Out of Time

Chapter 53

"How dare you tell him that?" Hermione seethes, gripping the towel around herself so tightly that her knuckles are white. Draco can hardly process her abrupt appearance in the doorway. She stands there, dripping onto the floor and shivering slightly in the open air. Her wet hair hangs limply to her waist, the ends trembling along with the rest of her.

None of this reduces the impression that she's crackling with pure, unfiltered magic, channelling a rage that makes her seem to spark from within. Draco hasn't even had time for Weasley's declaration to marinate into anything concrete, too off-balance by her sudden appearance in the doorway.

Weasley is similarly shocked into silence, flushing bright red (though he hasn't exactly been pale through most of this little chat). His unfortunate lapse in speech gives Draco's girlfriend all the time she needs to go on a fresh assault.

For all Draco knows, she'd spent the entirety of the shower running other arguments through her mind right on the heels of the screaming row with Weasley half an hour ago. Was there anything more frustrating than perfecting an argument too late to use it, and anything better than getting another opportunity when least expecting one? Hermione seemed to be gearing up for a full detonation and Weasley retreated a step.

"That was a fucking Horcrux. It had nothing to do with me. It was twisting anything it could to get under your skin, and it worked. How dare you say it like I was spending night after night in that tent, dreaming about somebody other than Draco?

"I've held your secrets for you. I've held them from you, as a matter of fact, doing you a bloody kindness you haven't deserved."

She steps forward, index finger outstretched. Her brown eyes blaze with indignant anger and Draco doesn't know if she's ever looked so beautiful.

"Back at school, you and Lavender didn't just end things. You got your dick stuck through a knob hole and she couldn't get you out. She came to fetch me, and when you thought it was me doing it, she was able to get you off - and out."

The logistics of this make less than no sense to Draco. A knob hole? In what? Weasley's dick got stuck? Where? But this clearly means something tangible to Weasley, who is no longer red at all. He looks like death incarnate. His freckles could be flecks of mud with how starkly they stand out on his cheeks.

"Lavender ditched you because you were attracted to me, even then. And you were so mortified afterwards that I obliviated you in the common room. You're welcome," she hisses.

"Hermione," Weasley gulps, shaking his head back and forth and holding his hands aloft in front of him. Silly; there's no stemming this verbal onslaught, Draco thinks in fascination. He's not even sure if Weasley's responding to the primary issue or this new brick of detail Hermione's throwing at his head.

"Hermione, I didn't mean it like -"

"- and yet," Hermione says over him, volume rising, "you stand there and talk about dreams, Horcrux dreams, making you so crazy with jealousy -"

She's drawn quite the crowd. Fleur and Bill must be tiring of this, especially since their cottage simply isn't very large. It's overrun with people, without those people having various screaming fits from rows, nightmares, panic attacks or anything else.

Draco doesn't see Ollivander or the goblin, though Ollivander was up and about the day before. He's still holding out hope that they can commandeer the spare bedroom, if only to make the rest of the occupants' lives easier in accessing the kitchen.

But that's neither here nor there. Here is his girlfriend, shouting so enthusiastically that she's about to forget she needs to hold her towel together. Draco sends a surreptitious sticking charm at the knot, just in time for her hands to fly in the air with her shrieks.