Draco woke hours later, his body heavy with exhaustion but his mind clearer than it had been in days. His gaze fell to the floor, and something inside him twisted at the sight of her. Hermione was curled uncomfortably on the carpet, her wild hair fanned around her face, her features marked by tension even in sleep. He reached out before he could stop himself, his hand trembling as he brushed his thumb across her cheek.
She startled awake at his touch, her eyes snapping open with alarm.
"Darling…" His voice came out hoarse, more breath than sound.
Her concern was immediate and cutting through the fog of sleep. She scrambled to her knees, leaning toward him as if she could hold him together with her presence alone. "Are you all right? Do you feel anything strange? Are you better?"
"Give me your gorgeous hands," he murmured, reaching out.
She hesitated, but only for a moment, then placed her hands in his. He drew her up from the floor and pulled her close, guiding her to sit at the edge of the bed. With a flick of his wand, the damp sheets vanished and fresh ones appeared in their place. Another spell left his body clean, the clammy sweat gone, and for the first time he felt almost human again.
She stayed perched there beside him, her gaze fixed on him with a sharpness that held no softness at all. "Promise me," she demanded, her voice low but unyielding. "Promise me you will never do something like that again. Ever."
His throat tightened, but there was no hesitation in his answer. "I promise."
The weight of those words filled the room. She blinked, her chest aching at the sincerity in his tone. He reached for her, pulling her in gently, though his hold made it clear he had no intention of letting her go. Her warmth settled into him like a balm. He buried his face in her hair and pressed a soft kiss against her temple.
"Thank you," he whispered, his voice ragged. "For… for saving me."
She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. "Of course."
"I mean it," he pressed, his fingers brushing along hers. "I swear, I will not make myself a task again."
Her expression softened, though her voice kept its sharp edge. "You are not a task, Malfoy. Do not ever think that."
He gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. "But I am. You will see. There are only a few weeks left, and then you will…"
She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. "And then I will what?"
He swallowed hard, his voice breaking as he forced the words out. "You will abandon me. I will never see you again. And I—" His words faltered as he turned his face away, but she caught his chin, guiding him back, refusing to let him hide.
Her fingers stroked his jaw, gentle and steady, grounding him. "Would you like me to visit you after this is over?"
His head snapped up, pale eyes widening with something close to hope. "Yes. Please." His voice cracked with desperation. "Please, darling, I do not know what I will do without you in this miserable life. You are the only reason I am still breathing."
She exhaled, her heart pounding in her chest even as she tried to keep her composure. "Perhaps," she said slowly, her tone lighter than she felt, though there was a thread of vulnerability beneath it, "this is only Stockholm syndrome. Perhaps you do not actually care for me the way you think you do, and—"
"No." His voice cut across hers, sharp with urgency. "Hermione, do not. You do not get to dismiss this. You do not get to pretend it is nothing."
She parted her lips to argue, but he surged forward, words spilling from him in a torrent, as though holding them back even a moment longer would tear him apart.
"I am in love with you," he said, and the tremor in his voice betrayed how much it cost him to admit it aloud. "Utterly, completely, hopelessly in love with you. And it is not because you saved me, or because you stayed when things got unbearable. I love you because you are brilliant and fierce and impossibly stubborn. Because you are the only person who has ever made me believe I could be something more than the sum of my mistakes. You see through everything I hide, Hermione, and somehow you stay."
She could only stare at him, caught in the force of his confession, but he pressed on, as though the words had a life of their own and refusing to release them would destroy him.
"I love the way your mind never stops working. I love the way you argue with me, the way you cut me down to size without hesitation. I love the way you care for people, even when it breaks you apart. And yes, I have imagined what it would be like to truly be with you, in every sense of the word, but it is not only that. I want all of you. Your brilliance, your kindness, your fire, your flaws. I want every single piece."
His hands shook as he caught hers, holding them tightly as if she might vanish if he loosened his grip. "I know I do not deserve you. I may very well be the last person alive who does. But I love you. And I will spend every day proving it, if you will allow me."
