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Songs of Regret	By : RavieSnake Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 76454 -:- Recommendations : 5 -:- Currently Reading : 17
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters from it. I also hold no rights to any of the songs mentioned. I make no money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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“What the fuck did you do, Granger?” she heard a young man wheeze in front of her.

Hermione’s head was thudding. Pins and needles pierced her skin all over and she likened it to the feeling she used to get every time she had used her Time-Turner back during her third year, except intensified a hundredfold. It felt similar to the time when she was ten and had accidentally electrocuted herself on a frayed lamp cord.

“I didn’t do anything, Malfoy,” she panted.

She noticed that they were both sitting on the sidewalk again and began to reach for her shopping bags. Hermione was startled to find that they were nowhere to be seen. Her head swiveled around quickly taking-in their surroundings.

They were still in Diagon Alley, but it looked…different. The small tea shop they had been in front of just a moment ago was closed and its windows were boarded. Hermione had visited that shop at least once a week for the past five years, but it now looked like it had been abandoned for months. She noticed several other storefronts were similarly changed.

Hermione’s breathing started to become panicked as she focused on the blond sitting across from her. He was not wearing the same clothes as he had been just a minute ago and his hair was longer. His face was hidden behind his hands as they scrubbed it and he groaned. She looked down and noticed that she was in different robes as well. What the hell was going on!?

Draco felt like he had been hit with a Stinging Jinx while Apparating. He thought he might be sick from the pounding in his head and massaged his face and forehead with his palms.

“Well you must’ve done something, Granger,” he replied while lowering his hands and blinking his eyes open at her, “because I feel like…”

His words stopped dead in his throat as he looked upon her gobsmacked face. Her face! She looked so…young. She looked at least ten years younger. Draco quickly assessed her and he noticed too that she was wearing different robes than the previous moment and her brown hair hung in wild ringlets around her head instead of the neat twist it had been up in.

His head still sore, Draco shook it slightly and blinked his eyes rapidly trying to shake what he was sure was a hallucination. When the same scene appeared before him when he refocused his eyes, he stood suddenly. He whipped his face about looking at everything he could see. Although he could tell it was Diagon Alley, nearly everything looked different. Even he was dressed differently. Something was very wrong. He did not like this. He felt around himself and found his wand.

Still seated on the sidewalk, Hermione watched Draco’s movements with wide eyes. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. He looked about 20 years younger. She noticed as his expression changed from surprised to confused to worried as he looked around. She stared, mouth agape, as he patted his hands around his torso until he came to a pocket and pulled out his wand. When he brought it up in front of him, an expression of extreme alarm crossed his now youthful face and he let go of the wand as if it had burned him.

“What the…I haven’t…what is…” Hermione heard him stammer above her as she watched the wand fall and clamber around at their feet.

She leaned forward and picked it up and as she did so she spotted something glinting on the sidewalk just to her left. It was a large kelly-green pearl. She picked it up carefully as well and finally stood-up herself. Her eyes were glued to the pearl in her hand as she held-out Draco’s wand in his general direction with her other hand. She felt him take it from her grasp as the gears in her mind turned furiously while looking at the pearl. It couldn’t be…

“I haven’t seen this wand in years,” she heard him say distantly. “I don’t understand what…” his voice trailed off.

Draco had been so distracted at the shock of seeing his long-lost wand that he hadn’t been paying attention to what the young woman in front of him was doing. He saw now that Hermione was holding the Paenitentia Pearl up between her fingers with a look of abject horror upon her face. His mind whirred and suddenly everything clicked into place. He had thought of something he regretted while holding the pearl! The realization hit him like a stampede of hippogriffs.

“Holy shit,” he said breathlessly.

Tearing her eyes from the pearl, Hermione looked at Draco when she heard his quiet exclamation. She saw a look of revelation on his face, his eyes now trained on the pearl in her hand.

“Holy shit,” he said louder and he brought his eyes up to meet hers. She was struck dumb as she blinked at him and watched as Draco abruptly looked down and yanked up the sleeve of his left arm so fast that the button of his cuff popped off into the air.

“HOLY SHIT!” he yelled as he looked upon his exposed forearm. Nothing but smooth, clear, pale skin greeted him.

Hermione’s last thought before this strangeness had occurred floated across her mind as she took in the blank skin of his arm, “I regret that he ever had to receive that horrid Dark Mark.” Dread completely consumed her as she looked again from his arm to the pearl.

“Is this what you were holding when you helped me up?” she managed to ask through strangled breaths.

Draco found his voice failing him as he returned his gaze to her and merely nodded his head. She shook her hand that held the pearl at him and it was her turn to stammer, “This…where…how did you…how could you…oh Gods, no, no, no.”

