Rebellion {Book Two}

That Chair.

Seven.

It's Christmas break. December 21st-
Hermione's first Christmas with Draco, at Malfoy Manor.

He gives her a choice of presents, either a flat box-like candy cane wrapped package or a small square box with snowflakes on the wrapping paper.

She chooses the candy cane wrapped present. She sits by the massive pearl-white fireplace, opens the gift to find out it's a book, a fancy cute book full of pictures. A scrapbook.

"I made it myself," Draco says softly, "From the clips of newspaper that I could find, and photos that I might've taken from your lil' pack."

"You stole these from my pack?"

"Well, you left it here at the start of the year while we were away, and mother helped with finding pictures of you with your parents"

"But all the pictures I had at their home had my face erased, especially for their memories"

"Mother restored them," he waits for her response. "You seem to have gotten your beauty at a very young age"

Hermione smiles and looks to him for his classic sly sweet smile, but he only stares at her. He stares into her almond-brown eyes of intelligence and ambition.

Draco begins to laugh at himself, "I thought I'd never see this day..."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you, Hermione. And the fact that, for so many years, I wanted to tell you how I felt. And not say the things that my Father would expect me to say.."

He looks over to his father's chair, begins to tear up as he looks down.

"That chair- it used to be the place where my mother would play with me, then when my father came in, he'd stand in front of us and mother would put me on the ground and just walk away. Leaving me to be at the feet of my father, as he would sit in his own personal solitary self, twirling the head of his cane between his fingers."

Hermione watches him, glaring into the pit of the fire then he looks back at the chair.

He swallowed up the tears and spoke again, "I still feel the pain that he gave me, whether by his words or even by the kind of looks he would give me."

Hermione tries to find a sarcastic side within the situation, "You'd think that maybe he could've-"

"It's the only thing he knew to do when I would 'misbehave' as he would take it. It's what his father would do to him for the same thing."

"Something tells me that you're not going to be the same as either of them."

"But I'm a Malfoy-"

"And I'm a muggleborn."

The two continue to be silent, then Lucius barges in through the door.