Her throat closed with emotion, and for a moment no sound would come. The raw honesty in his voice, the sheer weight of what he had laid bare, left her shaken in a way she could not explain.
"Draco…" she whispered at last, her voice so thin it nearly disappeared.
"I am not asking you to say it back," he cut in quickly, desperation tightening his hold on her. "I only needed you to know. Because even if you leave tomorrow and never once look back, I will still love you. I will love you until the end of me."
Her chest ached as she looked at him, his pale eyes searching hers with a need so raw it left her breathless. She did not have the words yet, not for this, but one truth settled inside her with terrifying clarity.
•••
30 days left.
Draco felt the weight of every single hour pressing down on him, each moment dragging him closer to an ending he was not ready to face. His fingers twitched restlessly, his foot tapped against the cold wooden floor of the flat, and his nerves ate at him until there was nothing left but sharp edges. He told himself it was ridiculous to feel this way. Every single examination had come back spotless. He was cleared. He was innocent.
Innocent.
The word left a sour taste in his mouth. Draco Malfoy, innocent. What a laughable thing to say. The entire ordeal reeked of irony, and the longer he thought about it, the more his anger burned. Theodore Nott, his supposed friend, had been the one to smuggle out that bloody time-turner, yet because of the cursed mark burned into his arm, the blame had settled on him. It had been too easy for them to confuse the two of them, too easy to write him off as just another branded Slytherin. Another body in the pile. A name to cover the paperwork.
What was he in all of this? A placeholder? A scapegoat? A convenient sacrifice for something greater than himself? He did not know, and at this point he was not sure it mattered. His tests had all come back clean, and in thirty days he would walk out of here.
Free.
The word should have been a balm, but it cut instead. Freedom no longer sounded like something he wanted. It tasted like emptiness, like solitude. What waited for him outside these walls? The Manor he had grown to despise? The endless corridors that smelled faintly of his mother's perfume and carried the memory of his father's shadow in every corner? A house that had already become a mausoleum. He shuddered to think of it.
And as though his mind could not stop punishing him, his thoughts shifted, dragging him toward the one thing he had tried to avoid and failed every time.
Hermione Granger.
Merlin, she was a problem. A problem that refused to be solved no matter how many sleepless nights he spent unraveling the look in her eyes, the sharp edge of her voice, the fierce way she never backed down. She was the problem that saved him without meaning to, the problem that had crawled under his skin and lodged herself somewhere he could not dig her out.
How was it possible to love someone so infuriating, so relentless in her disdain, so impossible to reach? How could he want someone who seemed to despise him down to her very bones, someone who looked at him as if he were nothing more than the lingering stain of every mistake he had ever made?
He dragged both hands through his hair and let out a low, guttural groan, the sound muffled as he pressed his palms against his face. He could not escape her, not in memory, not in thought, not even in sleep.
He told himself he had to make her love him. Somehow.
The words struck him silent the moment they formed. Make her love him. The sheer audacity of it was laughable. She was not someone who bent to anyone's will. She never had been. If anyone in this cursed world could rival his own stubbornness, it was Hermione Granger. She was a storm contained in a single body, sharp and unyielding, too clever by half, and merciless when she was crossed.
The echo of their last exchange tore through him like a blade. Her words had been merciless, each syllable sharpened to cut through flesh and bone, and he had stood there like a fool and let them gut him. He deserved every strike. He deserved worse. He had watched her once, back in the war, trapped in that endless, echoing hall. He had watched her scream, watched her bleed, watched her break, and he had done nothing. His fists clenched at the memory, nails biting into the skin of his palms, because that was the truth he could never run from. He had stood by and done nothing but hate himself for it afterward.
How could she ever look at him and see anything worth loving?
He rubbed his hands over his face, the weight of the question pressing down until he felt his chest might collapse beneath it. Thirty days. Thirty days left to attempt the impossible. Thirty days to claw his way into the good graces of a woman who seemed determined to make him pay for every sin he had ever committed, and whose punishments cut far deeper than any prison cell, any mark, any chain.
And yet, even with the certainty of failure hanging over him, he could not stop. He could not silence the way her name burned on his tongue, the way her face haunted the corners of his vision, the way his body ached just to be near her.
