A/N: Infinite thanks for reading and reviewing! And after the end of this chapter, needless to say - I'm ready for the incoherent screaming in your reviews. *moonwalks out of the room*

Chapter 13

I can't think about my feelings for you.

Hermione woke up with a start. Her eyes blearily focused on the lone, milky slice of moonlight that had spilled across her ceiling from a gap in her curtains. She looked at the time. 3am. She turned over, trying to get comfortable.

A few minutes later, she threw her covers off and headed towards her door, passing the stack of books on her desk.

For the past few nights, she had borrowed Harry's invisibility cloak to sneak into the restricted section to search for books that had anything written about the Unbreakable Vow. Her search – although exhaustive - ended up fruitless and frustrating. The Unbreakable Vow was mentioned extensively throughout both old and new literature, but they all repeated the same facts: once enacted, there was no undoing it except for death. If Draco broke the vow - meaning if he failed to protect Hermione, and she died - he would die, too. There was no way around it.

Hours of research and pouring over ancient texts, and that was all they had to offer her. It was a rarity for her to be so disappointed by books, especially in such desperate times.

She crossed their common room, her feet bare against the lush carpet. She stood in front of his door for a solid minute, silently debating. All she could think about was what he had said to her that day, no matter how much she had tried to put it out of her mind. Oh how she had agonized over it – had obsessively rewound and replayed the reel of that moment in her mind, trying to find a way to tuck it in neatly with everything else she had discovered about him. That's why she had taken on the mantel of trying to find out more about the Unbreakable Vow. That if maybe she could give him an out, she wouldn't feel so conflicted. She hated feeling indebted to him, and hated knowing that their lives were so intrinsically linked to each other's – all because he had decided it was for her own good.

She knocked quietly. She listened for the faint rustle of the covers, or the dull pitter-patter of footsteps. Maybe he wouldn't answer. Maybe he would just let her stand here. She didn't put it beyond him. He was good at keeping people out like that.

It took a few moments, but the door opened. His silver-blond hair was unruly, and he looked tired. He didn't look like he'd had much sleep the last few days, either.

He looked at her, his eyes searching and serious. Then he wordlessly stepped back, letting her come in. She walked in, the room only dimly illuminated by the soft light of his wand on his side table. He closed the door behind her. Alone in the room with him, she felt his gaze on her back, burning.

"I tried to do some research," she said, her hands nervously clenching at her sides. "On the Unbreakable Vow. I tried to look for ways around it, to undo it. I hoped that maybe... since you made the bond with my father, and he'd passed, it would render it void."

Draco walked over to his window, his back to her. From his tall, lean frame she could see the tension locked in his shoulders, read it in his spine. "It doesn't work like that."

"I know. But I was hoping…" she trailed off, and cleared her throat. "As far as literature goes, there's no way out of an Unbreakable Vow except for death."

He scoffed. "Seems fitting, seeing as how the whole point of an Unbreakable Vow is so that it can't be broken." His voice was soaked with derision. He was mocking her, even now. Even after everything.

Hermione shook her head. Her voice was thin with frustration. "I'm only trying to help."

"You want to help me?" he said, turning around. "Stop being an idiot. Stop leaving Hogwarts to see your parents' graves. Keep yourself alive." He paused then, as if hesitating. He balled his hands into his fists, and even from where she stood, she could make out the map of bulging veins on his forearms. "And stay away from me."

Hermione felt her disappointment fill the room like a tidal wave. Even with knowing everything he had done to keep her safe, his persistent rejection of her felt like a fist slamming into her chest. It knocked the breath out of her, made her stagger back, and wonder if everything that had happened within the last month had just been a dream.

She watched him, unmoving, trying to read his face through the shadows.

"Was it all pretend?"

It surprised her how afraid she was of the answer, but how desperately she also needed to hear it.

"No." He didn't glance away from her, and she could tell from his eyes that he was telling the truth. The anger had been real. The cruelty had been his own doing. Everything he had ever said to her, he had dug up from himself - with help from no one else. "To play the part convincingly," he said, "some of it had to be real."

In the past week, she had managed to discover more truths about Draco. Snape had been training Draco in Occlumency, since the Dark Lord often used Legilimens as a tactic to make sure his followers were staying loyal and telling the truth. The nights she had found him in a dead faint in their common room had been the side effect of him trying to fight off such rigorous mental extraction.

