Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters.

Yay, I simply can't leave that couple alone!! I know, I should be writing on other stuff or whatever, but I soo can't help it, they are soo sweet:)

Okay anyways, here goes:

Light Me Up

Oneshot

Whatever it was that made her feel so incomplete, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, anyway. Harry was gone; Ron had changed so much to the point of being insane, Ginny didn't seem to want to go on without Harry there, so many people had lost faith…

Hermione knew that she was starting to, as well. Why was it always her who was meant to be the strong one? What if she didn't want to? She was so sick of hiding her fear, being strong for others, when she had barely enough energy left for herself.

The astronomy tower was in a way the only place for her, and in the darkness of night, she would simply come here and look up at the stars, remembering the happy times she had had with her friends. How she missed those.

A tear slowly flowed down her cheek and crashed down onto the stone floor, where it simply stayed, nothing more than a stain that reflected the moon light. The young girl closed her eyes and lifted up her face towards the stars. They shone brightly onto her pale skin, making the trace the tear had left on her face apparent.

New tears formed and dripped onto her clenched fists. They started burning lightly, but Hermione simply smiled as she felt that pain. It was nothing compared to how she felt inside. She looked down on them and could see the blood and bruises on them. How many times she had punched against the walls of the tower, she didn't know. All she knew was that it made her feel better. Nobody was there to hold her back, nobody was there anyway. It was all dark.

Hermione bit her lip as she stared at her hands, and slowly opened her fists. How could it have come to this? The eternal fighting had taken its toll on everyone, and this was the only way for her to get rid of any of her feelings of desperation, sometimes hatred for whoever had caused this. She felt guilty for taking them out that way, but for her, there was no other option. She couldn't just weigh others down who had so much pain to carry themselves, and so had to deal with it herself.

Steps were heard behind her, and she whirled around to see who it was. A flash of blonde and grey. She turned back again, and went on staring at the sky. Malfoy. He had been of their best sources concerning death eaters and other small things like that. He had helped them getting a strategic advantage during important tasks and provided them with important information. He had never been evil, just something like a coward. That's what she thought of him, in a way, not sure of what else to see in him.

Hermione wasn't sure if he really was, but she didn't care, didn't want to care. What did he want here anyway? She hadn't really seen him in the past few months, when they had all been struggling. He had always been there, somewhere, but nowhere near.

He came over and stood next to her, and she took care to hide her hands in the folds of her cloak. Nobody was meant to see. Malfoy simply stood there, looking nowhere in particular, saying nothing.

"What do you want?" she finally asked, no real emotion in her voice. It was up to him to see if he wanted to stay or not.

"It's a nice night" he replied instead, both of them not looking at each other.

"I haven't had one of those in a long time" the young girl replied bitterly.

"True…" he sighed.

"It's not like you know how I feel anyway" she snapped. She could feel him stiffen.

"You don't know what you're talking about, do you?" he whispered.

"Enlighten me then" she bit back, sarcastic.

"All those nights in which I haven't seen the moon…All those days in which I haven't seen the sun…Blood…pain…men screaming, betraying their very family with the hope to get out alive again."

Hermione froze and looked over at him. He looked drawn and tired.

"And then…when you simply don't want to go on anymore, just spill all of your secrets in the hope it will end…though you know it won't. I held back…it wasn't easy." The young man gritted his teeth and breathed in sharply.

For the first time, she wondered what they had actually done to him to make him turn back and join their side. She hadn't thought that there was much worse than what she was going through, but now she knew there was.

"What did they do to you?" she asked softly.

He closed his eyes with a pain expression and said nothing for a moment.

"I didn't do it..." he whispered. "I just couldn't kill that girl…her hair was so soft, her eyes…blue. They slaughtered her in front of my eyes."

Hermione gasped.

"Yes…" he choked out, frowning. "But it was too late. I knew too much of them for them to simply let me go. They forced me…but I couldn't. So they tortured me, along with a few others. Who would have thought I'd be able to hold on so long. Dark rooms…chains…blood and pain. Nothing is clear in my memory, but sometimes, there is a flash of light in this whole nightmare and flood of agony

By now, the young man was lost in his story, entranced in what he was saying, reliving every moment of the pain he had experienced.

"He came too, once, trying to change my mind. I almost gave in, but he gave me the condition to kill again. I wouldn't."

Hermione was too shocked to say anything, and simply looked at him intently. Slowly, he lifted the bottom of his shirt and pulled it over his head to take it off. The young girl frowned but couldn't take her eyes off him. The white skin on the back of his neck was smooth, but underneath, deep scars traveled across his back in no recognizable pattern.

She could see the muscles under the marked skin, how they moved smoothly underneath, and was inevitably drawn closer to him. Hesitantly, she lifted up one of her hands and gently touched his back, trailing along one of the long scars. She could feel him tense against her touch, but went on.

"Nobody has seen them before" he said quietly.

"Why are you showing me then?"

"I don't know."

He tilted his head to the back, and she moved away from him. His eyes followed her movement and stopped at her hand and the bloody gashes on it. They widened, then, he frowned and gently reached out for it.

"Why?" he simply asked.

