The Greatest Mistake Chapter 1: We Go One More Round, a harry potter fanfic

"I Can't Stay Away" by the Veronicas

This is wrong / I should be gone / Yet here we lay / 'Cause I can't stay away

Roses bloom / In your dirty room / I come to play / 'Cause I can't stay away / No, I can't stay away-ay

I'm conflicted / I inhale / now I'm addicted / To this place / To you, babe / I can't stay away / Can't stay away
We get up, we go down / Then we go one more round / It's wrong, they say / I can't stay a- I can't stay away
No, I can't stay a- I can't stay away

I was numb / For you I come / Night and day / And I can't stay away / No, I can't stay away

I'm conflicted / I inhale / now I'm addicted / To this place / To you, babe / I can't stay away / Can't stay away
We get up, we go down / Then we go one more round / It's wrong, they say / I can't stay a- I can't stay away
No, I can't stay a- I can't stay away

I wish I could / Leave and never return / Baby, I know I should / But for you I'd burn

Stay away / 'Cause I can't stay away-ay

I can't stay away / I can't stay away / I can't stay away / I can't stay away

Hermione stood anxiously in her bedroom, trying to decide what she was going to take with her to the Burrow this summer. Usually she didn't spend much time, but this time was the last. Whatever she took with her tomorrow was what she had until the end of the war. She startled when she heard someone downstairs. Her parents were out to dinner. She was only home because she was packing her things. She'd convinced her parents to change the locks, so the only way someone else could get in would be to-

She shook her head frustratedly and stormed out of her room and down the staircase, greeted by the silver-blond hair she had expected.

"In case you hadn't noticed, this is the Muggle world," she jeered sarcastically. "You can't just pop into people's houses here."

Draco sneered.

"Are you trying to tell me this is a regular Muggle house? There's a Daily Prophet lying on the coffee table."

"You're lucky I didn't attack you instead! Now what on earth are you doing here?"

"I needed to ask you something," he said flatly.

"And it couldn't wait?"

"Wait until when? I'm not so naive as to think that the Weasleys would let me in!"

"All right then. What is it?"

"Why weren't you angry?"

Hermione's heart jumped. Her left hand moved instinctively to rest on her right forearm, clenching the fabric of her sweater against her skin.

I knew I should have erased his memory...

"Wh-why does it matter?" she stuttered.

"We're at war, Hermione. Do you think we're both making it through this?"

"What do you want to know? What I would have done?"

"Why don't you hate me after what they did? I was there! I helped them!" Draco exclaimed. It took him a moment to catch his breath, and then he reached forward and grabbed her left wrist, pulling it away from her right arm and shoving the sweater sleeve up to her elbow to reveal the crimson word on her forearm: mudblood. He cringed inwardly, but was skilled at concealing his feelings, so he lost no composure, and spoke clearly and flatly.

"I don't understand how you can forgive me for this."

"I don't forgive you. I don't need to. It wouldn't do me any good."

Having expected Hermione to be less adamant, Draco was slightly shaken. Hermione picked up on his hesitation, and lowered her voice even further.

"We're at war, Draco. Do you think we're both making it through this?" she quoted harshly, pulling out of his reach. Draco rolled his eyes.

"I am a lot of things, Draco, but first and foremost, I am leading the Order of the Phoenix into war," Hermione asserted, looking him square in the eye as she spoke.

"My chief duties are to protect Harry Potter and to disable the Death Eaters. I'm not on the frontline, Draco. I am the frontline in this war. Everything else comes after."

"I have one more question," Draco said tentatively.

"Yes?"

"If it comes down to you and I-"

"No special treatment. This," she gestured towards the few inches between them, "never happened."

"Perfect. We're on the same page, then."

Just as Draco turned towards the door, the Malfoys' eagle owl landed on the back of one of the chairs in the Grangers' living room. Draco cautiously grabbed the slip of paper out of its beak and read it aloud.

"Dearest Draco, we've had a search out for you almost a week now. I went to Diagon Alley today to ask around again. No one had seen you, except for a couple people in the Leaky Cauldron, and I think they were drunk, since they told me you had gone into the Muggle world. An auror has been sent in Muggle London to look for you nonetheless. Please, come home, Draco. I don't know why you left so suddenly but we need you here, darling. Love always, Mum."

Draco sighed, sinking into the chair with his hands cradling his head.

"Fuck," he groaned.

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"You don't honestly think they're going to find you here?"

"You don't live that far from the Leaky Cauldron, you know," he said defensively. "Not in terms of people who spend their lives running around the world searching for people and investigating murders. I think they've got a bloody good chance."

"You won't be coming back, then?"

"What, are you trying to get rid of me?" Draco retorted, displeased at how poorly he knew he had disguised his offence. As well as he was able to fool most people, Hermione could read him like a book. There was nothing else that bruised his ego as much as the endless list of ways that Hermione Granger had shown him up or proved him wrong.

"I'm trying to protect my family," she scoffed.

"No, I won't be coming back here. I'm not an idiot, Granger," Draco sneered, purposely ignoring her answer. He stood up from the chair, folding the letter and sliding it into the pocket on the inside of his suit jacket. Hermione stood up straighter.

"One last hurrah before we forget it all?" Draco asked, cocking his head and looking at her expectantly. She resisted the urge to laugh, but almost habitually began to undo the buttons on her sweater. They didn't need to speak any more. After nearly seven months of sleeping together, they knew each other's body language and facial expressions like the backs of their own hands.

