Atonement

4. Four



“I think I am going to bring you home,” she said.



Draco nearly fainted from shock.



It\'s been five months. She still hadn\'t touched him. Yet he still persevered in the voluntary ignominy of spending several evenings a week, naked and kneeling in her presence, doing her filing and sorting. He got used to it, to the point that when she went on vacation, he found that he missed being with her.



“Really?” he whispered, without lifting his head.



“Yes, really.” There was laughter in her voice.



“What about... your husband?” Draco asked awkwardly.



“What about him? You are married yourself, aren\'t you?”



“That\'s... different,” Draco said uncertainly.



“So I take it Daphne is still fucking Zabini,” Hermione murmured.



Draco swore under his breath. Did the entire wizarding world know?



“Ron and I have an open relationship,” Hermione said coolly. “We have no secrets from each other.”



“He knows about this then?” Draco asked.



“Of course he does,” Hermione said with satisfaction. “I\'ve shown him a Pensieve or two of you doing just what you are doing right now. He found it very amusing.”



“I bet he did,” Draco spat bitterly as the word betrayal flashed through his mind. He was shocked at how much it hurt.



“Degradation is quite different when it\'s not a private matter, isn\'t it?” Hermione challenged him. He bit his lip, and gave no response. “You really don\'t need to be doing any of this, you know. You could get up, get dressed, walk away, and never come back.”



His heartbeat racing wildly, he shook his head. “No.”



“Suit yourself,” Hermione said. “This Saturday, seven in the evening. My place.”



Draco glanced at her, as she jotted down the address on a small piece of parchment and handed it to him. He received it from her and held it in his palm reverently, a stupid involuntary grin appeared on his face.



She stared at him with the kind of unkind amusement he\'d become accustomed to.



“Get dressed,” she said. “Get out.”



“Fine.”



When he left, the tiny piece of parchment was still in his hand. He brought it to his lips and kissed it, soaking in the faintest trace of Hermione\'s scent still lingering on it.

---

At seven in the evening on Saturday, Draco rang Hermione\'s doorbell. He heard loud, confident footsteps and a few moments later, Ron opened the door. For a few seconds, they stared at each other mutely, while Draco was desperately searching his brain for something to say. Nothing was coming to mind. Just what the hell did one say in a situation like this?



Ron continued to stare at Draco in absolute silence, and finally raised an eyebrow as if to invite some sort of statement from Draco.



“Hey, Weasley,” Draco said finally with a small smirk, “I\'m here to fuck your wife.”



The moment the words left his lips, he realized that this was definitely not the socially acceptable ice-breaker he\'d been inwardly striving for. He issued a resigned sigh and wondered privately whether Weasley was going to hex him, or punch him. To his surprise, and relief, Ron chuckled amicably.



“You should be so lucky, Malfoy,” Ron said. “Judging from what I\'ve seen so far, I don\'t think you will be the one doing the fucking.”



Draco grunted quietly.



“Come in,” Ron said, and Draco followed him into the kitchen. “Sit,” Ron said, pointing to a chair by the kitchen table, and Draco sat obediently, like a dog, he thought with loathing.



For a few seconds, Ron studied Draco\'s face intently. “You having fun with Hermione?” he asked.



Draco swallowed hard. “Not exactly,” he whispered.



“Oh,” Ron said with a smirk. “You are one of those then.”



“Hmm?” Draco gave Ron a wary look. “One of who?”



“Perverts who are too ashamed to admit they enjoy humiliation, and come up with complicated, overwrought excuses to play their kinky games and get off.”



“I\'m not getting off on any of this!” Draco spat bitterly.



Ron\'s smirk grew even more infuriating. “Oh, and I suppose you are wanking to the image of your lovely wife every night.”



Draco felt heat rush to his face, but he held his temper in check, for the most part.



“I don\'t care what you think, Weasley,” he said almost calmly.



“You should care,” Ron said, resting his hand on Draco\'s shoulder. Ron\'s fingers dug into Draco\'s flesh in a way that was threatening to become painful any moment. “You see, at the end of the day, I\'ve got her back, and she knows it. Should you ever hurt her... again.... I doubt they will ever find your body. And if they do, I am certain they won\'t be able to identify it. Are we quite clear on this?”



Draco sighed deeply. “I would never hurt her again,” he softly said. Ron\'s grip on his shoulder lessened slightly and became an almost reassuring squeeze.



“In that case, you just might survive this arrangement,” Ron said, suddenly sounding a little older and wiser than his age. “See you around, Malfoy.” He picked up what looked like a bag of Quidditch gear off the floor and headed towards the door.

---

Hermione came downstairs a few minutes later. By the time she entered the kitchen, Draco had managed to calm himself down after the weird conversation with Weasley. He lifted his eyes and looked at her expectantly.



“Hi,” he said quietly. Her lips twitched slightly, and for a moment he thought she was going to say something normal to him. Something like hello.



“Strip,” she said instead.



“Yes, Ma\'am,” he said with a cheeky smile, and proceeded to peel off his clothing.



“Not on the floor,” she warned him. “Fold it and place it on the chair.”



He nodded quietly, and did as told, forming a neat pile of his clothing on the kitchen chair.



“Give me your wand.”



He swallowed hard, and stared at her with a mixture of disbelief and dread.



“What?” she challenged him. “Scared?”



“A little,” he said quietly. “You won\'t hex me, will you?”



