TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of domestic abuse

A/N: Over a year, I am really sorry. I completely forgot about this story over the 2016 summer, and then this chapter took me 5 months to write. I just have little bursts of creativity. This chapter is all over the place, and pretty angsty. I don't really remember what I had in mind for the story as a whole, but I do intend to finish it.

Hermione
I had been so wrong. I didn't think that Voldemort would do something like that; I didn't think that Draco would do something like that. I really didn't think that I would feel like this if it did happen.
It had seemed so foolproof, us not letting the outside world into our little sanctuary. But everywhere he went he brought that contamination with him now. I had been avoiding him for a week, as well as I could. He hadn't tried to contact me yet, which I was thankful of. It was irksome that my best friends' favourite subject was the boy who had betrayed me and everything I stood for.
See, why did I think like that! Draco hadn't really betrayed me if it had never meant anything in the first place. Draco didn't feel the way I did about magical rights and magical equality. We had just been toys for each other to play with. I tried not to think about the guilt and hurt on his face when I had ripped his shirt off to look at his arm. Or About the times he looked like he might confess to something he was told is wrong.

A week later when leaving potions class, I was rudely bumped into and my books knocked from my arms. I shot my head up to make a snarky comment to the careless other person; my brown eyes immediately narrowed when they were met with grey ones. He looked more lifeless than usual and his drawl no longer had the same sharp bite.
"Watch where you're going, Granger."
I clenched my fist and knelt to pick up my books and roughly shove them into my satchel. Before Malfoy and his cronies could shove past Harry and Ron, a crumpled up piece of parchment dropped to the floor.
"What's going on here?" Professor Slughorn asked loudly. "Oh, Harry my boy," he said upon noticing my friend glaring daggers into the back of Malfoy's head.
"Oh, nothing Professor," Harry said, trying to sound nonchalant but still sounding a bit stiff. While the attention was off of me, I grabbed the crumpled parchment to stuff in my pocket. Probably just a bit of rubbish. As I was hastily putting it in my robe pocket I looked up and met Ron's gaze, and saw him narrow his eyes slightly at me.
"You will join us for dinner, won't you Harry? I would be delighted to have such a skilled student join me for dinner; you too Ms. Granger!"
"Of course, Professor. Thank you for the invitation." I replied quickly.
As soon as we left the dungeons, I made an excuse and dashed off to the girls' lavatory. My fingers trembled as I locked the stall door for privacy and groped for the crumpled bit of paper in my pocket. I wasn't sure what I wanted it to be: I knew that it would be simpler if it were just a bit of rubbish, but there was a part of me that was hopeful.
Room of Requirement, Friday 8pm. I'll be waiting. Draco

That was the night of Slughorn's supper, so Malfoy would have to be left waiting. I let out a shaky breath of relief and flushed the note down the toilet.

Draco
I checked my watch for what seemed like the hundredth time. This is what was so terrifying; what if she never came, what if this really was it? Out of insecurity, I let my fingers trail absentmindedly down my left forearm. I had tried to conceal it with a few charms and whatnot, but it simply burned and caused great pain while never fading. I had even looked in the library for information about marks like this but found nothing. I pressed hard on it, wincing from the pain of the blisters that had formed from trying to charm it into oblivion.
The room was a bit different this time, it was cozier and there were fewer shadows. The upholstery on the wing back chairs was much lighter in colour, as was the bedspread which displayed a floral motif. It felt young and hopeful, which was opposite of what I felt right now. Maybe this was to represent how Hermione made me feel or at least made me want to feel. It was so late; she obviously wasn't coming. I wasn't sure how I felt about this. I wanted to rip all the stuffing out of the chairs, but that would require an amount of energy that I wasn't sure if I possessed. It would be much easier to just sit down and cry to relieve my pain, anger, and stress. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to relieve the enormous weight I felt constantly pressing down on me.
When I returned to the Common Room, Blaise had only just put on his pajamas.
"Where have been?" He asked casually. I shrugged as I loosened my tie and unbuttoned my cuffs.
"Out for a walk, you?" I finally said.
"Slug Club; remember, that thing that you so wanted to be invited to."
"All the usual suspects," I said with a note of disinterest.
"Potter was absent as usual." Was all Blaise said in reply.