She looked away and tried to retrieve her hand from his, but he wouldn't let it go. As soft as his touch was, it was firm too. With his other hand, he took hold of her other one and held them both, looking down at them disapprovingly.

Hermione hadn't been so close to anyone in a long time, and she could see that it was the same for him. A single tear formed in her eye, threatening to fall down. She didn't want that to happen, but somehow couldn't muster up enough strength to keep it anymore. She was so tired of crying, but felt so weak next to him. He had endured so much.

She closed her eyes and hesitantly leaned closer to him. He let her, and slowly put an arm around her shoulders. The young girl started crying quietly, only feeling his warm skin on her cheek. He slowly slid down along the wall, taking her with him, and they simply sat there, Draco distractedly stroking her hair.

After a while, Hermione stopped crying and simply lay in his arms, unmoving out of fear of facing the situation. It wasn't really awkward or uncomfortable, but maybe the fact that it wasn't made it so strange. She didn't feel like going, but she wasn't so sure what he was still doing there.

All the while, he was watching her unmoving form lying in his arms. She had stopped crying, for which he was thankful, but he didn't exactly know what to do now. Everything that had happened up to this moment had been different, because there had been no contact between the two of them. He had needed someone to talk to, and it was as if she needed to see that others could be off far worse.

She hadn't been pitying herself, that wasn't it, but she had needed to see that others were going through the same thing without any help too. Draco stroked her hair, again and again, in a soft pattern that soothed her pain. Not all of her pain, he knew, but it was a start.

After a while, and he had started wondering if she had fallen asleep, she slowly tilted her face towards his and looked into his eyes. She looked eternally fragile, her pale cheeks stained by the tears that were still glistening on her skin, her eyes reddened as they questioningly looked up at him.

Without thinking, he used his hand to wipe away the clear liquid on her face, but to him, it seemed as if that wasn't enough. For some reason, her pain ached him. Hermione looked up into his dark grey eyes, so much darker than they had ever been before, and could see the moon reflected in them.

He had been through so much. Suddenly, there wasn't anything more than his face next to hers, his eyes, his lips. He leaned closer, and so did she. Their lips made contact for a sweet kiss, but soon afterwards, all of their passion roared up in them, and it became deeper and more demanding. Their emotions that had been bottled up now came spilling out of them, and though their touch became more insistent, they were both gentle.

Hermione placed her arms around his neck and tangled her hands into his hair, while he took hold of her waist and held her close. His lips were soft, and he started tracing patterns on her back all the while. She leaned closer towards him, not allowing anything to occupy the space between them, and could feel the warmth radiate off his skin. Slowly, she let her hands trail down to his shoulders while he started kissing her neck.

He pressed her against the wall they were leaning on, and placed his arms at either side of her face. Letting his lips travel upwards again, he kissed her jaw and almost touched her lips, but not completely. She smiled at that, and lightly turned her head, but before their lips could touch, she lowered them towards his collar bone and started trailing kisses on it.

He growled playfully, and held her close, his lips brushing against her forehead, until she tilted her head and he could kiss her on the lips again. It was as if they were both clinging to each other, because they had no one else to share their feelings with. But Hermione was sure that there was another reason for this.

She had always felt that there was something about him, something that had made her want to get closer to him, know what he was thinking, see what he was seeing. Her pride and dignity hadn't allowed her to do any of these things back then, but in times like these, emotions like those were worthless.

After a few more moments, the young girl pulled away and was suddenly aware of his closeness. She wanted to move away, but he didn't let her and instead placed his forehead on hers, their noses touching. They were both breathing heavily.

Hermione closed her eyes and simply let herself fall into his embrace, while he started kissing away the traces of her tears on her cheeks, then her nose, eyelids, forehead. The sweetness of his touch made new tears form in her eyes, and she simply couldn't hold them back.

"Shhh…" he whispered. "It's okay… Everything's gonna be alright"

"How can you be so sure?" she asked back, not convinced. But how could she be?

"I'm not" he said, looking away. Hermione stared intently at his face, the forlorn look in his eyes something she didn't want to see.

She stood up and pulled him up with her, while he still stared ahead. She went to stand behind him, and gently enclosed his waist with her arms, resting her head in between his shoulder blades. He took hold of her hands, but a flash of pain in them made her stiffen against him for a second before she relaxed. Her hands didn't matter at the moment.

Draco seemed to see that differently, because he lifted them to his lips and gently deposited a kiss on them.

"You shouldn't have…" he started.

"It doesn't matter."

"That's not true."

Instead of an answer, she started kissing the scars on his back.

"You have known far worse" she whispered against his skin.

"It's the past, now."

"Just like this will be part of the past too, eventually" Hermione quietly muttered, but he still heard her.

He said nothing to that, and the young girl thought. There was nothing that really could be said about it anyway, and so, she simply stood there with someone who in a way was practically a stranger to her. Had anyone told her about this, she would have laughed. Yet, it was true.

"I was in the dark for so long" he suddenly said quietly.

"Are you still?" Hermione asked.

"That depends" Draco stated.

"On what?"

The young man hesitated shortly before answering.

"You."

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