Hate You, Hate Me

~Chapter 13 - Loss and Resolve~

I hate you, Hermione.

The hallway was quiet and dark. I was staring out into the abyss, thinking strange thoughts. What if the floor underneath me tilted, and I fell down into the darkness? Could I ever be saved? Would I ever even hit the ground? Would I die, or would I keep falling forever?

I hate how you ended up being pregnant with Potter's child.

Hermione was pregnant. Her short affair with Potter had left her with child. Part of my mind accepted it as fact, but the other part rebelled. It didn't actually make sense. None of it did. This whole bloody year had the markings of a long nightmare I just couldn't seem to wake from. Weasley's death. Hermione suicidal. Potter soulless. Hermione pregnant.

It couldn't be real. This couldn't be the same year I became Head Boy. The same year Hermione became Head Girl. That year had stretched impossible long into the blurring of my nightmare. When had it started? At which point did it stop being real?

The only thing that made some sense about this was my role. My selfishness. My envy. These things were nothing new. But how could petty Draco Malfoy have caused this nightmare scenario to become real?

A lit wand turned the corner out of the Hospital Wing. Madame Pomfrey came towards me. "Mr. Malfoy..." she breathed. Her face was serious, and it pulled me out of my contemplation.

I straightened out of my protective pose. "What is it?" I demanded. "What has happened? Is she all right?"

"Miss Granger is... stable," she said. "But her emotional state is quite another story."

"She's all right, though?" I asked again. "She was bleeding..."

Madame Pomfrey frowned, and her eyes looked weary and wet. "In all my years, I've never had to deliver this news, but... the child did not survive."

"What?" I heard myself say. In all my thoughts out in the hallway, I had never once considered Hermione surviving without the child. It was always Hermione dead. I'd pictured her, ashen and cold, lying in bed with bloodied sheets. The scene was imprinted into my mind.

Madame Pomfrey put a hand on my shoulder. "I am sorry, boy."

I cringed away from her. As I stared into her pitying gaze, I realized she thought me to be the father. I laughed a strange, mad laugh.

"Perhaps, you should come in and rest," Madame Pomfrey offered, her hand reaching out to me.

I tried to take a deep breath. "I am fine." I turned and started walking into the darkness.

"Wait, Mr. Malfoy!" Madame Pomfrey called after me in astonishment. "She's... asking for you."

I stopped. "What?"

"Miss Granger is asking for you..." Madame Pomfrey repeated. "I understand how you might feel like being alone in your misery, but she needs you to be strong. "

I looked back at her and the light from her wand, still alive in the darkness. "She doesn't need me," I said, but I walked towards her.

"Miss Granger refuses the dreamless sleep potion," Madame Pomfrey continued. "She needs your comfort and protection. You cannot leave her alone to wallow in your own grief."

I sighed. She didn't know the truth of the situation, but somehow, Madame Pomfrey was still right. If Hermione was really asking for me, I couldn't deny her. Though all I could imagine were her heated eyes, glaring fire at me back in the common room. The only reason I could come up with for Hermione wanting to see me was to kill me. But even if that were the case, I couldn't deny her that either.

I hate how you had a miscarriage when you found out about Potter.

I followed Madame Pomfrey into the room. My feet felt like lead. I half-expected my footsteps to bang against the stone. Curtains roped off part of the room on the left, and as we walked through them, I saw Hermione sitting propped up in the last bed. Her eyes were hollow.

I just stood there for a moment, watching her. Madame Pomfrey brushed past me and touched Hermione's hand. "Dear, I brought Mr. Malfoy to see you. He was waiting just outside, like I told you," Madame Pomfrey said with all the comfort of a loving Aunt.

Hermione blinked once, and then, her eyes flashed to me. I swallowed. There was no anger there. That scared me.

"Thank you," Hermione breathed.

Madame Pomfrey nodded and straightened. She walked over to me. "I'll be right in my office if you need anything," she said, quietly. "We'll try the potion again later." She waved her wand, and the curtains closed around Hermione and me. Hermione's wand was lit on her bedside table.

Hermione looked away from me. She was silent for a long time. "I don't really want you here," she said.

"Oh," I said, lamely.

Hermione looked at me again. "It's just that you're all I have now," she said, coldly. "What else was I to do? Who could I turn to?"

"Perhaps... Ginny?" I offered.

"What right do I have to put this on her?" Hermione said. "She's been in love with Harry since the day they met. She's just lost her brother. I can't."

"Hermione..." I started.

She groaned at my voice speaking her name. "What have you to say now, Malfoy?" Hermione said, heatedly. "What can you do now to destroy everything I love? There's nearly nothing left." Her voice filled with pain at her last sentence.

I surged automatically towards her, wrapping her into my embrace. "I'm so sorry," I mumbled into her shoulder.

"Don't touch me," Hermione cried. But she didn't fight me. In fact, she leaned into me, and I could feel her trembling with the force of her quiet sobs. "The baby... the baby's gone."

"I know," I breathed. "I'm sorry, Hermione. So sorry."

"I just wanted some little piece of him to carry on," Hermione whispered. "And Harry... he always wanted a family. We thought we could be a family for the baby."

"I had no idea," I said. But of course, I had no idea. Why would she share this with me? And it wasn't hard to cast glamours to cover a pregnancy early on. "I would have..." But I had no idea what I would have done. What could I have done? And what could I say now? That I wouldn't have taken Potter into the woods if I had known? How on Earth would that help?

...the worst part was I didn't know if it would have mattered to me at all.

