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The Best Of...	By : T-W-O Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 13807 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I own nothing of HP nor do I profit in any way from these missives. I almost own the laptop I'm writing this fanfic on, tho'.

Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
“When did you turn into a student? You’ve been invisible all term.”
Sprawled across a cushy club chair in the Slytherin Commons, Blaise led Pansy a merry chase to avoid becoming her confidant about the break-up and to avoid the effort to conceal his knowledge of how Draco spent his time nowadays.
Blaise witnessed the emergence over the summer of the real Draco — not in its entirety, but little by little as advantage and authority shifted from a penniless, powerless Lucius to the current source of income and influence for the Malfoy empire. Absent the constant threat to his parents, Draco made more choices for himself using his own barometer of what was needed and what was acceptable. His Slytherin housemates might be shocked by Zabini’s ready acceptance of Draco’s new “best friend” — but they didn’t know Zabini’s secret: Pasquale Zabini had not fathered Blaise with Zenobia Zabini née Ibn-Asaad.
Blaise Ah’Jal Zabini was, in fact, a half-blood.
Blaise’s biological father had been a wealthy North African muggle prince from Zenobia’s home territory. The two teenagers had been forbidden to marry by his aristocratic family. And so for years, Blaise and his mother summered on the Arabian peninsula as “guests” of her childhood friend Nijah T’Jal Al-Therou W’Alshi who’d been introduced to the infant Blaise as an “uncle by choice”.
On Blaise’s seventh birthday,“Uncle Nijah” revealed himself as Blaise’s biological father and bestowed his ancestral inheritance on the boy.
On Blaise’s ninth birthday “Uncle Nijah" died in a freak industrial accident at one of his refineries; less than three weeks later Pasquale Zabini succumbed in his sleep to a previously unknown heart condition. Blaise’s mother awoke after a night of energetic sex with her husband to find Pasquale permanently asleep.
Thus was the murder of Uncle Nijah, by the Sicilian contingent of the Zabini family, avenged. His mother mourned Nijah T’Jal Al-Therouh W’Alshi with her tears to this day. Zenobia moved on rather quickly to “Daddy #3” after Pasquale’s mysterious death, marrying Luciano Zabini, her late husband’s first cousin, after six weeks in mourning.
The blood-purity and blood-traitor vitriol spilling daily from Blaise’s pre-war lips was carefully crafted to ensure his secret remained his secret. Fifty years hence, Blaise would discover he was not, in fact, a bastard; Uncle Nijah had married Zenobia secretly in their youth. Blaise liked to believe that his support of Draco’s post-war choices would have pleased his real father.
No one should be denied true love.
“Zabini, are you listening to me?”
Draco’s former fiancée reestablished herself every day as Slytherin’s #1 bitch on high heels.
“Si, Pansy. Am I not allowed to pass a few classes and graduate with my friends?” he deflected.
“You sound like Draco. Can’t wait to get to the library and study for another ‘Outstanding’ on some meaningless assignment. I’ve fucked him in every row of that library except the Restricted Section; now I can’t find him to fuck him.”
“He’s Head Boy.”
“He’s always been ‘head boy’ and he’s good at it,” she winked.
“He’s working for Malfoy Enterprises to keep the family in galleons. The end of frivolous fun has arrived early for mi compagno. What about you? What will you do after graduating?”
To Zabini’s annoyance, Pansy broke out in tears at his casual question.
“Fuck Voldemort! Fuck him and the Death Eaters and my father and especially LUCIUS FUCKING MALFOY! I was supposed to marry Draco and became Lady Malfoy, have one son and spend how ever much I wanted on whatever I wanted! Voldemort LOST, the fucking git, my father’s slowing going bankrupt — and crazy — and Lucius fucked me without a kiss or a gift when he terminated our marriage contract!”
Tawny-colored fingers drew out a monogrammed Arabian cotton handkerchief and levitated it over to the distraught Pansy.
You owe me for this one, Drake…
“Draco and I aren’t through. No witch in England suits him better than me and I intend to tell him that at his Christmas party.”
Zabini stuck his wand tip out in time to catch the soggy, snot-laden hanky Pansy thrust towards him. Flicking it over his shoulder, he ignored the shouted “Hey!” from the second year wearing it on his neck.
“Mi dispiace, Pansy, but the party has been cancelled. Lord Malfoy cannot afford the time or the galleons this year and Draco refuses to pay for such a trivial social event. Maybe you can visit the Manor over the holidays.”
The second the words left his lips Blaise regretted them. In Draco’s present situation the last thing he needed was a bat-shit crazy she-witch with a fatal attraction.
“Leave it to an Italian to solve a romantic problem. You’re brilliant, Blaise! See you over the holidays.”

”Shouting and stomping about won’t solve the problem.”