Thirty days. Thirty days to prove himself. Thirty days to hold on before she slipped away forever.
The way she had looked at him that night would never leave him. The image was carved into his mind as sharply as the Dark Mark burned into his arm. She had been kneeling at his side, her hands shaking as she pressed them against him, her eyes wild with fear.
"Don't do this to me, Draco. Please."
The memory brought a sharp ache to his chest, a wound that no potion or spell could mend. She had begged him to live, begged him with a desperation that had cut him deeper than any curse. And yet afterward she still treated him like he was nothing. She still walked around with her chin high and her voice sharp, acting as if he had not felt her breath against his skin that night, acting as if her world would not tilt if he were gone.
Did she stay up thinking of him? Did she lie awake in her bed and remember the way his hand had clung to hers, the way his eyes had searched her face for a reason to keep fighting? Or was he the only one haunted by it?
His fists tightened at his sides until his knuckles turned white. No. He would not accept this. There had to be a way to fix it, a way to prove to her that he was more than the cursed ink branded into his flesh, more than the boy who had stood frozen in fear while the world burned. There had to be a way to make her see that he was not a coward.
But how? How in Merlin's name was he supposed to do that?
The thought of romance nearly made him laugh. What did he know about it? He had no practice at tenderness, no knowledge of how to make someone feel cherished. Every relationship he had ever had was hollow, a transaction of vanity and fleeting pleasure, nothing that had ever demanded his heart. Flowers and chocolates, dinners and poetry—pathetic things. She would see right through them, and she would despise him for even trying.
No, Hermione Granger would not be swayed by trinkets and rehearsed lines. If he wanted her to see him, really see him, he would have to strip himself bare. He would have to lay down every wound and every secret, every dark and broken piece he had spent years burying. The very thought made his stomach turn to ice. To be seen like that was more terrifying than war, more dangerous than the Mark itself.
He shot up from the couch, unable to stay still as the thoughts clawed at him. His body carried him across the room in frantic strides, back and forth like a caged animal searching for escape. Thirty days. Thirty miserable days to attempt the impossible. The very walls of the flat felt like they were pressing closer, mocking him with their silence.
He needed a plan. Something. Anything to cling to, because the thought of her walking away from him, disappearing out of his life forever, was unbearable.
He stopped dead in the center of the room, chest heaving, heart hammering as he whispered into the empty air. "I'll make her see." His voice cracked, shaking with both determination and dread. "I'll show her that I'm not the same Draco Malfoy I was."
The words trembled as soon as they left his mouth, fragile, unconvincing, but they were all he had.
What other choice did he have? For the first time in his life, he was not clawing for power or his family's approval. He was not fighting for an image or for survival. This fight was for her. For the only person who had ever made him believe that he could be something better than the ruin he had become.
He would fight for her, even if it killed him. Even if it left him splintered at her feet. Even if she walked away and never looked back.
Because he was already broken without her.
And maybe, if he bared everything, if he let her see the real man beneath the weight of his sins, then perhaps she would finally look at him and not see a Death Eater or a coward. Perhaps she would see Draco. Only Draco.
•••
24 days left.
Hermione was losing her mind. Utterly, completely, without a shred of doubt.
What in Merlin's name was she supposed to do with Malfoy?
Every time her thoughts circled back to him, which was far too often for her own comfort, her chest tightened with a mess of emotions that refused to untangle themselves. Anger, frustration, confusion, irritation, and something far more dangerous that she refused to name.
Because she liked him.
No, that wasn't right. She did not like him. She couldn't. She simply… noticed things about him. That was all. The way his jawline was so sharp it could cut glass. The way his shirtsleeves always seemed to be rolled just enough to reveal the veins running down his forearms. The way his muscles shifted when he moved, each subtle flex catching her attention when it had no business doing so.
"Stop it," she muttered under her breath, pacing the length of her flat. "You are not allowed to find Malfoy attractive. You are a grown woman, not some hormone-addled fourth year."