She understood now, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

"You making that vow," she said angrily, "was beyond stupid and reckless. If only you'd truly hated me enough to never make it in the first place, we'd both be better off."

She rued the day he ever made that vow - the day her parents had allowed him to. How could he think so little of his own life? How could he think she would have wanted that? It was a burden she firmly believed no one should ever have to carry – especially for her.

He didn't say anything. Hermione waited a beat, and then two. All that greeted her was a full, aching silence. She figured perhaps that his wall had come back down. Visiting hours were over. Glaring at him, she turned to leave.

Then he spoke up.

"I knew what kind of life I would have if you weren't in it," he said. His voice was low, like a rumble that crept out from underneath the floor. "I saw glimpses of it. I had nightmares. It was all darkness and pain. You were the only thing keeping me from drowning - even when I had to be cruel to you. So I did it. Sometimes I did it so well I even believed it. I did hate you. I hated you because you lied, and because your blood made you a target. Nothing was simple anymore."

He took a shuddering breath. It clanged inside Hermione like a bell, jumbling up her insides.

She shook her head. She felt a violent dip in her chest that made her want to reach out and lean onto the door for support. "I wish you hadn't. Connecting your life to mine… It's foolish, and I wish you hadn't done it."

She could hear a faint smirk in his voice. "I knew you'd say that. Even your parents were horrified, at first. But they knew how bad it would get. They knew you needed protecting."

"I needed a friend," she insisted. "Not protection."

"You have plenty of friends," he said, sharply.

Her voice was soft, barely a materialized thought. She said it even before she thought it. "They're not you."

He was silent. She felt the distance between them lengthen. The wall had come back down again, the distant light fading out. This was as far as he would let her go, tonight. "You should go."

ooo

"Any news?" Harry asked, taking the seat next to her in the Great Hall. He was freshly showered and had a new bruise swelling underneath his eye. This didn't worry Hermione so much anymore - it actually shocked her more when they didn't end a session of Quidditch practice without some kind of bodily trauma. "Ron mentioned you saw some Aurors this morning."

Hermione nodded absentmindedly. She was finishing up her batch of the Prefect rotation charts. Her lines began to blotch, so she pressed harder to keep her hand from shaking. "They think they have a lead on who might've killed my parents."

"A lead?"

"Two disgruntled former employees," she said. "Gardeners from our manor. They'd been fired a few months before, and they also had some ties to some extremist pureblood group called Puritus Sanguinem. Both had a few assault charges under their belts."

The two detectives had shown her pictures of the men, whom she vaguely recognized, but not enough to be of any real help. The gardeners at the manor had always worn hats and dark coats.

"Do you think they could be right?"

"I don't know." More bodies had been discovered since her parents' deaths, all with the same messaging. Could it be possible the same two men had done those, too? Or was there a network of them responsible - that extremist group they were part of? And how could they have made it into Hogwarts?

When she looked up, Harry's face was serious and grim. "Blimey, Hermione. I'm sorry. I know this can't be easy. If you ever need anything—"

Draco's voice from that night flashed through her mind. You have plenty of friends. She put her quill down and attempted to smile through her gratefulness. And her guilt.

"Thanks, Harry," she said. "I know."

ooo

It was raining. It was the miserable kind of raining - where the drops were tiny but concentrated and relentless. The air was frigid and the clouds were thick and murky, blocking out much of the natural light. Due to the downpour, some of the Quidditch players were slipping off their brooms. Casting charms of any kind - even the kind that could save your life in bad weather - was forbidden in the Pitch, which explained why every rainy Quidditch game ended with a hospital wing full of injured players.

Hermione sat in the stands with Luna and Neville. She had cast a Keep Dry charm so that they wouldn't be pelted and the rain wouldn't obstruct their view too much. She watched the players huddle in mid-air, robes of green on one side and robes of red on the other, keeping her eye on Draco.

She'd done what he'd requested and kept her distance from him since that night in his room, but she continued to watch him closely. Although she knew more now than she had ever before, there was still so much she didn't know - so much that he refused to tell her.

He would leave his room late at night and wouldn't return until the early hours of morning. She knew this because she had cast a charm on his door that would notify her every time it closed and opened. Once she had even followed him to find out where it was he went and discovered that he went into the lower levels of the Slytherin dungeon for his Occlumency lessons with Snape.

