A/N: Thanks to Draco's Gurl, desertstorm, Jenna Kathleen (it just might be H/Hr by the end! Or maybe the epilogue...I dunno, but I'm hoping it ends up that way too, lol.), hpdancer92, ~mrs~draco~malfoy~, Mrs Felton, Anna, pinksunryse (yet another long review! Man, you're awesome! Chloe's actually like my widdle sister Rachel...hehe, she just turned 7, she's so adorable...), Lily Love (glad to get consent from an editor!), lavalampronsgirl (ah, another R/Hr...you guys must go through so much pain being on this site, lol), Austenlover, nymphtonks, chica, and all you anonymous reviewers for your amazingly supporting comments.
This entire story has been in third person, with the exception of the last chapter. Yes, that was meant to be...I dunno, that chapter was more of an out-take than it was a real chapter...well, who cares about what I'm saying! Finally, a new chapter! READ!
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To Bring You Back
Chapter Seven: Revelation, part III
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"Well then," Draco croaked out. "I guess we do need to talk."
Harry nodded, raising his wand and muttering an incantation. The door closed, a startled Hermione stepping further into the room.
"What're you talking about, Harry?" Ginny whispered, her eyes darting from Draco to Harry. "What-"
Harry silenced her with a look.
"Out with it, Malfoy," he spat. Enraged, his hands curled into fists and he gritted his teeth; even Draco looked a little scared.
"There's nothing to tell, Potter, if you told me right." They stared each other down for a few moments, blazing green and stormy gray.
"Harry-" Hermione tentatively began, but Harry raised a hand.
"Malfoy, Ginny deserves to know." Draco paled but remained firm, his face set into a pained expression.
"It's better if she doesn't."
"I'm standing right here!" Ginny erupted, turning from Harry to Draco in rage. "You don't need to talk like-"
"What the hell do you mean, it's better if she doesn't?! She deserves to know!" Harry glared at Draco.
"She shouldn't be burdened with it," Draco muttered.
"A burden? Yes, Malfoy, truth is a burden-she thinks that you left her! She thinks that you left London because you were leaving her! Do you know how heart broken she was?"
"Well then she knows the truth already, doesn't she? There's no reason-"
"That's not the fucking truth, and you know it!" Ginny's eyes went wide as Harry made that statement.
"Harry-" Hermione tried again.
"And Hermione! And me! We both deserve to know!" Harry yelled.
"Harry-"
"You two? Why the fucking bloody hell should I tell you two?! What did the two of you do to deserve the truth? The fact that you and her already know it is beyond me-"
"Harry-"
"We deserve to know because we both...wait, what?" Harry stopped talking, blinking uncertainly.
"Harry-" Hermione tried again.
"What what?" Draco sneered.
"You said...what did you say?"
"Harry!" Hermione frowned, narrowing her eyes.
"I shouldn't need to repeat myself." Draco gave a bored sigh.
"HARRY JAMES POTTER!" Hermione finally yelled.
"What, Hermione?!" Harry turned to Hermione, exasperated. "What?!"
"I already know!"
"You already know what?"
"About everything!"
"That's what I was saying, Potter," Draco explained. "Both you and Granger already know, and I don't want Ginny knowing, there's no use-"
"Don't want me knowing what?" Ginny interrupted. "What is there for me to know?"
"Nothing!" Draco yelled, turning to her.
"Then what's Harry-"
"Potter is a raving, bloody lunatic! He doesn't know what he's talking about!"
"Then tell us, for Merlin's sake, exactly what I'm missing." Harry took another step forward, his fist clenching again. "We deserve to know."
"Why do you think you deserve such an honor?" Draco sneered, mocking Harry as he tried to smirk.
Harry sighed, his green eyes blazing with anger as he muttered, "Because Ron died for it."
Draco paled, swallowing nervously.
"H-how...you..."
"I went to Ron's house after my meeting with Snape. But as I was playing with Chloe for a bit, I found something in Ron's study...a bundle of letters. And I know all of them are from you."
Harry sighed again, raking his fingers through his unruly hair.
"He...Ron...what did you have to do with Ron?" Hermione asked quietly, her brown eyes brimming with tears.
"Granger-"
"Tell me what the fucking hell you had to do with Ron!" Draco's eyes slowly moved from Harry's glaring eyes to Hermione's desperate ones, and sighing, sat back down at the table.
For a brief moment, Draco's eyes snapped up to meet Ginny's, sharing a glance.