Her inner voice did not let her off the hook. Really? Then why do you keep staring at him? Why do you keep remembering how his shoulders fill out a shirt, or how his hair always falls into his eyes in that maddening way that makes you want to reach out and push it back?
She groaned loudly, pressing her palms hard against her eyes as if she could scrub the thoughts away by force. This was absurd. Utterly, infuriatingly absurd.
And then, as if her brain hated her, she thought about his hands.
Those long, elegant fingers, scarred just enough to remind her that his life had not been untouched by violence, yet graceful in a way that made them impossible not to imagine touching her. Her breath caught. The thought slipped in before she could stop it, vivid and scorching, and she jolted upright like she had been hexed.
"No!" she hissed to the empty room. "Absolutely not."
She gripped the edge of the kitchen counter for support, leaning into the cool surface as though it might anchor her. Her reflection stared back at her from the polished finish, wild-eyed and furious with herself.
"What is wrong with you?" she whispered harshly.
Maybe it was hormones. Yes, that was the most reasonable explanation. Biology was a traitor. A chemical reaction, that was all this was, the kind of fleeting pull any healthy body might feel toward someone fit and nearby. No different than catching herself staring at a stranger on the street. Nothing more, nothing less. Entirely natural.
Except strangers had not stood across a drawing room and watched while she screamed. Strangers had not carried the name Malfoy.
And yet here she was, a rational, brilliant, grown woman, standing in her kitchen, contemplating the very real possibility of climbing Draco Malfoy like he was the only tree left in the forest.
Hermione let out a strangled sound, half groan and half scream, before collapsing into the nearest chair. She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders hunched as if she could hide from her own thoughts. "This is ridiculous," she muttered into her palms. "This is completely and utterly ridiculous."
It wasn't fair. None of it was fair. It wasn't fair that he looked like that, as if the universe had decided to turn a once-sniveling ferret into a man carved out of marble. Cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Shoulders broad enough that she could imagine sitting on them without a second thought. And his voice, Merlin help her, his voice. Low, rough, laced with that drawl that managed to send a shiver racing down her spine every single time he said something as harmless as her own name. Granger.
It wasn't fair that her mind insisted on supplying images of him shirtless, of the way those shoulders might look without fabric in the way. And worse, her thoughts did not stop there.
"Jesus Christ," she hissed, dropping her forehead onto the table with a thud that rattled through her skull. She stayed there, pressed against the wood, her breath fogging against its surface as she willed the heat burning in her cheeks to cool. "I need therapy. I actually need therapy."
Her thoughts betrayed her anyway, circling back with cruel efficiency to that kiss.
That cursed, consuming kiss she had been trying to erase from her memory for weeks. The kiss that had not been sweet, not gentle, not even close to anything she should have wanted. It had been rage and desperation, curiosity sharpened into something dangerous. And yet she kept replaying it in her head, like a secret she had no right to keep.
She remembered the way his hands had closed around her face, steady and unyielding. The way his mouth had crashed into hers, demanding and reverent all at once, as though he could not decide whether he wanted to ruin her or worship her. The worst part was the truth she refused to say aloud: she had melted into it. Her body had leaned in, betrayed her entirely, incapable of pushing him away no matter how much she told herself she should.
She sat up sharply, running her fingers through her hair as though she could shake the memory loose. "No," she snapped at herself. "Stop it. Absolutely not. STOP IT."
She sat up with a sharp breath, her chest rising and falling as if she had just sprinted through the streets of London.
This wasn't her. This wasn't who she was. She was not the kind of woman who lost her head over a sharp jawline or the curve of long, elegant hands. She was not the kind of woman who swooned over someone she should have despised with every ounce of her being. Hermione Granger was rational, logical, level-headed. She was supposed to be immune to this sort of idiocy.
Except apparently she wasn't. Not with him.
"Malfoy, you absolute menace," she muttered under her breath, her arms folded so tightly across her chest it felt like she might crack a rib. "Why couldn't you have stayed ugly and pathetic? It would have made my life infinitely easier."