“Why not!? She’s being…”
Frustration stole the limited eloquence Ron had developed since the war. The barrage of interviews with auto-quills shoved in his face gave him plenty of practice. Leaving for the Aurors’ Academy had been a blessed relief.
“HERMIONE! Bloody difficult under the best conditions.” Ron finally finished.
“I’m sure that’s why you and Hermione are getting married next week.”
Harry’s snarking commentary did nothing for Ron’s mood.
“‘Listen, mate — as a girlfriend, ‘Mione’s too much work. Megan and me are doing just fine. Don’t need to rush to the church like SOME of us.”
“Ron…” Ginny warned him. No one except Ron knew about Baby Potter yet.
“Gin, calm down, luv; you’ll be back in that loo for hours. So how do we get Hermione back to the Burrow for the holiday? She shouldn’t be alone on Christmas.”
“We need to talk to Malfoy.” Ginny explained.
A petrification curse must have anchored Ron and Harry in place because neither could speak or even breathe.
“If you want Hermione at the Burrow, he’ll know how to persuade her.” Ginny made clear.
“We’re not talking to Malfoy!” Ron finally declared when the nonexistent spell wore off.
“So what’s your plan?” his sister challenged.
“Harry and me are aurors in training — we’ll just body-bind her and side-along apparate to the Burrow. She’ll come around.”
Ginny bypassed explaining the list of problems with Ron’s plan. Instead, she took Harry’s hand with one of her own and grabbed the floo powder ever-present on the Gryffinfor fireplace mantle with the other. A faintly intoned “Head’s Room” with a few steps into the cozy fire, and Ron stood alone in his old tower.
Back in the Gryffindor Commons room, Harry’s face appeared in the coals immediately afterwards —
“You coming, Ron?”…
Stepping clumsily out of the floo, Ron found Ginny and Harry on the Heads’ Commons sofa listening to a perplexed but worried Draco Malfoy. Ron joined them mid-conversation.
“… packing done — she’s obsessive about planning and preparation —”
“That’s our Hermione.” Harry added in the middle of Draco’s sentence.
“ — and screamed at me to mind my own. Took off up the stairs in tears. Haven’t had the pleasure of her temper in the last half-hour.”
“Figures you’d piss her off, Malfoy.”
“I believe you’re standing in MY rooms, Weaselbee. Please feel free to return to whatever ROCK you crawled out from under.”
“Hermione’s crying upstairs —”
Despite the escalating ruckus between Ron and Draco, Hermione’s sobbing could clearly be heard.
“— and you had nothing to do with it!?” Ron growled.
“Are you sure you’re related, Weasley? I know red hair is an inherited trait but, honestly, the ginger git couldn’t get any more dull-witted.”
“HEY! I’m standing right here, you buggering wank!”
All the arguing raised Ginny’s anxiety level with the ultimate result that she needed the loo in Malfoy’s quarters, ralphing loudly into the commode seconds later.
The Slytherin Sex God stared at Harry before a devilish grin set his face ablaze.
“Congratulations, Potter. I assume aurors-in-training have apparition privileges within Hogwarts?”
Harry’s confirming grin answered all unasked questions. The detente begun when Harry’s testimony kept Narcissa out of Azkaban broadened into peaceful non-hatred.
“Hermione shouldn’t be alone on Christmas, Malfoy. Any idea why she’s being difficult about it?”
“She’s Granger, Potter. ‘Difficult’ becomes her.”
“Talk to her, Draco.”
This most ridiculous suggestion came with Christmas colors, in the form of long red hair and a green-tinged complexion, from Ginny.
“Talk to her. Hermione’s upset with us — RON.” the pregnant Gryffindor clarified.
“What!? All I said —”
“Was she’d feel better after a good hump.” Harry reminded his insensitive best mate.
“Why would she talk to me? Granger and I are hardly friends.”
“I’m her best friend. Right now… we need your help. For Hermione’s sake.” Ginny pleaded.
“You assume,” Draco smirked, “that I care about Hermione’s sake.”
“Harry. Ron. OUT! I’ll meet you back in our Commons.”
“You sure, Ginny?” Harry asked with concern for Malfoy’s safety in Ginny’s present state.
“Yes.”
Popping accompanied Harry and Ron’s disappearance.
“Draco - SIT.”
“How DARE you order me about, blood traitor!”
“Oh, shut it! It’s just us now, Draco. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Hermione but I know you each feel something for the other. McGonagal had to petition the Board not to expel her when she rescued you. You paid for the most expensive Halloween ball gown at Madame Malkin’s and refused to let me tell her. So grow a set, take your pasty white arse up those stairs and talk to her before I’m sick in your lap!”
Draco stared, unable to move until the full weight and authority of Ginny’s words landed.
“Why would they expel her for defending me???”