"I'll have to start from the beginning," Draco muttered, staring now at his hands. His shoulders were rigid, his stormy eyes exhausted. "I fell in love with Ginny...but I wasn't aware of it then."
Ginny's heart leaped-he had loved her! Draco Malfoy had loved her!
But then her eyebrows knitted in confusion-in that case, why had he left her?
"She asked me if I did love her...and I told her no. I thought that it would be impossible for us, and more for my sake...I tried to get out of it. But even then I knew it was too late."
Hermione nodded attentively, and Harry almost gave out a small laugh at her antics.
"But soon...I realized I couldn't forget her. Realized what she meant to me. Yet I couldn't tell her that I loved her." Ginny pleaded for Draco to look at her but his eyes remained fixed on the floor. "But I told her that...told her I would die for her. That I would do anything to make sure that she could come home. To me, of course."
Draco sighed, getting up from his chair and pacing the room nervously. He opened his mouth only to close it again-this reoccured nearly six times before he stopped moving and began to talk again.
"Soon...I knew she couldn't come home to me. I couldn't be her home...so instead, I decided no matter what would happen, I'd protect her." Draco took a deep breath, sitting back down at the table and nervously drumming his fingers on the wood. "I went to my father...he was in the final stages of plotting Voldemort's coming-up offensive. I told him that I would turn him in, give all the secrets I knew, make sure that he died...unless he promised me with Malfoy blood that he would do something." Draco's lips twisted up into a small smirk as he remembered. "I made him promise that he wouldn't hurt Ginny...that nobody would. That she would live past this war, which I was confident the light side would win." He nodded to Harry then, who, surprised, gave a small nod back.
"But Malfoy-" Hermione began, yet with a look from Harry she closed her mouth and instead looked intently at Draco.
"Father made a Malfoy blood promise. But he said that it wasn't enough...he said that keeping the Weaslette safe was worth more. He said that I had to leave her...not have any contact with her. So I made a blood promise with him in return....one, that I wouldn't tell anyone inside the Order any secrets, and two, that I would leave Ginny." Draco swallowed, shaking his head. "But I found a way around the secrets. Dumbledore helped me with this-I would tell the Order inductees information before they were officially part of the Order. But for Ginny...no matter how much I tried to get around it...there was no way."
"What do you mean?" Ginny asked quietly.
"Whenever I saw you...my feet went in the opposite direction of its own accord. Whenever I even heard your voice, I had to get away. I left England, Ginny, to leave you, yes...but you have to understand, I only..." Draco broke off, closing his eyes. "A Malfoy blood promise is where we drink a potion with their blood as the main ingredient...it magically bound us to the promise we held with the other."
"That's barbaric!" Hermione exploded.
"That it is," Draco admitted. "But it was the only way to ensure my father's word...the only way it's removed is when the other's promise is broken. That's how I knew he had escaped...it's possible to break a blood promise, you know. However painful and difficult...it's possible. You have to understand, it's only accomplished in the worst situations of desperation...when this happens, it causes immense pain to both parties. That's how I knew my father had broken his promise, somehow."
"Wait," Hermione intervened. "How could Lucius Malfoy have broken your promise? Ginny hasn't been touched-"
"That's true," Draco interrupted. "But if you remember correctly, the promise said that he wouldn't hurt Ginny. It never specified how it would hurt her. The thing is, a cut or a scrape wouldn't be considered hurting her. It would have to be a purposeful, physical wound...or something like a brother's death. My father purposely killed Weasley, with the intention of hurting Ginny. He knew I would come."
"But how...what does that have to do with Ron?" Ginny asked. "What did...Why did he-"
"That's one thing that Snape also doesn't know." Draco began pacing again, his eyebrows knitted in concentration. "Snape believed that he was my only correspondent...but that wasn't true."
"No..." Hermione whispered, staring horridly at Draco's pacing figure.
"Weasley also kept in touch."
"So you killed him? What did he have to do for you?! What did you make him do!" Hermione screamed, fists clenched.
"I didn't make him do anything," Draco whispered, but by his stance, Ginny could tell he still felt responsible. "He found out about me quite by accident...I never meant to pull him into this." Draco looked at Hermione, pleading, begging for her to understand. "Do you recall, about a year go, when Ron went to America?"
"Yes," Hermione said slowly, frowning as she tried to remember. "He went with Arthur for an inventors convention, I think. But what-"
"He bumped into a young girl while strolling around after the convention. She was on a cell phone, and he heard her say, 'Sorry, Mr. Malfoy...what were you saying?'"
