22. Chapter 21: Your Lady Loves You

Chapter 21: Your Lady Loves You

            As a young girl, Hermione was fond of playing out her wedding in her imagination. She had imagined wearing a beautiful, white gown and walking down the aisle of a packed church festooned with orange blossom. There would be a pipe-organ playing and a choir to sing hymns. After that, she would have a small reception, in the park – or perhaps, in a fashionable hotel.

On many occasions, the imaginary groom had been Viktor Krum. After she had broken up with him, she had sometimes pictured Ron, or Seamus Finnegan in the role.

            She felt someone take her hand from her lap and hold it tightly. She looked up into the eyes of her groom-to-be.

He wasn't Viktor Krum, Ronald Weasley, or Seamus Finnegan.

He was Draco Malfoy.

There was no white gown or orange blossom. There was no organ or choir. She wore her plainest clothes – a dark, gray gown – and she and Draco were all alone in the darkened church.

Draco looked very calm. She got that strange feeling that he was in total control again and just at that moment, it felt good to be looked after. She rested her head against his shoulder and felt him stroke her hair.

They hadn't spoken much since they had met for the first time in a week five minutes earlier. Both didn't know what to say – what had started out as a summer romance, had suddenly turned into something far more serious than they had imagined possible. Her mother was convinced that she was in love with Draco- and that was what had turned her fay blood human. But Hermione knew that her mother did not have the whole story. She wasn't the changeling her mother knew. Wherever that changeling had gone, Hermione's Thyme Eliminus had stuck her in its place.

With Draco.

And they had always hated each other.