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The Mudblood and Her Alpha

Chapter 15: Heartbeat

Summary:

Someone slap Draco for me
Not really hard, but like, hard enough.

Notes:

There's an epilogue to come and then it's over

:O

I have a few other projects planned and in the works, but it will be weird to not be thinking about what happens next in this fic throughout the day.

If you'd like follow me on tumblr for updates- I also reblog a lot of dramione art and talk about other fanfics and books and random things :)

Thanks to @Sectumtemptra for beta and being awesome-

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

 

 

 

 

Hermione

It felt as if the curse had leached the energy from Hermione’s body. Her eyes fluttered open as Draco knelt next to the couch she laid on, fervently muttering healing incantations. The office was brightly lit and for a moment, she thought the entire night may have been a dream.

He smiled at her, and she realized she’d been staring.

“Hermione Granger saves the wizarding world.” His voice was teasing, but with a hint of awe and disbelief.

“Draco Malfoy makes it to the right side of history.”

 


 

 

“There are three portkeys. One to transport you to a neutral location, and two there to take you to your separate safe house as you requested.” She pulled her son in, squeezing him tight. “It will be obvious which you’re supposed to use, just trust your instinct,” Hermione heard her say as she let go of Draco.

He nodded, and her heart sank.

Their separate safe houses. To start their separate lives.

“What about you and Severus?” she asked.

Narcissa smiled, an unfamiliar sight for Hermione, but she liked it much more than the sour expression the woman usually wore. There was no need to pretend anymore. “We have business at the Ministry of Magic. There are several changes to be made in light of recent events.”

“Miss Granger,” the slow drawl echoed through the room as Snape entered, his hand outstretched and holding a wand she immediately recognized.

She shook her head, silently mouthing the word. “No.”

“The elder wand magically binds itself to its new master. You must be the one to take it.”

“I don’t want to be anything’s master,” she replied, and it was true. All she wanted to do was submerge herself in a good book, apply for colleges, start a career, and live a normal life.

“Then dispose of it.” Snape gently grabbed her hand, closing her fingers around the wand. A surge of magic flowed through her and loose pages rustled across the study.

She frowned, tucking the wand into her robe pocket. There was no time to ruminate on it. She would figure it out later.

Winky apparated into the room with a snap, throwing her arms around Hermione’s legs and squeezing. “Hermione Granger has saved everyone! Hermione Granger has killed the Dark Lord!”

I should be happy, like everyone else, shouldn’t I?

It was bittersweet. There was a throbbing ache in her heart, telling her she’d been too late. Her chest tightened with every breath, and the realization that she was about to be alone with this guilt wrapped around her like a snake does its prey, suffocating any happiness she could have felt. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind, kneeling in front of the elf.

“It was only possible because of what you and Severus did. I couldn’t have done it without you, Winky.”

A flush crept up into Winky’s cheeks, and she swirled her tiny foot against the floor.

“I did charm the wards, Miss! And helped Snape apparate to the house because my wards is so good he couldn’t do it by himself- AND THEN he came back with a SWORD miss, covered in BLOOD- It was HORRIBLE!”

Hermione’s eyes widened as the elf began to act out her part in the battle.

“Winky got scared and apparated back to the manor and you was all fighting so I thought WINKY CAN HELP - and then Winky flipped the lights on and off—”

The elf bounced around the room, demonstrating how she had stunned the death eaters while remaining out of sight.

“BUT THEN I remembered Winky was supposed to bring him back!” she exclaimed, pointing at Snape. “I’d got distracted- but then I went and brought him right in time to see Miss Granger RUNNING at the Dark Lord-”

“Oooooo Winky was so scared because Winky likes Miss Granger, but THEN—”

Winky was on top of the desk now, shooting two beams of light out of her fingers toward each other in an imitation of Hermione’s duel with Voldemort. One finger overpowered the other and Winky cheered, jumping down to throw her arms around Hermione’s legs again.

Hermione had to cover her mouth to stifle her laughter.

“Wait, then who started floating my father around the room?” Draco asked.

“Oh, that was Winky too,” Winky replied hesitantly. “Winky thought a distraction might help and then Winky found him in the closet, but Winky couldn’t watch because of the blood. That’s when Winky left.” Her face was grim, as if she thought Draco may punish her.

“It was brilliant, Winky. We desperately needed a distraction.”

Her smile returned.