"So he-"
"He followed her, naturally. Weasley curiousity." Draco smirked. "She's...not a witch. Squib, actually. But her family's been Malfoy servants for generations...my mother was very fond of her. So she was the one I brought with me to America...besides, this way, I knew she wouldn't mind melting into the muggle society."
"Who was she?"
"Her name's Miranda Figg. I think you know her aunt, Potter. Arabella? She used to be my nanny."
"Where is Miranda?"
"I sent her to Arabella's house before I came here. She's probably worried about whether or not I just conveniently dropped her...she doesn't have a job or education, otherwise."
"Why didn't you tell us about her?" Ginny asked. "We would've gone and told her or something, I-"
"Because I don't want her in this," Draco replied sharply. "She's just an innocent girl, she doesn't know anything...I knew if I mentioned her, aurors would be crawling all over her. I don't want that."
"A little overprotective?" Ginny muttered, slightly smirking.
"But anyway...he followed her. To my apartment, it seems. Knocked on the door a moment after she walked in. You can imagine my surprise at seeing him."
"So what happened?"
"Nothing," Draco replied, shrugging. "He demanded to know what I was doing there. Everything one would imagine an ignorant Weasel to ask."
"Did you...tell him anything?"
"I had to. What would I do, having him dancing back to London and exclaiming he knew where I was? I had started my fresh life there, I couldn't just kill myself and start a new identity. It was easy the wizarding way...but killing yourself as a muggle is just too much work. Too complicated. So much bloody paperwork. That's a way our societies are too well the same."
"So what did he do?"
"The Weasley actually offered to help me. I declined at first, saying that I didn't need someone to screw up my perfectly made plans. But...he volunteered something that I couldn't refuse."
"And what was that?" Harry asked.
"To give me updates on Ginny," Draco muttered quietly. "I knew I shouldn't. I should've kept my head up and perform a memory charm...but for some reason...I agreed. To be honest, however, Weasley was in a perfect position to feed me the necessary information. He was an auror, closely related to all the people in high power and was someone that no one would expect me to correspond with."
"Why didn't he tell me?" Hermione asked Draco. "I mean, why didn't...Ron is horrible at keeping secrets...you didn't do anything, did you?"
"I had to," Draco said quietly. "We did a blood promise...Ron was very hesitant, for his part. He said that he couldn't hide something like this from you, Hermione, or you, Harry. Particularly Ginny...but in the end, he agreed. He knew it was the sensible thing to do..."
"What was your promise in return?" Harry asked. Draco smiled in an ironic way.
"That I would never tell you what he hid from you."
"Then how-"
"Something slipped. I don't know how...but word of it traveled, and Lucius heard of it in Azkaban. When he managed to escape...he came to the one correspondent he knew could give him information to my whereabouts."
"Ron," Hermione whispered.
"Another reason why I came," Draco muttered. "Ron didn't let anything else slip...but how Lucius found out about Ron, I don't know...and I planned to find out."
"But-"
"Lucius sent word to Weasley. Threatened him...Weasley went out to meet him, Granger. He went of his own free will...and I suppose that my father threatened to kill you if he didn't tell him where I was, what I was doing, what I was planning." Draco sighed, raking his fingers through his lengthened hair. "It was enough for Ron to break a blood bond...your safety, Granger, was more important to him than my whereabouts."
"And then he...killed him..." Hermione muttered, her eyes wide.
"Yeah..." Draco stopped pacing, a sigh racking through his body. "I'm sorry, Granger."
"You bloody well should be," she mumbled, hands clasped on her mouth. "Oh Merlin..."
"Hermione," Ginny said gently as she walked to the woman's side.
"How could you do this to us," Hermione said, staring at Draco. "How could you do this to him...put him in that situation? You...you foul, evil...bastard...you..."
"I've already apologized," Draco muttered, his gaze slowly turning cold. "I didn't force him into it. I don't owe you anything else."
The two stared at each other, seemingly sizing each other down.
"Malfoy," Harry began, giving a wary look at Hermione. "There's something I don't understand..."
"Like that's anything new," Draco said, still glaring at Hermione.
"Why didn't you just change your appearance and voice? I mean, why stay Draco Malfoy?" Harry asked, completely ignoring Draco's taunt.
"I couldn't," Draco explained. "By changing myself, I wouldn't be Draco Malfoy anymore...the blood promise wouldn't let me. You can't change anything about yourself that might possibly change the promise. It's...complicated."