But no. He had to grow into someone infuriatingly beautiful, someone who seemed almost illegal to look at for too long. He had to open his mouth and be clever, and cutting, and maddeningly vulnerable in fleeting moments that made her want to strangle him one second and hold him the next.
This was his fault. It had to be. Draco Malfoy was trying to ruin her life.
And the worst part was that he was succeeding.
She shoved back her chair so hard it screeched against the floor, the sound ricocheting through the room. She needed to move, to do something, anything that would stop the spiral. She cast her eyes toward the neat stack of books on her desk, her old, reliable safe place. But even they seemed to taunt her, their spines gleaming as if to say, You think words will save you now?
No book could fix this. No logic, no reason, no carefully constructed argument. Not even the endless loop of Hozier she had tried to use as a shield against the sound of his voice replaying in her head.
Her brain was gone. Absolutely gone. A lost cause.
She pressed her fingers hard against her temples, muttering aloud like someone half-mad. "It's just physical. It's just physical. I don't want him. I don't want to marry him. I just…" She paused, grimacing. "I just want to peg him. Once. For therapeutic reasons. Perfectly normal. Completely healthy."
The glass of the window in front of her reflected her face back at her, unimpressed and vaguely concerned.
Hermione groaned and collapsed back into her chair, her head tilting against the backrest as if she no longer had the strength to hold it up. Twenty-four days left. That was it. She could survive twenty-four days. She had survived worse. She had faced Death Eaters, fought in a war, carried the weight of the world on her back. Surely she could survive this.
Couldn't she?
Her thoughts did not answer. They only laughed, cruel and mocking, whispering the truth she already knew but hated to admit. Draco Malfoy was inside her head, clawing his way in deeper every time she tried to push him out. And no amount of logic, or hatred, or carefully rehearsed denial could dislodge him.
And that truth, the one she could not stop circling back to no matter how many times she cursed herself for it, was the most maddening realization of all.
•••
20 days left.
Draco was unraveling.
He had spent the entire morning pacing his flat like a man possessed before forcing himself into the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, hair falling in his face, hands trembling as he worked. There were onions half-chopped on the cutting board, their sharp scent burning his eyes, meat sizzling in the pan with angry spits of oil, and flour clinging to every surface in sight like a fine snowfall. His kitchen looked like a battlefield, and he felt like a soldier losing ground.
He did not know what he was doing. Malfoys did not cook. Malfoys did not set foot in kitchens at all. Yet here he was, knife in hand, obsessing over cuts of vegetables he could barely see straight enough to slice. None of it mattered. He had to get it right. This was all he had left to offer her.
A meal. That was his grand plan. A pitiful attempt at romance. A gesture so small it felt laughable, and yet it was all he could think of. One last dinner before she walked away. One final attempt to tether her to him. A token. A plea. A desperate attempt to keep her from slipping through his fingers.
Because every day she came, she seemed a little further away.
The words she gave him were shorter, her tone colder, her eyes harder to meet. He could feel the space growing between them like a canyon, stretching wider and wider no matter how tightly he clung to the edges. It gnawed at him, sharp and merciless, like rats tearing at his insides.
She was leaving him.
The thought made his grip tighten on the knife until his knuckles turned white. He could feel the tremor in his hand, the dangerous twitch of his wrist. She was going to walk out without so much as a glance back. She would slip back into her world of friends and causes and sunlight, and he would be left here in the ruins of his own silence. That was something he could not allow. He would not allow it.
The food hissed on the stove, but he barely heard it. His chest rose and fell too quickly, shallow breaths scraping his throat raw. His vision blurred until he was staring not at the countertop, not at the flour-streaked mess, but at the image of her turning away. The image of her hand slipping from his forever.
It felt like a curse.
The idea of her absence left him hollow, an echoing cavern of a man. He had clawed his way to her light, touched it, tasted it, felt it warm his bones, and the thought of that being torn from him was unbearable. It was more than unbearable. It was ruin.
She cannot leave me.
The thought was sharp, primal, almost unrecognizable in his own head. It flickered through him like fire catching on dry kindling, unstoppable once it had started. Because if she left, what would he be then? Nothing. A shadow. A man who had glimpsed redemption only to have it snatched away.
