down over her chest. When he finally spoke, it was coldly as her frightened breathing shuddered out in audible gasps.

“What do you do, Granger, when in this position? Hmm? What are you going to do? Nothing… there is nothing you can do. I’m bigger than you, stronger than you, and if I wanted to rape you, there would be nothing you could do to stop me. You could scream,” he continued with a twisted sneer of his mouth, “but who's going to hear you over the streams of magic, and the cursing, and the sounds of war?”

Hermione shook her head as she fought back tears, and Draco bit back an oath when he finally loosened his grip on her and stepped back. Straightening up slowly, Hermione watched as he ran an agitated hand through his hair, and stared up at the ceiling as if he could see into Cho‘s room.

“That’s what Cho learned, Granger. Now she’s learning something else, something that will give her strength, rather than leave her curled up and feeling like a victim. She’s learning that the hands touching her now don’t mean to bring her pain or humiliation. Only pleasure. That the body resting over hers isn’t there because of brute strength, but because he asked to be, and she agreed.”

Looking back at Hermione, Draco smiled bitterly.

“She is learning that not all who come from Slytherin mean her harm. And if she’s as smart as she’s meant to be, having been a Ravenclaw and all, she’ll learn that Blaise, although fighting with the rest of us, abhors violence more than anyone I know, especially when it comes to women. That he’ll want nothing in return, unless she asks for it.”

“He’s getting a free shag, isn’t he?” Hermione hissed, and Draco laughed bitterly.

“Blaise has known Cho for years, and the first time he shags her, she cries for the first half of it. You think he’s enjoying that, Granger? Fucking her while she cries?” he asked crudely.

Hermione caught on to only one part of his statement, and she lifted an eyebrow slightly.

“Years? Are you telling me he’s liked her that whole time, Malfoy?”

“Why not?” he asked smoothly. “She’s pretty enough. She’s not some simpering Hufflepuff, who is only interested in him for his looks and money.”

“Is that all that matters?” Hermione asked. “That’s she’s pretty enough?”

Draco snickered and looked at her pointedly.

“I keep forgetting that you’re a virgin under all the bluster and heat you have,” he said, and snickered again as she blushed furiously, and spluttered in indignation.

“To some, things like that matter. But at the end of the day, Granger, a shag's a shag when you’re horny enough. Chin up… maybe someone will take pity on you one day, and you’ll find out what all the fuss is about,” he said, as he turned to leave the room.

“Because I’m nothing but a Mudblood right?” she spat, and Draco paused where he was and looked back at her.

“I never said that,” he said quietly. “I was thinking more along the lines that if you pulled that stick out of your arse, a bloke might feel comfortable approaching you, without wondering if he was going to get splinters.”

He never smiled, smirked, nor sneered as he said it, and even after he’d left the room, Hermione was left feeling as though she’d entered the Twilight Zone. A place where Draco Malfoy had grown up and become a completely different person. Still cold, still an arsehole, still slightly crazy, but with layers that made him human. Stunned by it, Hermione could only sit there and stare off into the distance.

When Blaise came down the stairs an hour or so later, Hermione saw the strain on his face, and the fatigue in his eyes. Unable to talk about what she’d overheard, about what she knew had happened in Cho‘s room, Hermione simply made him a cup of tea and left him to brood as she went back to bed. And when she woke the following morning, she saw the three former Slytherins for what they were - young men, fighting a war that went against everything they had ever known.