"What will I do, Draco?" Hermione cried. "I've lost everything."

"I... I don't know," I said. I could feel my chest moving strangely against her, and I realized I was crying, too. "But we'll figure something out. I promise."

I hate how when you cried in my arms that night, I cried too.

Hermione didn't say anything more; she just cried softly in my arms. I rested my face in her hair and let my escaping tears disappear into her curls. I breathed in her warm scent and promised myself I would do anything she asked of me. Things had come a long way since 7th year had begun, and I knew I had no life away from Hermione Granger. She was my entire world, and I had to protect her.

Madame Pomfrey soon peeked in through a gap in the corner. She slid in, and I saw her glance at the window next to the bed. "Almost dawn," she murmured. She slipped a bottle from her pocket. "Do you think you can get her to take this?"

I carefully reached out a hand to take the bottle, and Madame Pomfrey left us alone again. I thought Hermione might already be asleep, but she twitched oddly against me. "Hermione?" I said.

"What?" she mumbled. I shook her lightly, and she looked up. "What?"

I took the cork out with my other hand. "Drink this," I said.

For a moment, Hermione glared at the bottle suspiciously, but her expression soon softened with tiredness, and she allowed me to tilt the bottle past her lips.

"I hate you, Draco," Hermione whispered. She fell back into my arms fast asleep.

"I know," I sighed.

I held her as she slept, and I watched the light coming through the window from the rising sun touch the stone floor. I wondered what would happen now. Students would be waking soon. What would they be told? I thought vaguely of Cedric Diggory's death in 4th year. Dumbledore had given a speech. He had spoken the truth, or what I thought to be the truth. Would he be honest now?

In spite of my awkward position, I'd almost fallen asleep, myself, when the curtain flew open. Snape took in the sight in front of him with a shocked expression. "Draco..."

"Yes?" I asked, fighting a yawn. "What is it?

"I thought you'd... left," Snape said.

"She fell asleep," I said. "I couldn't leave her."

"Left the school," Snape elaborated.

I blinked. "What?"

"You weren't in your dorm," Snape sighed, crossly. "I feared the worst."

"I wouldn't leave her," I said.

Snape shook his head. "It matters not," he said. "The Headmaster has yet to return."

"No," I said. "That can't be." Just like with Hermione, I hadn't been able to imagine anything but Dumbledore returning with Harry's body, looking grim.

"I'm afraid it's true," Snape said. "And something must be done at once!"

Hermione lifted her head. "What's going on?" she asked, groggily.

Snape's expression flashed to alarm, but it was gone before I could be sure I'd seen it.

"Dumbledore's... been gone a long time," I said, carefully.

If it was possible, Hermione's face turned sadder. "Oh, no," she said. Hermione was upset but resigned. She wasn't the least bit surprised. "I... I knew this would happen."

"How could you possibly...?" I started.

Hermione sighed. "Harry worried that if it happened... Dumbledore wouldn't be able to do it."

Snape made a noise. "That's it, then?"

Hermione looked up at him. "I'm sure of it."

"Wh-what are the two of you talking about?" I demanded.

Hermione gave me a look that clearly told me she didn't think I deserved to know, but she spoke the words anyhow. "Voldemort wanted Harry's body. His was growing weak, and he always assumed Harry's power came from their connection. Without a soul, Harry isn't Harry anymore. And if Dumbledore got there too late..."

"He'd have to kill Potter," Snape finished.

"Yes," Hermione whispered. "And Dumbledore... he couldn't do it."

"I refuse to accept that," Snape barked. "Dumbledore isn't weak!"

I sent him a glare for daring to yell at Hermione in her current state, but she defended herself. "You may not understand what it's like to love someone, but Dumbledore loved Harry very much. He wouldn't want to destroy the body that looked just like him. That isn't weak. "

"He'd get up the nerve," Snape countered.

"Even a moment's hesitation could be it with Voldemort," Hermione said.

"I'll get to the bottom of this!" Snape turned and with a flip of his cape strode out of the room. Hermione glared after him, until he could no longer be seen, then her face fell into her hands.

"Hermione...?" I tried, slipping my sore arm back around her.

"I don't even have any tears left," Hermione said. "There's nothing left in me."

I wanted to tell her that wasn't true, but what right did I have to say that?

"What about your family?" I realized aloud.

Hermione pulled away and looked at me with bloodshot eyes. "Madame Pomfrey offered to owl my parents, but I can't - I just can't let her do it," she said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"They'll want to come here," Hermione explained, almost hysterically. "They'll want to be here for me. I'm not sure they even could, but they would try. And everything's going crazy!"

"Maybe you should go home," I said, pushing away some hair from her face and letting my fingers get caught in the curls. "You might be safer."

Hermione sent me a glare, and for a moment, I wasn't sure if it was because of what I'd said or what I'd done. "I'm not running away." I sighed. Stubborn Gryffindor.

"You have to consider it, Hermione," I pleaded. "Right now, you're weak and, we don't know what's coming next. This could be it for all of us."

"So, I should just go home and wait to die?!" Hermione snapped. "No way. I don't know about you, Draco Malfoy, but I won't go down without a fight. Even if there's no hope of beating him, I'd rather die fighting!"

Of course, she would.

"I haven't forgiven you," Hermione continued. "I'll never forgive you." She took in a deep breath. "But if you stay and fight for redemption, I'll let you live."

I smirked. "All right," I said. "Then, I'll fight, too." Little did she know, I would have had it no other way.