Draco unbuttoned the last couple buttons of Hermione's sweater, then carefully took off his jacket and laid it on the back of a chair. For a moment he watched as she dropped her skirt to the floor, and then he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and began to kiss her passionately, his lips travelling down her body as they became increasingly engrossed in one another.

After about twenty-five minutes of increasingly impassioned snogging, Hermione jerked Draco up the stairs and into her bedroom, quickly leaving a note for her parents saying that she'd turned in early in anticipation of her coming departure. She knew that they wouldn't come in to her room to check. They, like everyone else, assumed that she was the most responsible, honest teenager they'd ever meet. That was the only catch with Malfoy: he knew how far from the truth that sometimes was. The bra and panties on the floor, lying next to his fancy dress pants which he almost never bothered to fold, were testament enough to the less innocent side of her.

Draco woke with a start and then noticed that the time on Hermione's clock was nearly eight in the morning. He crawled out of the bed, and sighed as he slipped his jacket on.

"Remember: you were scouting for Potter," he whispered to himself. He took one last look at the woman peacefully sleeping in the dim bedroom, subconsciously biting his lower lip, then turned away and gingerly shut her bedroom door. He couldn't shake the thought that the previous night was really the last time they would sleep together; he just couldn't make the idea seem realistic. Knowing better than to open the door back up, he walked down the stairs, slowly and contemplatively. The stationary photographs were somewhat fascinating; he wondered how muggles would decide which piece of the moment to photograph.

Maybe they don't really think about it...maybe they just take the photograph and see what they get instead of trying to plan it perfectly...

As he reached the bottom step, his interest was piqued by a photograph of the Granger family, and he walked over to look at it. It had obviously been taken before Hermione had gone to Hogwarts, but even in her former school uniform she looked almost the same as she had when he met her, so he supposed that she was likely ten, nine at the youngest. Her hair didn't seem as bushy or as juvenile as he remembered it being, though, especially when juxtaposed against a snug dark green sweater. Realising that the skirt was black and the insignia was all in silver, he almost laughed, but stopped himself with the recollection that her parents were home as well, and them learning that he was here could only end badly. He was struck by how proud of her they looked in the photograph, with their beaming smiles and matching scarves.

For a moment Draco felt a pang of sadness, knowing that she had spent very little time with her parents since she started attending Hogwarts and that now she may never see them again. He hadn't asked specifically, but he knew Hermione was going to erase their memories; that way, if the Death Eaters were to capture them, they would not have anything of value to tell. He briefly regretted poking fun at the Weasleys' unofficial adoptions of Hermione and Harry; he would have always argued that the two had families of their own, but especially now that they were adults - and at war - their magic separated them that much more from the muggles in their lives. He was quickly able to shrug it off when he heard a door close.

Hermione was shaken from her dream by the sound of footsteps on her stairs. Seconds after she awoke she realised that she was alone in her bed - except for a thin green and silver tie lying next to her pillow. She let out a light laugh, then grabbed the tie and stroked the silk for a moment as she sat up. After a minute she noticed that there seemed to be something tucked inside of it. She pulled her wand from the nightstand and very carefully opened the tie down its seam and found a minuscule bottle. Its worn label said 'P-BELL.' Hermione wasn't sure what it meant but decided that it would probably benefit her to keep it. She slid the bottle into the drawer of the nightstand and slipped into a short lingerie dress and ballet flats, sliding the tie into the pocket in the dress. She opened the door gently, but cringed when the door's closing was louder than she had planned.

"Draco?" she called quietly as she walked down the staircase. She saw him only once she had walked about halfway down, standing in the living room with an inquisitive and secretive gleam in his eyes.

"I ought to be leaving, you know," he said, trying to sound matter-of-factly and superior as he advanced towards the front door, stopping directly in front of it to silently open the lock. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hermione rolling hers.

"I know," she replied in the same tone, stepping off of the bottom stair.

"Okay, then."

Draco haughtily stepped onto the porch, barely allowing Hermione the time to follow him. She moved so that she was standing in front of him and reached into the pocket on her dress. She slung the Slytherin tie around his neck and started to tie it.

"You never fail to forget this, you know," she scolded mildly as she tightened it.

"I'm always wearing it, so when I get dressed I assume that I'm wearing it," he conceded. She laughed, and Draco used the second that their eyes met to lean forward and kiss her lightly. Hermione was reluctant at first, knowing that they were minutes away from needing to return to despising one another, but ultimately decided to let the kiss grow rougher as they advanced. Draco rested his hands on her hips, wrapping his left arm around her further and pulling her entirely into him, so that every part of their bodies which were able to were pressing against each other.

Neither of them knew how long their embrace lasted; it ended only when they both realised that they were moments away from starting to undress each other again and absolutely had to stop themselves from going any further. Hermione moved back towards the door and Draco turned to the street, both out of the same desperation to distance themselves from their history. They spent a few minutes reminding themselves that they hated each other, and once they both had caught their breaths they turned back to look at each other coldly and spitefully.

"Granger," Draco said bitterly.

"Malfoy," Hermione returned, breathing more deeply and standing taller. Draco scoffed.

"This is war, Malfoy," she continued, all the sympathy and lust drained from her expression, and her voice hit clearly, directly, and caustically.

"I don't need to be told twice," Draco spat pridefully, pivoted around, and strutted the regretfully familiar path to the Leaky Cauldron.