She'd wanted to tell him about the leads the Aurors were pursuing regarding her parents, but aside from patrol, they were never alone. They spent patrol walking through the castle, and even though they found mostly only harmless students breaking curfew, even taking that opportunity to talk to him during that time felt too risky, in case someone were to overhear. There was a reason he insisted on keeping up appearances, and she was sure it was more than the fear of the Dark Lord seeing into his mind.

The game started and flashes of crimson and emerald blurred into view. She could hear Lee Jordan's excited commentary blare throughout the Pitch. The Snitch was almost impossible to see, catching barely any light as it whizzed by. Several players were swiped off their brooms, but managed to hang on long enough to re-mount with some help. The weather was merciless, and this seemed to only encourage the aggressiveness of the game.

Slytherin and Gryffindor were neck and neck. Everybody knew it would be a close game - it typically was. Their House rivalry was the most palpable, which seemed to translate into the brutality of their Quidditch matches. Hermione watched Draco, his platinum hair like a flash of lightning against the dark sky. He moved quickly and dodged all of the players trying to dismount him, his eyes narrowed and focused on hunting for the Snitch. He seemed to catch sight of it and flew upwards overhead, but then stayed there, swiveling his head around.

There was an uproar in the crowd as Ron was sandwiched by two Slytherins who derailed him and made him crash into the upper levels of the stands. Ron scrambled back up, wiping the blood trickling from his forehead, and determinedly got back on his broom.

The game was eventful and wild with energy. Just before the halftime mark, Hermione drew her eyes back to Draco. He was still a ways above, looking for the Snitch, but she noticed something... off about him. Suddenly, his eyes fluttered closed, and she could make out the sway of his body on his broom, before he heavily slumped forward. His grip released, and he slipped off of his broom, free falling into the ground below.

Hermione jumped to her feet and pointed her wand, blood roaring in her ears. She needed to be accurate if she wanted to catch him. "Tarda Motus," she yelled, just as a loud gasp erupted from the crowd at the sight of him quickly falling.

He stopped. It looked like his body had frozen in mid air, but the spell had just decelerated his fall so much that he fell about an inch every minute. This gave them enough time for one of the Mediwizards on standby to fly in and grab him to take him to the infirmary.

After Draco was off the Pitch, the horns blared again and the game continued.

"Odd," Luna commented airily. "Malfoy must be ill. Nobody else was up there with him."

Neville patted her on the shoulder. "Good catch, Hermione. Although I doubt anyone would have been all that upset if he'd happened to fall the whole way," he winked.

Hermione sat back down in her seat, wringing her hands.

"He's Head Boy," she muttered. "If anything were to incapacitate him, I'd have to do both our jobs for the rest of the year."

She stayed for the rest of the game but barely paid attention. Her thoughts were with Draco in the hospital wing, and whether she had done the right thing. Surely, in these packed stands, no one would have been able to make her out as the one who saved him?

Due to the absence of their Seeker, Gryffindor ended up winning the game by seventy points. Hermione followed Neville and Luna in heading to the Gryffindor common room - where she was sure some hearty celebrating would take place - unaware of Blaise Zabini's eyes trailing after her.

ooo

"I was wondering when you'd come."

He said this in his insufferably typical, bored drawl - the kind that always made her wonder how words actually made it out of his mouth.

Hermione hated visiting Draco in the hospital wing under any circumstance – but the feeling was especially heightened when the reason he'd been admitted was sports-related, specifically Quidditch. This didn't mean she stopped visiting, however. She'd always considered it - as a way of silently protesting his insistence in playing a dangerous game - but her loyalty to her friend usually won out.

Besides, she had a dark feeling about this year. Just this past summer she'd found out that she wasn't a true Blackwell, and was in fact, not very Pureblooded at all. She wanted to keep up all of her routines as long as she could. One day she knew she wouldn't be able to.

Hermione had brought her books with her, and the strap of her satchel was cutting into her shoulder. She let it drop to the floor as she sat, where it fell with a heavy thud.

"I had to wait until the must of sweaty Quidditch players had been aired out from the wing," she sighed, trying to make herself comfortable in the seat beside his bed. "How are you feeling?"

