Damaged Goods by slytherin_after_dark

Chapter 43

- NOT MY STORY!! ALL CREDITS TO @slytherin_after_dark ON A03!!

There was a sense of freedom. Of new beginnings. A sense of an 'after'. After the war. After the wounds. She still had her scar but it no longer carried the same weight. The nightmares were gone. Her skin no longer itched and burned. She still wanted to finish her research into removing the scar completely but that could wait. For now, she wanted to just enjoy the feeling of life without the constant heaviness surrounding it.

When they got out of the healing quadrant, they went to Malfoy Manor and spent the next week just inside because they couldn't seem to get enough of one another.

It felt like after ages of longing they were finally allowed to enjoy each other as much as they wanted. She joked he was making even sex competitive because he seemed determined to do it in every room and on every surface in the house. He bent her over the table in the entryway, fucked her on the staircase, took her up against the wall in the hallway, interrupted her cooking breakfast by lifting her on the kitchen counter and going down on her, pulled her on top of him on the couch, and recreated their first night together in the Manor's library.

The time they weren't tearing each other's clothes off, they spent talking for hours. She wanted to know everything there was about him, from little things like his favorite breakfast food to deep conversations about their past. He wanted to know about her parents. What they were like. How she spent Christmases in the muggle world. She wanted to know when his relationship with his father changed and when he realized that the blood purity obsession from Lucious was wrong.

"You played a big role in that," he said, stroking her arm as she lay on top of him, staring into his eyes. "I grew up learning that purebloods were so superior to those of mixed blood. When I first met you, I still believed it but then you were better at everything. How can I call anyone of mixed blood inferior when the most perfect person I've met was one?"

She blushed. "Now you're just winding me up."

He chuckled. "I love giving you compliments because one, I mean them, and two, because it makes you so embarrassed."

After that first week—where the world outside went on without them and that was alright because all that mattered to her was in this very house—they decided it was time to leave the Manor on occasion again.

She had to go to Hogwarts and pick up more of her clothes and he took it as an opportunity to check in with Snape. Hermione chatted with Ginny and Harry who were planning their wedding for next year and said invites were going out soon. Harry had moved up in the Ministry and was in the process of helping with the overhaul of the organization.

Before she left, she wanted to say hi to Dominic but when she opened the door to his dorm, she wished she had knocked before.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," she said shielding her eyes. "Just wanted to say hi."

She heard Dominic awkwardly mumbling something while Zabini laughed cooly. "Hi, Granger."

Still covering her eyes, even though the two of them were mostly dressed, she closed the door again.

Chuckling about that unforeseen chain of events she went to Snape's office but she stopped when she saw the professor talking to Draco in a serious tone and his hand landed on his shoulder in what was the most fatherly gesture she had ever seen from Snape. While curious about what they were talking about, she decided to give them a moment and turned on the spot.

She had resumed her weekly meetings with Ginny and Harry at the pub and Draco had so far always had a convenient excuse of why he couldn't attend.

One morning, they were lying in bed reading, when she got a scroll.