Ginny stared at her, disappointed resignation written across her face. “You could do so much better than him, Hermione.”
Hermione scoffed, her stomach twisting. “I don’t really care what you think. He saved your life. I would never have been able to save you on my own.”
The boy who got boxes of sweets and had a spot bought for him on a quidditch team, who cried and whined over a scratched arm, was gone. Everything soft and indolent and pampered about him was carved away by the war.
“However, if the Order has decided you’re an affordable casualty and sends you out to be mowed down as battle fodder, I will not be noble. I have no compunction against exacting dual revenge. I will make Potter pay if he gets you killed.”
“Draco and I go hand-in-hand. I made him who he is. I knew what his runes meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator. What did you think was the source of all his rage?”
There was so much about Draco Malfoy that she did not know or understand. When she looked at him, she could only wonder whether he was the type of person who destroyed the things he loved.
“So, you really have forgotten everything,” he said as he appraised her. “What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours? You lost the war.”
Draco stares at her, a mixture of shock and raged sweeping across his face. “You didn’t save me,” he said when he finally seemed capable of speaking at all. “You just put us in hell for two years.”
“You’re mine. Mine. You swore it. Your fucking Order sold you to me to buy themselves time. If anyone tries to put you in a cell to make themselves heroic, I will kill them.”
“Draco and I go hand-in-hand. I made him who he is. I knew what his runes meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator. What did you think was the source of all his rage?”
She ran a hand along his jaw and into his hair. As her palm grazed along his cheekbone he pressed his face against it for a moment.
He was so starved for touch.
For him, acknowledging that he would have a child meant acknowledging that he wouldn’t meet it.
He was telling her stories so she could tell his daughter about what he’d been like before school, before the war.
He was making arrangements.
Hermione’s throat tightened. “We’re—we’re in my room. I think you must have apparated and passed out just outside my door.”
His expression twisted. His pupils were blown wide. He shook his head, and a low groan escaped him. “I didn’t mean to come here.”