He had his leg propped up, a thick cast around it. There were rumors that his teammates had actually seen the bone protruding from his leg from it having been snapped in half. The thought alone made her queasy.

"Horrible. It's quite ghastly to realize that all that separates your bones from shattering into pieces on the ground is a thin layer of dermis and muscles." He glanced at her, before rolling his eyes. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't look so pleased with yourself."

"Every year, one hundred and thirteen people die from Quidditch-related accidents-"

"More people get struck by lightning."

She grabbed a book from her satchel. "That's actually very untrue."

"Get mauled by hippogriffs?"

"That's forty-two people annually."

He laid his head back, wincing. "Do you give Potter this kind of grief?" he grumbled.

"Yes. Although he doesn't get injured quite as often as you do."

"Oh, sod off."

"Honestly, Draco. Does flying around on a broom chasing after some golden object while dodging other players who are trying to maim you really that satisfying?"

Hermione had never understood the appeal of Quidditch. It annoyed her that the people closest to her happened to love playing it. Not only was it incredibly dangerous, it was energy spent worrying over them that she could just as easily be funneling into studying, instead.

Draco shook his head. "We can't have this argument every time I'm in the infirmary, Blackwell. Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's you. You're insane."

Hermione opened up her book. "If you insist on playing a useless, dangerous game, then I insist on nagging you about it."

Draco closed his eyes. She could tell from the firm line of his lips that he was trying not to smile. "You're insufferable."

"I know."

He was silent for a few moments. She listened to his deep, rhythmic breathing. She actually started to wonder if he had fallen asleep, until she saw his face twitch in pain.

"Why do you keep watching the matches if you hate it so much?" he asked.

"For House unity."

He snorted. "You could give two bollocks about House unity." He opened his eyes again, looking at her. Calmly. Curiously. His eyes were a light gray today, the color of silverware in sunlight. "Besides, that doesn't explain why you still watch my matches when they aren't with Gryffindor."

Hermione met his gaze, wondering what it was he wanted to hear from her. Draco loved to interrogate her about a lot of things, sure - but he'd never really gone so far as question her intentions about something as trivial as her attendance to his House's Quidditch games.

"Because if you died during a match, I'd want to witness it for myself," she said, haughtily. "So I could tell your ghost 'I told you so.'"

He raised one blond eyebrow at her. It struck her for a moment, how actually handsome he was, even lying in the infirmary with his foot in a cast. What was that about? She thought she'd grown immune to his good looks – and there were certainly times she was convinced that she was. But she also still had her moments where she couldn't deny how objectively attractive he was, in ways that sometimes caught her off guard. How unjust the universe was, to give a face like that to such a wicked boy.

"Oh? Not so you could be the first one to run out into the Pitch and weep over my broken body?"

She looked away, feeling herself flush. "It's not dignified to weep at a sporting event."

"Sob, then. Or how about wailing? I think I'd like it if you wailed. It's more dramatic."

"I don't think wailing is in my genetics, actually."

"Rubbish. The Blackwell family's been around for ages. Which means there's tragedy in your bloodline. Which means wailing is definitely in your genetics. You just need the right circumstance to unleash it, and my premature death would provide the perfect catalyst."

Hermione scoffed, but kept her eyes on the pages in her book. She was afraid that if she looked at him, she would betray herself, and he would realize just how wrong he was about her.

"Besides, you're missing the silver lining in all of this," he added.

"And what," she said dryly, "could that possibly be?"

"At least Quidditch players die a quick death. Bookworms die slowly from loneliness and lack of sunlight. I prefer the former."

Hermione looked up to see him grinning at her. "You're lucky I'm morally averse to hexing injured, infirmary patients," she muttered.

He laughed. Then he leaned his head back, staring up at the high ceilings of the infirmary. "You know, as morbid as it sounds - I actually do hope I die before you do, Blackwell."

She fixed her eyes on him. His perfect nose, his unfairly chiseled chin. Even his silver eyelashes. She spoke cautiously, certain that this was just the set up for another one of his jokes. "And why's that?"

He was quiet for a moment, thoughtful. She prepared herself for another teasing comment, another playful insult.

"There's this look you get," he explained, "when you want to punch me on the nose, but your fluffy little principles of anti-violence keep you from doing it, and your sheer internal conflict reads like a play across your face." His Adam's apple bobbed up and then down his throat. "I think I'd miss that."

