Balaur

Their’s was not a totally healthy relationship for a time. 

In private confrontations in and out of St. Mungo’s, she’d flung the accusation that they’d come together because “no one else will have either of us”. For his part, Draco turned the tables on his fragile partner numerous times — unfairly accusing Hermione of using him as a mirror of her own desire to bolt from the triggers of her war horrors, of her torture… and of her rape…

Until their work with the mental Healer began to bear fruit, Bali suffered through more than a few battles where Draco’s commitment got questioned loud enough to shake the rafters while Hermione’s less than enthusiastic “effort” to enjoy being a mother hurtled back in response; abandonment became a recurring theme in their lives together. 

Less than six month after she’d delivered the baby, sex became a weapon and a punishment she inflicted on the man who refused to leave her — and Draco surrendered, lacking the courage to deny her when she’d entered his bedroom in her suite wearing nothing but her determination to satisfy herself on him. She dared him to terminate a sexual relationship whose outcome left him unsatisfied by every definition of the term.

The young penitent subjugated himself during their sexual “confrontations”, allowing her to use him, in a perverted attempt at atonement for his contributions to her new challenges with intimacy. His complete submission to her led Hermione’s overactive brain to conclude that he felt no desire for her as a woman. 

For her part, Hermione made aggressive demands on his body and no demands on his emotions. She fought any juxtaposition that left her on her back, the placement he’d taken her in repeatedly while the Death Eater audience cheered him on. Anything like “Missionary” brought flashbacks and panic attacks, memorable for their magical damage. In the beginning she’d denied him even the intimacy of a kiss, afraid that to do so would absolve him of those episodes during the war when she’d had no choice and no voice in their couplings… 

“Unh!…” she grunted out as her climax undulated through her, “That’s much better.”

“You’ve finished?” he inquired, the only words he ever uttered immediately after this kind of encounter.

“You didn’t come — again.”

“Doesn’t matter. As long as you’re satisfied.”

“I wouldn’t call it that, Draco… I need to study,” she announced and climbed off of his painfully erect cock to return — naked in body and in thoughts — to her bedroom in her suite.

In therapy together, they dealt with their joint issues with intimacies, beyond those of the body, and of the vast differences between giving and sharing.

In between sessions they focused on each day, getting “better” at living again in the world (as it existed) and at being parents (individually and together) to a gifted and sensitive baby who refused to let them give up.

Time cannot heal wounds on its own; it can, however — with compassion and commitment — allow healing the space required to occur. And so it happened for these living survivors from opposing sides of a war where each had served as child soldiers.