DRAGON'S HEARTSTRINGS || dramione | harry potter

Chapter Fourteen

Apparently, Malfoy had quite a big stash of alcohol hidden in the room on the third floor – that's where they brought three bottles of hard liquor to the living room. They sat on the armchairs in front of the fire, staring at the flames. Malfoy opened the first bottle, and they drank it passing it to one another after a few gulps. Hermione's whole body ached from the exhaustion of the god-awful day but the warmth that spread through her from the alcohol felt nice and made her sore muscles relax a bit. She didn't know what Malfoy was thinking but she could tell he felt the same.

For the first half an hour they didn't speak, only stared ahead, slowly getting in the events of the day. Then, they spoke of some non-important things, and somehow both of them ended up on the ground, warming up closer to the fire, sitting face-to-face in front of one another. When they were halfway through the first bottle of hard liquor, Malfoy asked Hermione how they destroyed the other three Horcruxes. Hermione explained that Riddle's diary, the one his father gave to Ginny Weasley, turned out to be a Horcrux that Harry destroyed in their second year. Malfoy didn't seem surprised by this information, although he said it was news to him.

Hermione then told him that Marvolo Gaunt's ring was destroyed by Voldemort when they were in their sixth year. Dumbledore had been wearing the Horcrux on his finger, and it made the poison spread from his hand to his whole body until eventually it would've killed him if Snape hadn't done it first. Malfoy's eyes slid to the emerald ring on her finger. He stated he knew all this, although he found that out only a few years later. Hermione wondered if he had been carrying the guilt of almost killing Dumbledore when he was only sixteen, but she knew she shouldn't feel all that sorry – the man in front of her now had done a lot more terrifying things to others.

She explained all that went down with the Salazar Slytherin's locket – how Harry and Dumbledore went to retrieve it on that fateful night and how the Horcrux wasn't where they thought it was, so all that effort was for nothing. She told him how they found the real locket half a year later but couldn't destroy it because they didn't know how. Eventually, they destroyed the locket during the Battle of Hogwarts using Basilisk's poison from the fangs because that's how Harry had destroyed the diary.

Finally, Hermione told Malfoy that Harry was also an unintentional Horcrux of Voldemort; she told him how Snape had revealed to Harry what he and Dumbledore had planned, and this was the reason why Harry didn't die the second time Voldemort tried to kill him. "You-Know-Who killed not Harry but his own Horcrux that night, that's why Harry survived," she finished.

Malfoy seemed skeptical. "Can you destroy a Horcrux with a Killing curse?" he asked.

Hermione shrugged, a little unsure. "I guess you can. It worked, didn't it?"

The lines around Malfoy's lips hardened. "You can't destroy a Horcrux with a Killing curse. If that was the case, any smarter and stronger wizard would be able to do it," he stated firmly this time instead of asking.

"Maybe it works with... living things?" Hermione offered.

Malfoy didn't seem convinced. "Maybe."

They went silent for a few minutes, Malfoy seemed to consider what she just told him. He opened the second bottle of the night, taking a huge gulp from it, and reached it out for Hermione who took it, taking a slightly smaller gulp. After the whole first bottle her throat no longer burned when she drank, her vision was a little blurry, but she felt light as a feather.

"Did you destroy the locket?" Malfoy asked. Hermione nodded. "Did it make you see things? Before you ended it?"

Hermione swallowed. "Yes."

"What did you see?"

Hermione looked into the different shades of his gray eyes. "I saw Bellatrix," she said quietly. He didn't need further explanation. They got silent again. The fire crackled in the hearth. "I'm very sorry about your parents, about what they told you, but you must understand it wasn't them, it was You-Know-Who." Malfoy didn't answer, looking away from her, taking another gulp. "May I ask what—what happened to them?"