Draco gawked at her and noticed that her entire body was trembling. Her chest heaved with forced breaths and tears suddenly spilled from her eyes. Hermione dropped the pearl, clenched her arms around her chest and shoulders and let out an agonizing sob.

Draco bent and quickly picked-up the pearl and placed it in his pocket. He then grabbed Hermione’s shoulders and shook her. He hated hysterics.

“Granger, get a hold of yourself! Why -” His words were cut short as Hermione started to hit and punch his chest and shoulders wildly.

“A Paenitentia Pearl?” she wailed as she struck him. “A PAENITENTIA PEARL!!?”

“Shh. Granger, calm down!” he said as he attempted to grab at her flailing hands. He looked around worried that passersby where noticing the commotion they were making. Luckily, the street appeared mostly deserted.

He finally managed to take hold of both of her hands and she pushed away from him violently. His mind came back into focus as he stared at her face contorted with a mixture of fury and anguish. “You know what the pearl -”

“Of course I know what that fucking thing does!” she spat at him. “But obviously you don’t since you’re so bloody calm!”

Draco didn’t know Hermione very well in a personal sense, but he knew enough about her from their years growing-up together that she was not one to fly off the handle or frighten easily. Her obvious distress and forceful use of curse words caused a feeling of extreme trepidation to form in his gut.

“Well, then how about you stop acting like a banshee and explain it to me,” he responded after a moment with as much scorn as his blooming anxiety would allow. He glared at her and was surprised when her body seemed to relax and slump in on itself.

Hermione’s face fell from an expression of anger into one of pure sorrow. She raised her hands to her face and shook her head slightly as she began to gently cry again.

She looked at him miserably and said in a hoarse whisper, “I regretted something while I was touching that pearl in your hand. When I saw how upset you were when I touched your Dark Mark, I thought about how I regretted that you ever had to get it.”

Draco’s heart nearly stopped in his chest at her confession. An unfamiliar feeling roared in him as he contemplated what she had just said. No one had ever thought of his feelings before. No one ever did anything for him. Why had she thought that? He shook his head in an attempt to clear it and looked Hermione in the eyes.

“When I saw how upset you were having touched my Mark, I regretted the same thing,” he said to her quietly. Hermione raised her eyebrows. She let out a hollow, exasperated laugh, threw her head back and stared at the sky. She held her gaze to the heavens a moment before she turned her watery eyes back to meet Draco’s.

She took a deep breath and said, “So we both regretted the same thing while both touching a Paenitentia Pearl and it worked.”

“Apparently,” he responded as he rubbed his arm. “So what is the big deal?”

“You really don’t get it do you?” she asked him with sincerity. She said nothing more and walked just past him and plopped herself down on a bench. Still standing, he merely turned to face her where she sat. She stared at the ground in deep, troubled thought. When Hermione decided she had finally found the right words to explain everything she took several deep breaths and talked while still staring at the ground.

“When Harry and I were on the run during the war, I was constantly reading, trying to find something that could help us. I came across the Paenitentia Pearl in one of my dark objects books. I read about it quite extensively. Imagine having an object that could simply make the worst just disappear. The idea of it was so alluring at the time. But the more I read, the less appealing it was,” she paused there to look up at him. He sighed and sat next to her on the bench and nodded for her to continue.

“The pearl works in one of two ways,” she began again, “First, if regret is declared about an object or if the regret is small or not entirely sincere then the object or regret simply ceases to be. Say I had regretted that I had to carry those heavy shopping bags. They would have just disappeared. But for big regrets, for actions or events that one regrets from their past, the pearl does much more than simply erase the event. It erases EVERYTHING. It acts like a giant Time-Turner and any moment that occurred after the mentioned regret will exist only in the memory of the person who used the pearl.”

Draco’s heart thumped violently inside his chest. “What are you saying, Granger?” he questioned in a deadly voice.

“You got the Mark the summer before our sixth year, yes?” she asked and he nodded. “Then that means the pearl transported us to some point in time before that. That is why we both look so much younger. We are teenagers again. Our lives after this point never happened, the war has yet to happen, and our children were never born,” she began to cry again, “and we will never see them again!” The flood gates opened and Hermione sobbed loudly into her hands.

It was a good thing that Draco had sat on the bench, because he was sure he would have collapsed if he’d been standing when he heard her last words. He shook his head. He didn’t believe her, he couldn’t believe her. “But that’s ridiculous, Granger. I remember everything. I can see my son’s face in my mind. How could I know what he looks like if he’s never existed?”

“Were you not listening to me?” she snapped at him.

