Title: Sorry
Doesn’t Cut It
Category: Romance/Angst, D/Hr
Author: silvermisery
Disclaimer:
Let me check…currently the titles are not Draco Malfoy and the Half-Blood
Prince, so nope, I guess I don’t own Harry Potter.
She stared
at him. He was asleep, platinum blond hair spread all over the couch and her
shoulders, his face calm and serene as it never was in real life. In the back
of her mind, she knew and accepted and was grateful for the trust he gave her
by falling asleep in front of her without his wand, his guard totally let down.
But all she could think was, sleep. He’s asleep. Something she hadn’t been able
to do for so long, guilt eating away at her and gnawing her insides like a
werewolf ravening to be let out. I have to tell him. I can’t tell him. I have
to.
It was a
year now, a year and three months since she’d first met him at the little café
down the street and he’d bought her a cappuccino; eleven months since it had
stopped becoming a mission and had started becoming real. And she’d been so
happy. Six months since she’d started knowing it wouldn’t, couldn’t last. Lying
had never been one of her talents; even when she had been young, and alive, she
hadn’t been able to convince Borgin and Burkes about that cursed necklace.
Already there were small discrepancies popping up everywhere: photos of people
he knew, tidbits about his life she shouldn’t know, an invisibility cloak in
her room, Galleons to spend when she had had none before. They should
have—wouldn’t have tipped him off; sometimes she thought she might even be
hoping that they would, spare her the task of telling him herself. Only he
loved her, and he trusted her, and now she was going to shatter it all. She was
going to lose it, dammit, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She was
trapped.
Not tell him
and die of guilt—or lack of sleep, she thought ruefully, tell him and lose him
forever. How clever of me, the brightest witch in my year. I have found a path
so deep in hell that there is no way I can ever get out.
“Draco?”
“Hmmm?”
they had been lying in bed together, their clothes still on but cuddled in each
other’s arms.
“Do
you trust me?”
It
was a simple question, so innocuous, but so deadly too. She knew how much it
meant—he knew how much it meant.
“I
don’t know,” he said. “I—it’s been an ice mask for so long, you know? All ice,
covering it—myself, and it’s been there so long I don’t know whether it’s the
ice or myself anymore. And I can’t get rid of it either—it’s part of me for
good now. If you try to pull it away I’ll just come with it.”
“But
maybe you don’t have to pull it away, Draco. Maybe all you have to do…is melt
it.”
“Melt
it, huh?” he asked with a grin. “And what do I get for it if I do?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said,
smiling. “I think I can think of something.” And she drew him to her.
And now she was going to shatter it
all.
“Draco? Draco, wake up,” her voice
was hesitant, but it woke him up instantly, traces of sleep still obscuring his
eyes, but wide awake nevertheless, a last remaining trait of his days as a
Death Eater on the run. Looking at him, she almost stopped, said never mind,
her resolve giving out as it had so many times before. But she couldn’t. She
had to.
“I—I have something to tell you.”
Her voice faltered as she said it, cracking like a child’s.
“Yes?”
At the sound of his voice, she had
promised herself—she had sworn she
wouldn’t cry, but—
“Please, promise me, you have to promise me, don’t hate me for this
Draco, please, don’t—don’t let it destroy you, you have to know,” a torrent of
words, dammed up for so long, came pouring out, and he just sat there and let
her cry into his strong shoulder—the shoulder that been there for so long, no
matter what—the shoulder that would soon no longer be there.
“I’m a spy for the Order.” There. It
was out. She couldn’t look at his face. “I was ordered to try to get closer to
you—to become friends with you.” To
seduce you, the unspoken words hung in the air heavier than the spoken
ones.
“And you did.” It was a statement,
so painfully obvious. She blushed as she recalled their fevered love-making,
the snogging in dark corners, the robes hastily ripped from their body and
flushed cheeks and mussed hair afterwards.