Hermione fidgeted with the pages in her book, trying not to appear as flustered as she felt.

"Right," she said. "Well, luckily we're both perfectly healthy teenagers in a time of unprecedented peace. I've come with the list of your coursework for the next two days. Shall I read it off to you?"

ooo

Hermione spent a few hours with her Housemates before heading back up to their Heads quarters. She felt a little guilty knowing that part of why she had stayed so long was so that she could bide the time. If she hadn't, she would have just waited for Draco in their Heads common room for hours, repeatedly pacing the circumference of their shared area. She knew that going to visit him in the hospital wing was out of the question. She was even sure that when she did see him, he'd have a few choice words for her for having interfered in him falling to his death.

She had heard from a few of the players that he'd regained consciousness some time after the game had ended. If everything was okay - if it had just been another one of his fainting spells brought on by his nightly Occlumency lessons - he would be released tonight.

Hermione grabbed her books and parchment paper, setting herself up in their common area. She spent an hour attempting to work on her essay on the Transfigurational Purposes of Wolfsbane before she heard the sound of the portrait door swing open.

He was still in his Quidditch robes, but looked considerably dryer than he had been out in the Pitch. In the light she could see the faint blue of the bruising underneath his eyes.

"Draco," she said, getting to her feet as the portrait door closed behind him. He looked up at her, his jaw sharp and square, but kept walking towards his room. He unlocked his door and walked in, and Hermione boldly followed in after him.

She watched him angrily throw his broom, gloves, and his robes on the floor, cursing under his breath.

"You shouldn't have done that," he hissed, turning around to face her.

"And what? Let you free fall seven stories?"

"As a matter of fact," he snapped. "Yes."

"It's highly unlikely that anyone even saw me—"

"Everyone knows it was you. Who else would have such a quick draw and know the deceleration spell off the top of their head?"

"In case you've forgotten, between the two of us, you're the one who happens to think so dismissively about your own life, not me."

Glaring at her, he picked up his gloves and walked over to his closet, throwing them inside. "Would it kill you to care a little less?"

She shook her head. "Snape should cut down on your lessons - doesn't he know what it's doing to you? You've fainted three times now. Lucky the first two times didn't happen while you were in mid-air!"

Draco stepped in close to her - so close her breath was sucked back into her lungs. She could practically feel the heat boiling from his body. "Don't," he said lowly, "talk about that."

She tilted her face up to him defiantly. "Then what, pray tell, am I allowed to talk about?"

His voice bounded off the walls in his room. "Nothing, actually," he bellowed, "but that's never stopped you before, has it, Blackwell?"

Hermione stared at him, her heart racing in her chest. The room had gotten feverish for her, and she could hear the rain pelting his window.

He forced out a breath, shakily dragging one hand through his hair.

"Can't you, for once in your life," he ground through his teeth, "make this easy?"

"It's Hermione," she said, not taking her eyes away from him. "And no. I can't, and I won't."

The gray in his eyes went flat, and dull. "Then you'll kill us both."

"Yes, that's right - thanks to you." Her hands started to tremble with anger. "Am I supposed to be grateful, Draco? Am I supposed to feel guilty every time you lord that over me? Well I don't. I don't feel any of that. I had no part in you making that decision. You did that all on your own, knowing full well—"

"Knowing full well what?" he snarled at her. "That you'd fight it every inch of the way? That you'd do so with such gusto so that I would come to bloody regret ever—"

"So you regret it then," she said, cutting him off.

He didn't step away from her, not bowing down from her challenge. The nerves in her body hummed from his closeness. They hadn't been this physically close to each other for this long in… ages, and every atom inside her shouted so.

"What is it do you really want to hear, Hermione?"

"That you're sorry – for everything. For leaving me, for doing everything possible to make me hate you, for letting me think these past two years that you stopped caring." Hot tears stung her eyes. For each word she said, she wanted to beat her hands against his chest. She wanted to see him sorry. She needed to see something real from him, for once. "For pushing me away. For not letting me help you."

He took in a sharp breath through his nostrils. In the palpable energy roaring all around them, she almost thought he was actually inching closer to her.

"If I did tell you those things," he murmured to her, "they would all be a lie."