She wiped her tear streaked cheeks with her robe sleeve. “I told you. The person that uses the pearl will remember everything. That’s what I couldn’t get through to Harry. Using the pearl really doesn’t make anything any easier. It takes you to a point in time before the regretted action, but you still retain the feelings and memories associated with it. And it doesn’t guarantee that you won’t commit the same regret again. The reason a Paenitentia Pearl is such a dark object is because it usually causes the user to experience so much grief and longing for that which was erased that they go mad. The book I read stated that the use of a Paenitentia Pearl would most likely result in death…by suicide,” she finished miserably, wiping her nose again on her sleeve.

Draco grimaced at the sight of her rubbing snot all over her robes and reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to her. She took it, and gave him a shy questioning look at the same time.

“I always carry one. Never know when you’ll be in need of one,” he sighed matter-of-factly.

They sat in silence for a moment as she dabbed at her eyes and nose. Draco’s brain had been working furiously in the brief silence trying to think of something to fix their situation. He steadfastly refused to believe that he would never see Scorpius again.

“Can’t we just both touch the pearl again and regret that we ever used it in the first place?” he questioned hopefully.

Hermione smiled sadly at him. “I wish it were that easy,” she replied. “Unfortunately the pearl only works once for each user.”

“So then if we just have to relive our lives, why won’t we see them again? If we just do everything the same as we did before, then they’ll be born and everything will be the same as it was, right?” Draco asked with a new hint of desperation in his voice.

“Wrong,” she replied. “Everything that happens does so as a result of an extremely complicated and interwoven set of circumstances and actions. There isn’t any possible way that we could remember every little thing that we did twenty years ago. And even if we could, even the tiniest deviation could result in drastic alterations to the reality that we know. Muggles call it the butterfly effect.”

“Why would they call it that?” he asked candidly.

“It’s a type of chaos theory that is best explained using the analogy of a hurricane’s path being influenced by the beating of a lone butterfly’s wings. It’s made to demonstrate our world of extreme cause and effect. Everything we do has an effect on something else. Rose, Hugo, and Scorpius all came into existence under a very specific and unique set of circumstances: circumstances that we have no chance of recreating exactly. Even this very conversation is changing the future.” Her explanation complete, Hermione leaned back against the bench and closed her eyes in exhausted hopelessness.

Draco was about to do the same when Hermione’s eyes suddenly flew open and she bolted upright to the edge of the bench. He looked at her in astonishment as she turned to him, a wild look of fear now on her face.

“What!?” he asked, unsure if he really wanted to hear anything more that she had to say. Surely it would be more bad news.

“This conversation,” she said. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation! Summer before sixth year we are supposed to be mortal enemies. You-Know-Who is still alive here! If anyone sees us together and we aren’t hexing each other our lives will be in danger. Yours especially. If we want any hope of trying to get our lives back…oh gods, we’ve been sitting out here for how long? What if someone saw us!?”

She slunk down as if she were trying to melt into the bench and her eyes shifted about frantically searching for any sign of them being watched. Draco sensed that she was about to get hysterical again.

“Granger, it’s fine,” he said in as soothing a voice as he could muster. “There is no one around. But I agree that we do need to get out of here. Come on,” he said as he grabbed her by the arm and hoisted her unceremoniously off the bench.

He threw his own gaze quickly around them and then wrapped his arms around her tightly. Hermione’s eyes turned into saucers as she felt his arms close around her and she realized too late what he was about to do.

“No, wait!” she screamed just as she felt him turn on the spot and the sensation of Apparation descended upon her.

They landed hard in a dimly lit room less than a second later and broke apart from each other.

“Damn it all, Granger! Why did you scream in my ear? I nearly splinched myself,” Draco huffed in annoyance as he brushed-off and straightened his robes.

He looked at her seeking an explanation, but was taken aback at the sight of her looking down at her shoulder. The fabric over her left shoulder and upper arm was missing from her robe as if cut away and Draco could see fresh blood pouring from a large gash that extended down about three inches from the top of her shoulder.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!?” he yelled out loud.

In an instant, he stepped-up to her and raised his hands to take off her robe. She went to stop him with her good arm, but he batted it away with an irritated growl. Draco grabbed her robe and pulled it off of her swiftly as she stood and dropped it to the floor. He saw that the top of her shirt sleeve was barely still attached to the body of the shirt and he ripped it the rest of the way and tore it from her arm. He flung the sleeve to the side and grasped her just above her elbow. He held the arm steady and pushed her head to the side to better examine her injury.

“Merlin, why did you hesitate during the Apparation?” he scolded as he scanned the damage.