 


 

 

After they said their goodbyes, Draco grabbed Hermione’s hand. His touch was warm, comforting. It made her dread when he pulled away and left her alone with nothing but cold emptiness surrounding her. That’s what the world felt like without him.

The sinking feeling in her chest every time she stopped herself from calling him Alpha was a painful reminder that he was going to leave her.

They reached out, touching the globe together, stopping its idling spin on its axis.

Suddenly, she was spiraling into a whirlwind that threw her body in far too many directions at once. The force threw her onto her back as the spinning slowed; the hardwood crashing into her spine and her head clunking against the floor.

“Granger! Granger!” The voice was dripping in panic.

Hermione groaned, opening her eyes to see a chandelier juxtaposed against a drab ceiling and peeling wallpaper. They were back at Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

“Don’t call me that. Honestly, send me away so you never have to see me again — fine. But stop calling me bloody Granger.” Her head thrummed with the impact of her fall and she gritted her teeth.

“What?”

“Nothing. What is it, Malfoy?

He blinked down at her, then lowered himself onto the ground and pulled her head into his lap, checking her head for any swelling. Finding none, he ran his fingers through her hair in a way that made her scalp tingle.

They sat together for several minutes, her eyes fluttering closed as she matched her breathing to the gentle strokes of his fingers.

“Tell me why I can hear your thoughts,” she said.

He exhaled. “When we were in the cellar, a bond formed.”

“What kind of bond?”

“One that only forms between Alphas and their claimed omegas. It’s rare, and it usually takes several years if it forms at all. It could be because we were in a deadly situation, or. . .” His voice trailed off.

“Or what?”

Until this point, she’d been holding her emotion back, but as she sank into his touch, she allowed it to flow freely. Who cares if he knew now? All of this was about to be over. There wouldn’t be any Malfoy and Granger.

“Or it could mean we’re meant to be together.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Don’t let him break your heart again.

“But you still want to send me away, so you never have to see me again.” The tightening feeling in her chest returned as she said the words.

“I don’t deserve you, Hermione.”

“What the bloody hell does that mean?”

“It means that when I scented you for the first time, I took advantage of you. Your heat.” His face contorted as he stared up at the decrepit ceiling. “You never would have chosen me. You never would have wanted to spend your first heat with me. It’s no better than what my father and Greyback did to you.”

“No better than your father and Greyback?!” she echoed. “You saved me from being nothing more than a plaything for dozens of death eaters and risked your life for me.”

“That’s not the part I’m talking about.”

“I wanted it, Draco. I wanted every second of it.”

“It’s impossible to really know that.” His body stiffened beneath her.

“Well, I’m telling you now. I wouldn’t choose anyone else, and I didn’t choose to be an omega either.”

“You deserve better, Granger. You deserve someone without a dark fucking mark on their arm, someone who’s never jinxed you and whisked you off to a tower to fuck you.”

“Look, I agree it could have turned out like that, but I wanted to spend my heat with you. I wanted that from the moment you found me in the cellar, even if I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t want to be taken in the garden and pelted with water, but it ended up being the best thing that could have happened and I got to know — ” her voice hitched. “ — I got to know you out of it. To actually know you.”

“Hermione—”

“No. I’m not finished. I have nothing, and for a few days I felt like I had something, someone, and you want to send me off to some safe house so you can happily never see my face again and tell yourself it’s what’s best for me.

“It is.”

”Shut up. I am sick and tired of people telling me what’s best for me without asking what I want, Draco Malfoy, and I refuse to hear it from you.” Her voice was shrill and raw with emotion.

It seemed like an eternity before he spoke. “Am I really that stupid?”

Instead of words, a bitter sob escaped her throat, and she covered her face with her hands. Opening the connection between them, she allowed her consciousness to take as much as he would offer her.

A flood of images, moments captured. Some were simple memories of her smiling, some were moments that the images came swarming with emotions and his voice, his thoughts along with them.

 

Her fluffing pillows meticulously at Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

She’s so beautiful.

Her falling into his arms after being released from his father’s web.

She’s safe.

Her staring into his eyes just before her claiming bite.

She’s perfect.

Her eyes dilating as he approached.

My omega. You’ll always be my omega.

Her soft hum of approval as she lay her head on his chest and drifted off to sleep.

Please don’t change your mind. Please don’t think I was a mistake. I’m falling in love with you.