“Why?” his voice was calm,
controlled. It was not the reaction she had been expecting. She knew how
volatile he could become; she had feared curses, hexes—even the Killing Curse,
though she had not thought, really, that he could actually bring himself to
kill her. It was not the reaction she had feared. It was worse.
. “I—Draco, no, don’t do this—” her
voice, traitor that it was, traitor that it always had been, gave out, and she
struggled with words that would not come.
He sighed, a heavy sigh that sounded
like the whole weight of the world was upon his shoulders, and she cringed.
“Was it ever for real?” he asked. “The kissing? The—relationship? Or was it all
just a set-up? Did you ever feel—anything for me?”
She couldn’t bring herself to look
at him. She knew how much it had cost him to lower his pride like this; he was
always the one shying from a relationship, always the one shunning commitment,
and now he had practically said that he loved her. Please, she begged mentally,
please don’t do this to me.
“I see.” His voice was cold.
“Melting ice, huh? Or did you forget that ice always shatters before it melts?”
“Draco, don’t…”
“Don’t what? Don’t get mad because
my whole life for the past four months, my whole life has been a lie?” his
voice finally rose slightly.
“I’m sorry…” even as she said it she
knew how inadequate they were. What do you say to a man whose trust you have
taken away for good?
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Granger,” he said, and the sound of his
voice as he said her last name was like a wounded animal turning upon the enemy
who has cornered it. “Oh, trust me,
Draco,” he said wildly. “Why can’t you trust
me, why are you always so uptight?
Why can’t you be normal? Always the
damned trust, huh? What the hell is wrong with you? You think you can move on,
I can just move on because you said a fucking sorry?” his voice cracked on the last word.
“I don’t know what else to say,” she
murmured, hating to do this, but knowing she had to.
“You don’t know what to say? How
about, Malfoy, I hate you? Malfoy, I hope you drop dead? Malfoy, you never
mattered to me so you can go hang yourself for all I care?”
“No, Draco, I never meant to—it
wasn’t like that, I—”
“That’s Malfoy to you,” he snarled viciously.
“You don’t understand,” she said
desperately.
“What’s there to understand? You
came here to seduce me, to get me to tell you all about me so you can run and
tell Potty and the Weasel, and they can tell the whole world. You did your job.
It never meant anything to you. End of story. Happy ending for everybody except
the big bad Slytherin.”
“No, please, Draco, I swear to God,
it wasn’t just like that,” she pleaded. It sounded so harsh like that. So bare.
So unfeeling and cruel. But that’s what
it was really, all along, wasn’t it? Asked a voice that sounded
suspiciously like her conscience. All
he’s doing it is stating in words you were never brave enough to use. Shut
up, she thought desperately. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
He just looked at her. Anger was
gone—spent in that little exchange of words. It had been an instinctive
reaction, really, as he had always done. Anger to cover up the hurt, iciness to
cover up wounds. But he could keep it up—couldn’t maintain the façade. She had
hurt him too deeply.
He stood up.
“Where are you going?” she asked
frantically, afraid that if he went out like this he would kill himself or
something equally drastic.
“Out,” he said, waving his wand as
he did so. All his belongings zoomed toward him, and then neatly packed
themselves into his suitcase. He picked it up, waved his wand again, and fit
the magically shrunk suitcase into his pocket.
“Out where?” her voice grew
hysterical.
“Hell if I know,” he said, the last
tiny flash of anger mingling with his sadness.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered again,
the only thing she could think of to say, anything to keep him from—what? From
hurting himself more than she already had.
Again those eyes flashed before
turning that horrible black, devoid of all emotion, devoid of all light. “Sorry
doesn’t cut it, Hermione.” It wasn’t anger now, just a terrible resignation, a
knowledge that he was never meant to find happiness. A terrible bleak sadness.
She watched numbly as he left,
shutting the door carefully behind him.
Sorry
doesn’t cut it.