He squeezed the skin around her wound gently with his fingers and Hermione hissed in pain. Draco let go of her, grabbed her good hand that was still holding his handkerchief, and brought it across her to press against her injured shoulder.

“Hold that there,” he commanded. He darted away from her then and disappeared through a door a few feet away. He reappeared only a moment later with a small green bottle in one hand and his newly discovered wand in the other.

Hermione’s head was starting to spin and pure will power kept her on her feet as her body began to sway with blood loss. Draco promptly conjured a chair just behind her and guided her to sit in it just as her eyes started to roll back in her head. He flicked his wand and threw a silencing spell around the room. Then he uncorked the bottle and carefully pulled her hand with the handkerchief away from her shoulder.

“Now, try and hold still,” he said as he brought the bottle up, “this is going to hurt.”

Hermione came-to slightly just in time to see Draco dump the sticky contents of the bottle into her splinched skin. She let out a hoarse cry as the liquid hit her flesh and seeped in. Her skin began knitting itself together immediately and, as it healed, Draco performed several cleansing charms to remove the blood from her arm, her clothes, his hands, his handkerchief, and the floor.

“Stop it,” she choked at him.

“Stop what?” he asked with eyebrows furrowed in irritation.

“Stop using magic. We’re not supposed to,” she said in a slightly more steady voice.

“How much blood did you lose, woman? We are bloody wizards,” he scoffed at her.

“No. We aren’t supposed to use magic because we aren’t seventeen yet,” she answered. “That’s why I tried to stop you from Apparating. You aren’t even supposed to know how to Apparate yet. We are in enough trouble as it is; we don’t need the Ministry on our case about use of underage magic.” She sat a little straighter in the chair. The talking had actually helped her head to stop swimming and the pain in her shoulder had already decreased noticeably.

Draco conjured another chair right in front of Hermione and sat down in it. He smirked at the look of indignation on her face at the fact that he purposely used magic again when she’d specifically warned not to.

“You need to relax,” he said leaning back in the chair. “The Ministry can’t track that kind of thing here.”

“And where is here?” she asked and looked about the room as if looking for clues.

“The Manor,” he replied as if it were obvious. “In my bedroom to be precise,” he added.

Hermione snapped her gaze back to Draco. “Malfoy Manor?” she asked breathlessly.

“What other manor could there be with my bedroom in it, Granger?” he answered condescendingly.

Hermione’s face went stark white. She froze still in the chair and her breathing became ragged. Her eyes darted in every direction and her hand moved unconsciously to clasp onto her exposed left forearm.

“We can’t be here!” she yelled out in pure panic. “I can’t be here! We have to escape. Oh gods, we’re going to die. We didn’t finish the mission and they’re going to fucking kill us!”

Draco gaped at her in shock as her chest now heaved dramatically as she attempted to breath. Hermione’s wild eyes landed on his face and she let out a strangled cry. “Help us. Please!” she begged him.

Draco understood now what was happening. The last time she had been in the Manor was when she and Potter and Weasley had been captured during the war. His chest clenched in remorse as his own flashbacks of that day pushed to the front of his mind. He saw Hermione flailing on the floor. Saw is aunt holding her down and carving her arm open with a dagger while his father snickered behind him. Draco was torn from his horrific memories by Hermione’s frenzied voice.

“Bellatrix!” she whimpered. “She’s...no…no...please!” Hermione clamped her eyes shut tightly and then let out a blood curdling scream that echoed around the bedroom. She had a death grip on her forearm and she pulled it to her torso and doubled over in the chair as she screamed.

The pain that the screams elicited in the very pit of Draco’s soul was reaching an unbearable level and he knew that he had to break her out of her flashback before they both passed-out.

He lunged forward and clasped her head between his hands.

“Granger!” he shouted and shook her head lightly to try and get her to open her still closed eyes. “Granger,” he repeated louder when she didn’t’ respond, “it’s not real! You’re ok. Granger! Granger!” He shook her harder, his fingers pressed deep into the sides of her scalp as panic rose in him that he might not get her to calm. “Hermione!”

The sound of her name snapped her back to reality and she stilled at once. She blinked her eyes wearily open at him. Still holding her head, Draco looked into her eyes as they became focused and he saw comprehension finally take hold.

Hermione stared into Draco’s silvery eyes that were wide with fear and concern. She was overcome with guilt and shame at having lost herself to one of her attacks in front of him and she was unable to stop the huge rolling tears that escaped her eyes. Draco felt her body go limp and he pulled her into him and hugged his arms around her.

Hermione sobbed quietly into his chest as Draco rocked her gently and repeated over and over in a low voice, “I’m sorry.”
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Songs of Regret