In an instant, Hermione's hand rose, as if to strike him – but he caught her wrist squarely in his palm. Firmly, tightly. He pressed his thumb into her pulse point.

"You've told me a million lies thus far," she bit out. "What difference does it make to tell one more?"

She tried to pull her wrist back, but he held onto it, pressing it into the hard planes of his chest. She recognized what he was trying to do. He was going to scare her into regretting she'd ever followed him in here in the first place. She wouldn't let him. She would stand here for as long as he did. She wouldn't flinch.

"Don't you want to know why I'm not sorry?"

"Because you're a monster," she replied coldly.

"Maybe," he said. "But you don't really believe that. You couldn't care about a monster, let alone save him from falling to his death." His eyes, dark and churning, searched hers. His hot breath grazed the length of her cheek, making goose bumps appear on her arms. "If you really wanted to be free of me, Blackwell, you should have just let me fall."

She felt a sudden, painful ache in her heart. She knew him well enough that he wouldn't have minded one bit if he had hit the ground below. Maybe Hermione was wrong. Maybe that could have been his out from the Unbreakable Vow after all. Maybe all she should have done was to sit there and let it happen.

Oh, if only. If only she had the ability to just sit there and let him die.

A blond tendril had come out of place, grazing his brow. Hermione hesitantly reached up with her other hand and, carefully watching his expression, slowly tucked it back. To her surprise, Draco didn't pull away. Instead his eyes fluttered closed, and he winced slightly when her fingers gently touched him. How long had it been since he'd been touched by someone who cared about him, she wondered. How long had it been that he'd been so alone?

She swallowed hard, her heart thrashing in her chest. She knew she shouldn't be doing this. Her own body was preparing for the moment where he would inevitably jerk away and she'd have to recoil. But she kept her hands on his face, her fingers barely pressing down in a featherweight touch. He had the face of a man now. He was all smoothness and sharp, even lines, perfect and achingly so. He'd changed so much, and yet so little at the same time. She couldn't remember if she'd ever even seen him smile during the last two years, although that privilege would have probably been kept from her anyway.

She pressed her palm against his cheek, and she felt him let out a soft breath. She was terrified, but she couldn't bring herself to stop. You were real once, a voice in her head insisted. The pad of her thumb lingered dangerously close to his bottom lip, and she stared at his mouth. How familiar she had grown with the cruelty of this mouth – spitting, sneering, smirking. Subconsciously, she wet her own lips.

She could feel her pulse reaching all the way down to the soles of her feet now, pounding against the floor. Thump. Thump. Thump.

When her gaze flickered back up from his lips, his eyes were open and staring down intensely at her. They seemed almost black – unreadable. This almost made her pull away, except – she didn't let herself. She told herself that was what he wanted – what he expected of her. To pull away. To get scared enough to leave. No, she wouldn't do that. She would get close. She would get close, even if it ended up hurting her.

Don't pull away.

He released his grip on her wrist, but she didn't move.

Don't pull away.

A memory of him began to play in her mind, from years ago. It was from the last time she had visited him in the hospital wing. Looking up at the ceiling, seeming eerily serene for someone whose leg had just snapped in half.

"There's this look you get when you want to punch me on the nose, but your fluffy little principles of anti-violence keep you from doing it, and your sheer internal conflict reads like a play across your face." A ghost of a smile crept across his lips. How she'd wanted to possess it somehow, keep it all for herself. "I think I'd miss that."

Don't pull away.

In one quick motion, she felt his fingers dig through her hair to cradle the back of her head while he pushed his lips against hers. She gasped against his blistering mouth – sparks of raw longing from the edges of his teeth against her bottom lip to the feel of his tongue against her own.

Don't pull away.

His arm snaked around her waist, lifting her up, bringing her impossibly close to him. Hermione shut her eyes tightly, kissing him back. She didn't realize she was crying until she tasted her own tears in his mouth, a haunting mix of bitter and salt and sweet. It was a violent kiss, one that was heavy with pain and longing, but it was also tender and full of relief, brimming with answers and hope, and she felt it sweep through her body like a supernatural force that left her bones trembling.

She kept kissing him with her eyes closed, fearful that the moment she opened them, she would wake up to find out that this was all a dream, and that she would have to face the truth alone – that she loved him more than she had ever wanted to admit to herself, and that it had sat quietly in her heart, hibernating, until this very moment.

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