“Maybe I will, maybe I won\'t, but if you don\'t give me your wand now, I\'ll definitely throw you out of the house,” she said with a slightly bored expression.



“Fuck you,” he whispered, pulling out his wand from the pile of clothing. His heart was thundering when he handed the wand to her. His mind screamed in protest at this kind of surrender, but... his brain and his body had parted ways five months ago. Whatever she wanted from him, she would get, it was as simple as that. There was nothing he could deny her at this point.



She tucked his wand away. “Trusting little thing, aren\'t you?”



He gave her another cheeky grin. “Well, I figure I must have done something right, to earn the privilege of placing my clothing on the chair,” he said lightheartedly.



“Not really,” Hermione told him. “I want the floor clear of clutter and junk. You\'ll be scrubbing it today, the Muggle way, no magic.”



“Oh,” Draco muttered. \'”Well... that really sucks.”



To his surprise and delight, Hermione\'s lips twitched into a smile that lacked some of the former hostility.



“Doesn\'t it just.”



She opened the kitchen cabinet under the sink and pulled out a small bucket, and a set of brushes and sponges, along with a few spray bottles. Draco stared at the Muggle artifacts blankly.



“Try not to spray that stuff in the eye,” Hermione warned him. “It\'ll hurt like hell, and I don\'t feel like casting healing spells tonight.”



“Huh. All right then,” Draco muttered, still staring at the items in his hands. The bucket, the rags, the brushes, the sponges... everything was brand-new. She must have just bought all of it, Draco thought bitterly. Just for him. Just to make sure he got a taste of doing things the inferior, Muggle way. He sighed and filled up the bucket with water, and cast a tiny pleading look at Hermione. She was ignoring him, and he set out to the task before him.



Scrubbing the tiles manually turned out to be a great deal more exhausting that he could have ever imagined. No wonder the Muggles were so... well... unpleasant, he thought absently. What else could you expect from a species who spent their lives doing something like this?



And then he kicked himself, because he was quite certain that that\'s not what she was intending to teach him with this little lesson. Fuck, he thought tiredly. He was definitely losing it. He was really beginning to view this as some sort of rehabilitation program.



Hermione made tea, and poured herself a mug, moving around him, as if he was an inconvenient object in her way.



“You know, I\'m surprised,” Draco mused quietly, as he was scrubbing the tiles of the floor. “You and Ron.”



He tensed slightly, expecting a stinging hex to his naked buttocks, or a swat. But nothing like that happened.



“Oh?” Hermione murmured, sipping her tea. “What\'s so surprising? That I am not running behind his back, like you are running behind Daphne\'s?”



“Not that,” Draco said quickly. “That part I get. I mean, I was surprised you told him, but in retrospect I shouldn\'t have been. I know you care for each other, and wouldn\'t be lying to each other... but the whole open relationship thing, it just.. doesn\'t seem like you.”



He tensed slightly, expecting a stinging hex, or at the very least a swat to his naked buttocks. Instead, Hermione simply murmured, “didn\'t seem like us? How so?”



He struggled, trying to find a good way of saying this, expressing his incredulity without offending her.



“It just seems... un-Gryffindor, you know,” he said softly. “You all always seemed so ... wholesome. Innocent, even.”



She chuckled softly. “Did we? We were teenagers, fighting a war. Whatever innocence we had at one point was long gone by the time it was all over.”



“I suppose,” Draco agreed, his attention focused on a particularly stubborn stain. “So what happened? I mean... I thought you were fighting for things like... er... I don\'t know. Nuclear family, loyalty, true love.”



“Were, and would again, if we had to,” she said a little sadly.



“But this?” Draco pressed, certain that he was pushing his luck by badgering her. “This is a little ... er, eccentric, don\'t you think?”



“A little,” she mused, appearing to be deep in thought.



“What happened?” he asked, setting the brush aside, and staring up at her.



She studied the tea in her mug. “Good question,” she said absently, as if talking to herself. “I suppose, once everything was over and done with, we realized that some of the old values no longer mattered. Once the war was over, and the dust settled down, all we cared about was being happy, and doing whatever we wanted to do. I suppose we felt we\'ve earned the right to be ... eccentric.” She said all of that with a slight surprise, as if she had never taken the time to think about it until now.



His work complete, he put the cleaning supplies aside, and crawled to her, stopping a couple of feet away. There she was, looking so... normal and ordinary, just sitting down, holding her tea mug in her right hand. She was a picture of warmth and home... and yet, to him, she was still as unattainable as ever.



“You\'ve earned it,” Draco said sincerely. “The right to be ... eccentric, that is.”



She moved quickly as a lightning, striking him across the face with the back of her left hand. He hissed quietly from the blow, tasting blood in his mouth – the stone on her engagement ring had split his lip.



“Your opinion was not solicited,” she said coldly. “When I require your approval, I\'ll let you know.”



Absently, he touched the torn cut on his lip with his tongue.



“Of course,” Draco whispered, trying to get a grip on his runaway emotions. “Look, I\'m sorry...”



She stared at him without blinking.



“Get dressed,” she said. “Get out.”



When he left her home, he walked for a long time before Apparating back to Greengrass Hall.



He considered casting a healing spell on himself, but... he couldn\'t bring himself to do that. His legs felt weak, as if they were about to give under the weight of what had happened today, and yet his heart thrilled at the simple realization,



She touched him.



TBC...