Wartime Dramione
Prompt: “Tell me you love me”
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“Tell me,” he says. Hermione wasn’t expecting this reaction. Anger, betrayal — yes. But not this. Not his gray eyes wide in desperation. “Tell me you love me.”
The air was sucked out of the room. She wondered if he could feel her pulse in the grip he had on her wrists. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Draco was searching her face for something she could not give him.
“You know that I don’t.” The words felt like an iron rod down her throat. Not because she didn’t mean them, but because she did.
She watched his shoulders slump before his expression fell into smooth indifference and fixed his posture. Like he turned himself off and back on again. A restart. It was so subtle, so fast, that it was almost undetectable that it had even happened. Hermione missed the days where she did not recognize his occlumency.
“Draco, please—”
His raised palm stopped her. “Don’t.”
She stared at him. He slowly moved his hand down and inside his pocket.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Hermione said.
He let out a loud laugh, it echoing in the cobwebbed room. The rapid changes in his demeanor was giving her whiplash.
“What were you trying to do, exactly?” Draco’s words were venomous. “What did you think would happen once you wormed your way into my life? Made me care about you? Did you think that you would achieve your goal and leave me unscathed?”
She went to respond and he cut her off with, “That’s rhetorical, Hermione.”
The use of her first name felt like more of a slap in the face than any slur he could have hurled at her. She wanted to explain, make it better, but the truth was why it hurt like it did.
“I couldn’t,” she tried. “I couldn’t let myself love you. I can’t.”
“But you had no problem doing to me what you couldn’t handle happening to you.”
Her stomach dropped to the floor. He was right. She hated that he was right. But. But.
“You’re a Death Eater!” She spit, finally saying what she felt was obvious. What she had to know. What she had to believe for all of this to have been worth it.
Draco’s eyes flickered before the wall pushed itself back into place.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m a Death Eater.” His voice was hollow. “I’m the Death Eater who now has a target on his back from the Dark Lord himself. All in the name of keeping you safe.” He ran a hand down his face, his Slytherin ring glinting in the dim light of the shrieking shack. He had apparated them there after the raid at Malfoy Manor.
“Draco-”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell them where the precious Golden Trio has been hiding out all this time when they try to crucio it out of me.”
Hermione stilled. How could he possibly know where they had been staying? She would need to send word to Harry to move their location.
Draco sneered at her. “You didn’t really think that I wouldn’t have ensured that you were safe at all times? That I wouldn’t have tabs on your location in case I needed to get to you before someone else did?”
Hermione hated to even ask, but she had to know. Had to be sure. “What’s stopping you from running to Tom now and telling him?”
“Because I want you to live. Because even when I hate you, I love you. Above all else, I love you.”
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a/n: i found this in my drafts and sort of love it and am debating picking this back up for a longer piece