She was the only thing keeping him upright. The only proof that he could be more than the brand carved into his skin, more than his father's ghost, more than the endless self-loathing that had been his constant companion for years. She was the first hand that had ever reached for him and not recoiled. The first warmth he had ever believed was real.
If she left, if she abandoned him to the cold again, he would not survive it.
He would shatter into pieces that could never be put back together.
His hand trembled as he set the knife down on the counter, the sound of metal against stone sharp enough to make him flinch. He wiped his palms on a dish towel, dragging the fabric over skin gone clammy, but it did nothing to steady him. His thoughts were no longer sharp or ordered. They split and twisted, curling back in on themselves until they took on a shape he did not want to name. Something darker.
She could not leave.
She would not.
The certainty burned through him, irrational and unshakable, rising from a place deep in his chest that felt more instinct than thought. If she tried to go, he would not let her vanish. He would follow, no matter the distance. He would slip into every shadow she passed, linger on every street corner she walked, haunt the edges of her world until she felt him there. She would never escape the weight of him.
And if she dared to move on, if she dared to let another man place his hands where only his should ever rest, he would not stand by. He would ruin anyone foolish enough to try. He would burn through them until there was nothing left but ash and the warning their destruction carried.
She belongs to me.
The words coiled and struck in his head, poisonous and electric, as though they had been waiting all along for this moment to reveal themselves.
His grip on the towel tightened, twisting the fabric until his knuckles blanched. The air in the kitchen seemed heavier, pressing against his chest, crowding him until every breath felt like it scraped its way in and out. His thoughts were unraveling, loosening into chaos. He felt himself tipping forward into it, into something vast and terrible, with no ground beneath his feet.
Stop this. You are losing your mind.
He forced the towel down, shoved it aside, and braced his hands against the countertop. His palms pressed hard into the cool marble, his gaze fixed on the veined surface as if the lines and shapes might tether him back to reason.
But the storm in his mind did not ease. It swelled and darkened.
If she left, he would find her. He would track her across every distance until she could no longer deny him. He would become a constant presence, her shadow, her silence, her ghost. He would weave himself into every waking hour and every restless dream until there was no corner of her life untouched by him.
Until she understood.
Until she accepted that she was his.
The thought came uninvited, sudden and vivid. Lock her away.
The image formed with terrifying ease, a room hidden from the world, a place no one else could touch. She would be there, safe and contained, unable to leave him. No eyes but his would ever see her again. No hands but his would ever dare to reach for her. She would be his in the truest sense of the word—completely, irrevocably his.
His breath caught, sharp and ragged, his chest tightening as though he had spoken the fantasy aloud. For a moment he stood rooted, heart hammering against his ribs, before the weight of the thought struck him like a blow.
Merlin, what kind of man even imagined that?
He straightened suddenly, shoving back from the counter as though it had burned him. A shudder raked through him, disgust turning his stomach. His hands raked through his hair, tugging at the strands until his scalp ached. "You're pathetic," he muttered, the words harsh and bitten. "Absolutely pathetic."
And yet the thought clung to him, thick and choking, like smoke he could not cough out. Possession lingered in the hollow of his chest, whispering with every breath. She was his. She didn't see it yet, didn't believe it, but she was.
And he would do anything to make her understand.
The sharp scent of burning snapped him back, dragging his gaze to the pan smoking on the stove. He swore under his breath and lunged for it, scraping what he could into the sink, the hiss of steam filling the air.
Cooking. That was the plan. Keep it simple. He would show her he was capable of more than cruelty, capable of gentleness, of effort. He would prove that he could be the kind of man she might want.
But even as he told himself that, another truth pressed in, darker and more insistent.
If it wasn't enough, if she turned away despite it all…
He swallowed hard, refusing to finish the thought. Refusing to name what he knew lay waiting for him if she left.
But he felt it anyway. The darkness crouched at the edges, ready to claim him if she slipped through his fingers.
He could not lose her. He would not lose her.
She was his salvation. His obsession. His undoing.
And if she tried to leave him, she would discover just how far he was willing to go to keep her.