 

She gasped, pulling herself from the flood of memories. With a sharp inhale, she opened her eyes. He was staring down at her expectantly, holding his breath.

Remembering what he’d asked, she shook her head.

“Yes,” she answered. “You’re the stupidest man I’ve ever met.”

“And you deserve much better.”

And I felt it too. Everything you felt, and the crushing fear that it would end, and — ”

Pushing herself up, she turned and grabbed him by the back of the neck, pressing her lips against his in a way that savored the kiss, drawing it out as their lips parted and he raised his hand to caress her cheek.

He pulled away. “I can’t live with knowing I wasn’t able to control myself. I’d have to spend my whole life trying to make up for it.”

“So do it.”

He stared at her, mouth agape. “What?”

“Spend your whole life trying to make up for it. Show me you’re a better man than the boy who used to bully me, and the hormone-frenzied Alpha that whisked me off to his tower. I know you are. Stop telling me what I deserve. I deserve YOU. You’re my Alpha.”

He grabbed her waist, pulling her on top of him and letting their lips crash together. His lips traveled down her cheek and neck, pausing at her collarbone and sending a warm tingle up her spine.

“I promise I will. My omega.

There were a thousand things she wanted to say. She wanted to tell him how surreal it felt that a new wizarding world was going to be built from the rubble and destruction they’d witnessed. She wanted to tell him she’d known he wasn’t like the others when she’d found him collapsed in the Great Hall. She wanted to tell him how excited she was to see what their relationship could be like without Voldemort’s followers being a dark cloud hovering over it. Silently, she allowed the emotions to flow across the bond, smiling down at him.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“We choose a portkey. Together.”

He pulled her to her feet; her legs threatening to give out beneath her from exhaustion, and she scanned the room. A small table next to the staircase stood out as being remarkably dust-free, with a single item atop it. A heart-shaped box of chocolates.

 


 

 

The bathroom was refreshingly modern, well-lit, and notably devoid of snake-themed decor. The hot water running over her body soothed her sore muscles and evened her breathing. She would figure out where they were tomorrow, but for now, she was grateful for the peace and quiet the house provided.

Wrapping herself in the oversized towel hanging neatly on the rack, she brushed her teeth and shuffled to the bedroom.

“There are two toothbrushes,” she said, trying not to allow herself to be distracted by the fact her Alpha was leaning back on the bed, with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.

“I noticed.”

“There were never two houses, were there?”

“I don’t think there were,” he sighed. “If you need to know anything about my mother, it’s that she’s nosy, and she will take liberties any chance she gets.”

“Like popping into the fireplace at random?”

“Like that, yes,” he said, smiling. “Now come here, my perfect omega who just saved the entire wizarding world.”

“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” she said, crawling onto the bed and nestling into his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and for the first time in a year, she felt genuinely safe.

“I want to. I want to tell everybody as soon as I have a proper chance to show you off. After this whole ‘hide out while my mum has the remaining threats arrested’ bit.”

Being shown off by Draco Malfoy. It was a sentence she never thought would cross her mind, and definitely not something she ever thought she’d be excited about. But she was.

Matching her breath to his, her body relaxed into the comfort of the bed and her eyes closed. She began to drift off into sleep.

“Hermione?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I can feel your heartbeat through the bond.”

Mmm.”

“And. . .”

“And what?”

“There’s more than one.”

“Hm?”

She was already half asleep, his words fading in and out of her consciousness.

“I think you’re pregnant.”

“Shut up. You wouldn’t know that yet.”

“I would,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head with a smile curling his lips.

“You’re lying,” she yawned. “Fetuses develop heartbeats 3-4 weeks after conception. Everyone knows that. You can’t possibly be hearing two heartbeats.”

“There aren’t two, Hermione,” he said, squeezing her. “There are three.”

She mumbled incoherently.

“Two tiny magical heartbeats.”

“Definitely not.”

He laughed. “It’s true. We’re having twins.”

“Mm. . . No.

And with that, she was asleep.

 

 

 

 

Notes:

A moment of Winky appreciation!

Reading about her and writing her into chapter one I had no idea what kind of role she would play and she wasn't in the original outline much. She historically had depression and a bad drinking problem after she was freed by the Crouch family and started working at Hogwarts so she's doing much better now that she's serving the Malfoys- I don't think you could drag her away from that position if you tried which I'm sure will frustrate Hermione to no end but- anyway


winky


Good job Winky!