“Because Hermione hospitalized your attackers without a wand and without speaking! It all happened around her while she tended your wounds.”
“But… I could swear I heard her…”
“Malfoy — the only Hogwarts students capable of that kind of magic in living memory were Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore, my husband and Severus Snape.”
The “o” shape of Draco’s lips confirmed understanding.
“Whatever’s bothering her isn’t something she’ll share with us. Go talk to her.”
Reaching in a hidden pocket, Ginny removed an odd coin and handed it to Draco.
“For better or worse you’re one of us now. Speak her name and I’ll know you want to reach me. Don’t let anyone from Slytherin find that coin.”
The notification coin used by Dumbledore’s Army members had never been in the hands of a Slytherin. Draco flipped the coin over his knuckles several times, lost in thought.
Cultured and mannered in the most stressful circumstances, he carefully steered Ginny to the floo with a light touch on her elbow, grabbed a pinch of floo powder and specified the Gryffindor Commons as he tossed the powder into the flames.
Ginny stepped through as a belated “Thanks” echoed behind her; she couldn’t confirm if her final warning made it back before Ron and Harry greeted her:
“Don’t hurt her, Malfoy — she loves you.”

“Alright, your Highness. Your planner indicates your allotted time for self-pity has elapsed. Get up, get packed and get out of here.”
The sobbing rose to near ear-splitting levels as he entered her room.
“G-g-go home, Draco. Have a H-H-Happy C-C-Christmas.”
A non-combative Hermione annoyed him. Sighing at this explosion of emotionalism, Draco listened to the reverberation of Ginny’s instructions in his memory as he made his way to Hermione’s bedside. His first attempt to sit landed him on her unrelenting hip; Hermione made no space as his weight pressed her opposite hip into the thick mattress.
This will never do…
Employing lower body strength developed from broom flying and Quidditch, Draco butt-bounced her none to gently away from the edge. He leaned his weight back onto his hands to watch her over his shoulder. He’d seen her scared but never weak.
“Bastard…”
“THAT’S the Granger we Slytherins know and love to hate. Talk to me, Granger; why all the tears and PMS?”
“You despise emotional displays, Draco. I’d rather not discuss it.”
She’d backed herself into the corner furthest from him, sitting up in her bed, with her arms wrapped tightly around her bent legs. Body language explained everything but the cause of her extreme sadness.
“Granger, we don’t celebrate Christmas, at least not in the manner you mean. So it hardly matters if I leave tonight or tomorrow. Since it’s obvious the holiday matters to you, here’s a present: I promise to act like a decent, non-pure-blood, Weasley-poor human being if you promise to tell me what has you so upset.”
“Weasley-poor? That’s harsh, Draco, even for you.”
“Will you accept my present?”
“Why are you doing this?”
Draco asked himself the same question, pretending the answer didn’t matter and that he didn’t want to know.
“I don’t like you like this.”
By Arthur’s sword, did I say that out loud!?
“We’ve come out of the war in different places, Malfoy.” her defiant rebuttal came.
“Let’s compare notes: My father’s still under indictment for his Death Eater parties and setting up a bed-and-breakfast hosting Voldemort for the spring season. My mother missed the Dementor’s kiss by a hair thank’s to Potter and I missed a similar punishment by a hair’s breadth thanks to your know-it-all research, obsessive preparation and willingness to testify for me under Veritaserum.”
Twisting himself to face her required crossing his long legs over themselves like children sitting on the floor in pre-Reception. The diminishing natural light cast shadows across his angular face, bringing forth memories of gothic horror and grimoires she’d read by muggle and magical authors. Matter-of-factly, Draco continued his recap of his war experiences.
“Three-quarters of Hogwarts is now off-limits to me because I might get thrashed by students half my size traveling in packs — I misspoke; that’s not a problem anymore because they’re scared shitless that my personal Gryffindor bodyguard will curse and hex them into the Void. I can’t remember when I wasn’t scared that the only people I’ve ever loved would be tortured and killed by that madman or his followers.”
Her head lay forward, cheek to her knees, which irked him further. She raised up at the sudden movement of the mattress; Draco had scooted so far forward that her feet tucked themselves neatly under his crossed ankles.
“And then there’s the little matter concerning the complete destruction of my personal — and family — moral and ethical beliefs. By every reckoning you’re beneath me; Voldemort repeatedly impressed this upon me. I mean, not just you but every muggle-born; the term ‘mudblood’ so aptly described you all. And I took great pleasure in tormenting you about a status of birth that you had about as much control over as I did my own.
“But you see, Granger, thanks to Voldemort’s defeat I have to build a new Draco. My mother was saved by a man whose mother was tormented for her blood status — the same woman my Slytherin godfather loved a lifetime. My so-called ‘mudblood’ classmate finished first in our year for six years, withstood a Cruciatus from my auntie without betraying her friends, managed to break into and out of Gringotts and provided the brains to defeat the Dark Lord.”
