𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘛𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘳~ 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦

Chapter 8: The judge

"Who is it?" I called into the darkness. Shuffling steps. Then a girl emerged from a corner, wearing a beautiful dress, with brown hair artfully pinned up, with hazel eyes. And with tear-stained cheeks. She had heard every single word.
"Granger-"
"Just tell me one thing, Malfoy." She practically spat out my name.
"How come?" She shook her head, more tears welling up in her eyes.
"Why did you become one of them?" I swallowed and took a step towards her. She backed away. There was something in her eyes that I had never seen in Hermione Granger before. Fear. She was afraid of me. It gave me such a pang in the chest that I winced.
"You don't have to be afraid of me. I would never harm you," I gasped. A few months ago, I might have seen things differently, but I couldn't fool myself any longer. I had changed, I no longer wanted to be the same as I had been all those years before. I came towards her again, and again she backed away from me.
"You're a Death Eater!" she blurted out. "But against my will! I'm doing this for my father! Voldemort can get him out of Azkaban, I have to follow his orders or my father is lost!" Even to my ears, that sounded like a weak excuse at. I had become a Death Eater because my father was one and because he was from I expected to do the same. And the only reason I did it was why I did a lot of wrong things: for recognition. I had finally felt important when they had accepted me into their circle. I found all the values that my father had passed on to me there - with the Death Eaters. Pureblood wizards were better than anyone else, Muggles had to are oppressed, wizards and witches who came from a Muggle family were inferior Mudbloods. Without exception. Now I knew how wrong that attitude was. I now knew that everything my father thinks is right thought was wrong because someone had opened my eyes. And this someone was standing in front of me and had discovered what I had become. She saw an enemy in me. I just couldn't stand that…
"Please, let me prove to you that I'm not a bad person," I whispered without any hope.
"You don't know how much I want to believe you, but I can't!"
"Yes you can. Please, let me tell you everything explain." I reached for her hand, before she could pull them away. "I don't want you to explain anything to me. I've heard enough from your mouth, it's all lies!" she shouted at me and wanted to tear herself away from me, but she did I held her hand tightly. "I'm sorry," I said out loud. She paused and looked at me, no longer resisting my grip.
"What?" she asked.

///

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "Everything. Everything I've ever done to you. For treating you like a monster. For even for a second, I truly thought you were inferior. For calling you a Mudblood. Forever allowing myself to hurt you. That I can't be the right one for you. That's what I'm most sorry about." I was at a loss for words. I simply didn't have the words. I just stood there and stared at him. I was unable to realize what had just happened. Warmth spread through me. He was sorry. This confession had triggered something in me. Something I never thought could happen. His apology meant so much more to me than he could imagine. She changed everything.
"Say something." The silver-gray eyes looked at me sadly.
"Draco," I gasped. Yes, I said his first name. Finally. I never wanted to use his last name again because it was also his father's name.

The next moment, he was suddenly right in front of me. Before I could react, he pulled me close and pressed his lips to mine. I was so surprised that it took me a moment before I returned the kiss. I put my arms around his neck and pulled him even closer to me. The smell of roses and vanilla and his soft lips on mine made me forget the world around us. There was nothing left to worry about. Draco was not a Death Eater, not a tyrant, not a monster.

He was just what I wanted most. For a brief moment he separated his lips from mine, looked at me and carefully pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. "Hermione," he whispered. I gasped, then pulled him back to me by the collar of his shirt and kissed him again. Demanding, longing, full of passion and thousands of other feelings. Our hearts beat in unison, the kiss became more and more passionate and longing. The sound of his voice whispering my name echoed in my head. There was no more beautiful sound for me.

///

As soon as our lips met, I was overwhelmed with emotion.

I forgot everything around me, the school, the Death Eaters, my father. Nothing mattered anymore. She was the only thing that mattered to me. No one else had ever made me feel what she made me feel. She had said my name once before, the night we were in the library together. Even back then, it had evoked unprecedented feelings in me, but I quickly repressed them. She made me a better person, and for far too long I had tried to tell myself otherwise. I hated myself for everything I had ever done to her. How could I have been so blind? I needed more of her closeness. I took her face in my hands and pushed her against the wall behind us without stopping kissing her. How would I ever stop doing this? I didn't want that at all. Her lips were so soft and warm, she buried her hands in my hair and sighed when she needed to take a breath between our kisses. She returned the kiss with the same longing that screamed inside me. There was warmth in every cell of my body, happiness flowed through me. It seemed like we stood in this hallway, against this wall, for hours. We exchanged thousands of kisses. But at some point our lips no longer met, we opened our eyes and looked at each other. This hazelnut brown was driving me crazy. I pressed another kiss on her lips and then looked into her beautiful eyes again. She smiled at me.
"Say it again," she demanded.
"My name." Nothing better than that. "Hermione," I whispered and kissed her.
"Hermione!" I put my hands on her waist and lifted her up, turned her in a circle, lowered her again, pulled her against me again and kissed her again. And again and again. She wrapped her arms around me.
"You're the one for me, Draco." She looked at me with determination. Our lips found each other completely alone again, I wasn't sure if we would be able to separate from each other again. It should be fine with me.

I held in my arms the girl I was unquestionably falling in love with.