Potter and Weasley had left Hermione alone in the library, as they made their way to Quidditch practice. I presumed she noticed me as I pretended to browse books at a bookshelf near her.
"Enjoying your little Slug Club parties?" I asked quietly, not even sparing her a glance.
"He introduced us to Gwenog Jones." She finally replied, with a sigh. Blaise must have forgotten to mention that, or maybe I hadn't been listening well.
"I've never taken you for a Quidditch fan."
"Did you do it?" She asked sharply, turning to me.
"Do what?" I said smiling at her, even though she was dead serious.
"The necklace, Katie Belle," my smile vanished immediately, and I glanced around for eavesdroppers.
"She wasn't supposed to touch it; I didn't mean for that to happen." We shouldn't be discussing this, I thought, I wasn't supposed to tell her these things.
"I can't believe you even have the audacity to speak to me after what you've done." She said slamming her books shut and standing up abruptly. I panicked, I wasn't ready to be totally alone again.
"Please, I'm not evil." I said in a voice that was more pitiful sounding than I had intended. I turned my head to look at her, she had already slung her satchel over her shoulder and was ready to leave. She looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time in a while. She looked sad, that's what I was doing: making her sad.
"No you're not evil," she agreed "But you're a terrible coward." She turned and began to walk away.
"I don't blame you...for not liking me much," I said, my gaze dropping to the floor. "I don't like myself much, either."
Hermione stopped walking and put her hand to her head as though she had a headache. She walked back to the table she had been studying at and sat down in a defeated sort of way.
"What do you want from me? There is very little I'm able to give you."
"I don't want you to give anything you don't want to give. I just need someone who sees past my family name, connections...and expectations." I looked her right in the eye, this was one of the most painfully honest conversations we had ever had.
"Don't you have friends for that? I'm sure that Pansy would be more than willing."
"They are not like your friends; they don't see me for me. They see me as they want to; how I want them to."
"That's your problem, isn't it?" She said, leaning forward to put her elbows on her knees. She sounded so exhausted.
"Draco, what's going on right now is so serious, and has such a huge impact on me as a Muggle-born. I really don't have time for this." She made a gesture to indicate that she meant our conversation.
"There isn't much I can do or say about that, but I can say this: I feel different when I'm around you. I feel comfortable and at peace, I don't have to pretend and try to live up to anyone's expectations." Fuck it, I was gonna go for it, "But that's a lie as well; I do have to pretend around you." She looked at me with big eyes.
"What do you pretend?"
"I pretend that I don't care about you, or what might happen to you. I pretend that you don't mean anything and that you're of lesser value. I pretend that I think what I am doing is right, even though I know that I've simply chosen this path because it's the easiest."
"So what's your truth?" She asked standing up and facing me.

Hermione
It had been two weeks since Draco's near confession (which was interrupted by some third years setting off Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products in the library near them). I had dashed out in the confusion, leaving poor Draco standing there with unsaid words hanging from his lips. I had finally given in to Cormac's flirting, which seemed to be causing Ron a bit of displeasure. I couldn't worry about that; I had no interest in Ron and he was already technically in a relationship with Lavender Brown. Cormac was fine, albeit an extremely self-centred braggart. As it turned out, the way he acted Professor Slughorn's suppers was a pretty accurate description of his usual banter. I managed to only see Draco in class. He looked progressively worse every time, not much more than a walking corpse. One morning at breakfast I received a letter from my parents, and they told me a childhood friend of mine had died in September, but they had forgotten to mention it until now. I supposed that was understandable, Haily and I had not spoken in almost 5 years and soon after we fell out of friendship she and her mother had moved to Cornwall. I spent much of the day thinking about her until I finally sat down in the evening to write a letter.

Dear Draco,
I am writing you this because I don't really feel that I can tell anyone else about it.
When I was 9 I became friends with a girl named Haily who lived in my neighbourhood. She lived a couple houses down from my best friend Madeline. My parents and Madeline's parents always told us to be nice to Haily and to be her friend, because she had it rough at home. Surprisingly, Haily seemed to like us, and we felt that we were pretty lucky because she was the most popular girl in school: beautiful, blond, skinny, and her parents let her dress up as pop stars for hallowe'en. Unfortunately, Haily was a bully. She was always saying mean things to everyone, and whenever it was just the two of us together she would say nasty things about Madeline behind her back (I'm sure that when she and Madeline were together she said nasty stuff about me, too). We would try and tell our parents that we really didn't like Haily that much because she was so mean to all our other friends and because she was two-faced. And our parents would just say the same thing over and over again: Haily has it rough at home, so we have to be kind to her. Haily spoke of her home life often, and at the time it almost sounded like she was bragging about the fact that her dad was abusive to her mum. We didn't usually go over to her house to play, but the few times I went to her house (usually to pick up something she had forgotten at home) her mother was always lying on the couch smoking a cigarette, drunk with a bottle right next to her, and bruises on her face, arms and neck. I remember going over once while her dad was there and he stood at the door talking to one of the neighbours. The neighbour he was talking to was a good friend of my parents, and she had been my haircutter since I could remember (she also bred dogs when I was little). I remember standing there thinking that surely she must know what this man did to his wife? How could she stand there talking and laughing with him when his wife was just inside lying bruised and broken on the couch. Be nice to Haily; she has a rough home life. I'm pretty sure that everyone knew what was going on inside that house, but then why the hell did no one do a goddamn thing about it? Every time I think about it, it really fucking pisses me off that adults did nothing about this situation. It's like they were raising us to be lackadaisical about basic human rights and helping those in need. Haily and I got into a big argument a couple of months before I left to Hogwarts, and we never spoke again. After I returned from my first year, I found out that she had moved away with her mum after her parents had separated. Every time I see the woman who used to cut my hair when I was a child, I think about her standing on Haily's doorstep, chatting with a man who beat his wife. Haily stopped being my friend after I called her out for bullying a group of younger girls...I don't regret telling her off, but I do kind of regret that that's the last thing I will ever say to her. I wish she hadn't called Nora Baker fat, I wish she hadn't gone to that party, I really wish she hadn't gotten into that car.

I don't know why I told you all of this...I just had to tell someone.

H

I thought about crumpling it up and throwing it into the fireplace, but I knew that wouldn't calm my inner turmoil. I couldn't burden Harry with a small story from my childhood, and I didn't feel like it was something I could tell Ginny. Luna maybe, but somehow telling Draco seemed right. Of all the people I knew, he was the one person I wanted to know about this event in my life. That meant something serious, didn't it?

The next day during DADA, I dropped it in his school bag, and I absolutely know he saw me do it.