"Well," Hermione muttered, rubbing her temples. "You're free to go, Malfoy."
"Wh-what?" he stuttered, blinking. "What do you mean?"
"You just confessed to not doing the murder," she wearily said, conjuring a chair and sitting on it. "So go ahead."
"I..." Malfoy said, swallowing. "I can't."
"What?" Harry asked, unfolding his arms. "What do you mean?"
"My father...he's...he's holding my mum hostage," Draco whispered. "If I...he'll kill her, Potter. I can't...she..."
The four of them remained silent, contemplating on what to do. Ginny snuck a glance at Draco to find him staring at her, and they gazed at each other until Hermione spoke.
"Go and find him," she said. Trying to smile, she whispered, "We won't let anyone know. I'm sure Dumbledore will agree." She shared a glance with Harry, who had his eyes narrowed.
"I don't know, Hermione," he said. "This goes against everything we-"
"So now you're going to stop breaking the rules?" she said jokingly, smiling. "Come on, Harry..." Harry sighed, shaking his head.
"For Ron, then," he said. Looking up to watch Draco, he added, "But the moment you know where he is, you come and get us."
"You expect me to come and get you bloody aurors?," Draco said, shaking his head. "No." Hermione narrowed her eyes, strutting so that she stood a few feet from Draco.
"I will murder this man," she said, her voice breaking. "I don't give a damn what you want to do with him."
Draco sighed, taking a deep breath before putting his hands in his pockets.
"Weasley wouldn't've want you to commit revenge," he said. "You're above that, Granger."
"Maybe I am," she said, raising her chin defiantly. "But all the same...Harry and I are coming with you. This is as much our problem as it's yours."
"No," Draco said, locking eyes with Hermione. "Weasley wouldn't have wanted it."
"How do you know!" she yelled. "He's not exactly here to raise any objections!"
The room turned deadly silent as Draco stared out the window, a forlorn expression on his face. Shaking his head he muttered, "You're a stubborn ass, Granger." As he turned around he added, "Fine. I will alert the two of you when I find him...but don't expect me to wait around."
"Fine by me," Hermione said, waving her wand. A click was heard throughout the room and the door opened. "But hold on, Malfoy. Harry and I have to scan you."
"Scan me?" Draco asked, frowning.
"Yeah, so that anyone who comes in thinks that they see you sleeping on the bed," Harry explained, pointing his wand at Draco and moving it from his head to his feet. Then pointing at the bed a jet of pink light jetted out, a mirror image of Draco appearing underneath the blankets.
"We should give you a new face, too," Hermione said, narrowing her eyes. "Harry? You want to do the honors?"
"Of course," he said, grinning slightly. Draco swallowed, suddenly wary of whatever Harry was thinking.
"Potter, don't-"
Harry bit his lip and flushed his wand in Draco's direction, a jet of yellow shimmer floating out as it surrounded him. The shimmer settled upon his skin, and he felt his skin turn into wax...his closed his eyes as momentary pain erupted when his bones began to remold themselves...in a few moments, although un-Malfoy, Draco opened his eyes.
"Now you can go," Hermione said, motioning towards the door. "Don't take too long," she added, almost smiling at Draco.
He walked to the door, attempting to run his fingers through his delicious golden locks only to find that they had become a dirty brown. As he entered the doorway he stopped, a sudden thought formulating in his head.
"Granger?" he said, turning around.
"Yes?" she answered curtly. "We don't give a damn if you don't like your new appearance, Malfoy, there isn't a way you couldn't look any better than what you-"
"Weasley sent me a letter," Draco interrupted, fighting a smile, "in the off-chance case that he bit the dust. He instructed me not to read it...but to give it to you when it happened. It's with Miranda...in case you want to get it."
"Thanks, Malfoy," Hermione said, a distant smile on her lips.
"And Granger?"
"Yes?"
"I...I can see why you married him." Satisfied at the look on Hermione's face he walked out, his hands in his pockets, an un-trademark smile on his face.
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reviewing's good for the soul...
That has to be the worst chapter I have written for this entire series. Granted, it was probably the most important, what with all the info I gave out...but all the same, bleh! I hate this chapter! Took me long enough to be half satisfied with it...anyway, D/G fluff should be coming up soon, I think. Don't expect anything big, but hopefully they'll be able to kiss a few more times, hm? Anyway, I've been so frustrated with this chapter that you'll probably see loads upon loads of grammar...part of me says that I really need to find a beta, but yeah...