He leaned towards her from the waist and propelled his heat, his breath and his male scent through the barrier of her legs. Locking his grey gaze on her, he finished the lecture.
“And that’s not the hardest part, Granger. The most difficult post-war reality for me is this: my mudblood classmate then went on to forgive me and care about my welfare despite the awful ways my family thought about her, treated her. She took care of me and she saved my family.”
At this, Hermione began to sob again.
“Whatever else you may suffer adjusting to the new circumstances, you at least have your family, Malfoy.”
“Explain, Lioness.”
The pet name came across more intimately than “Gryffindor”.
“I obliviated my p-p-parents to protect them from V-V-Voldemort while we hunted for the h-h-horcruxes. Apparently I did too g-g-good a j-j-job because I haven’t been able to r-r-reverse the spell.”
“What about aunts, uncles…cousins?” he asked in hushed tones, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Dead or m-m-missing — Death Eaters hunted them down when they couldn’t find my parents. My relatives were older than most other f-f-families — my parents had me rather late.”
Dropping her forehead to her knees, Hermione explained the outcome for the Granger family.
“I have no f-f-family, Malfoy. I’m an orphan. I helped you because I didn't want you to lose your p-p-parents or them to lose you. Being at the Weasleys reminds me over and over again that I have no one. That’s what the war took from me — my family!”
As a woman, when Hermione married the Granger line would disappear. If she married. Draco, the last fruit on the Black and Malfoy family tress, completely grasped her situation.
“Lioness, I can’t imagine losing my mother. My father can be a bastard but I’ll miss him if he ends up in Azkaban. I’m sorry…”
Levitating her effortlessly with silent, wandless magic, he repositioned the sobbing Head Girl into his lap and cradled her.
“You shouldn’t be here alone. I take it Christmas got the full treatment in the Granger household?”
Curly hair bounced towards and away from his chin as she curled up in his lap. Draco sputtered silently trying to divest his lips of stray hairs.
“We have some time before I have to leave for the Manor. Let’s decorate our Commons — create a bit of Christmas. I’ll check in at home then I promise I’ll come back and keep you company. Are you a good cook?”
“I am, but why is that important?”
“Because I’m used to being spoiled by the house elves at home during the holidays. That responsibility will naturally fall to you when I return”
She slapped his chest over his willingness to overuse the servants.
“So you’re cooking while we’re here together.”
“I’m not a serving wench, Malfoy.”
“I’m under no disillusionment there, Lioness — although wench ‘services’ would be an excellent quid pro quo on my return.”
She slapped him again for suggesting the sexual services.
“Can you live without me a few days?”
“She’ll have to as your mother has sent me to fetch you.” Lucius Malfoy announced, standing on the top stair, as he peered into Hermione’s room from the stairway side of the threshold.

“Talk some sense into your son, Narcissa.”
“Lucius, you’re exaggerating about—”
“I will withdraw him from that ridiculous bastion of liberal thinking if you do not! I should have never given into you on his schooling - this would never happen at Durmstrang! There hasn’t been a single month since our lives disintegrated that the girl hasn’t insinuated her way into Draco’s presence. It’s unseemly!”
“They share quarters at school. It’s impossible for him to avoid her entirely. With our legal situation still unsettled I’m glad she holds a favorable opinion of him — it might benefit you during your trial.”
“Damn the trial!”
The swiftly moving fist slamming onto the side table shook the 100-year-old magical lamp precariously and flipped a 300-year-old wine goblet onto the floor, it’s contents staining the antique rug.
“And what would you have me tell him, Lucius?”
“Simply that he cannot keep consorting with that mudblood!” Lucius proclaimed as he claimed the most comfortable chair in the room for himself.
Narcissa rounded the back of the antique chair Lucius fidgeted in and leaned down to place her mouth next to his ear, crossing her hands over his silk shirt and rubbing his nipples teasingly. Her words came in small puffs and eddies of air. Her hand snaked down his chest and stomach without haste to stop at the bulge lifting the buttons at the juncture of his thighs. A different kind of magic raised Lucius’ “other” wand to the ready.
“And where, pray tell, shall we live when he evicts us from his life? Right now the only Malfoy with access to any significant wealth is your son. So I suggest we allow him his dalliance and remain in his good graces.”
“Why do you tolerate this blatant disrespect from him!? This is NOT how we reared him!”
The whisper forced him to calm, to listen with earnestness and care.
“I may lose you, Lucius. Our tribulations have not abated. I won’t lose Draco too. So long as her attentions keep him happy, I will not upset him — and neither will you!”
- 8
- 9
- 10
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