Hermione rubs her eyes to ward off the tears then stares at the floor. It's a long minute before she can bring up the words she had kept quiet for so long. When she finally manages, they pour out in an unstoppable stream.

"Ginny, have you seen my dashing groom?" Hermione inquires with an illuminating grin. Ginny turns away from adding the finishing touches to the wedding cake and gives her best friend a reproachful look.

"'Mione, it may be your wedding day but you know you can't see him before the ceremony! It's bad luck for the groom to see the bride beforehand, especially when said bride is wearing her dress," Ginny chides gently

The brunette bride, too giddy with the excitement of her special day to get upset with her friend, playfully sticks out her tongue and puts her hands on her hips."I'll do as I please!" She laughs, "it is my special day, mind you." Before Ginny has the chance to stop her, she flounces off with her white gown flowing gracefully behind her.

"Just remember, I warned you!" The youngest Weasley calls before smiling at her elated friend's attitude and returning to the large cake that sat on the counter. " Oh bugger, she wasn't supposed to see the cake until later."

Hermione laughs in a very unladylike manner when she hears Ginny's comment about the cake then returns to her search for the groom. After not being able to locate him in the living room, dining room, or the front porch, she stands in silent speculation with her painted fingernails tapping her chin.

"Perhaps he is still getting ready in his room," She wonders aloud and at that moment she hears a thump from the uppermost floor of the Burrow followed by a groan that sounds quite similar to that of her fiancé. Hermione laughs to herself. "He must be having difficulty with his suit." She says to herself with a playful disapproving click of her tongue. "He was never very graceful."

She starts up the creaking stairs and climbs above the hustle and bustle on the ground floor as everyone prepares for the wedding. There aren't too many people there, just their closest friends and family. There's also a few guards to keep out the intruding press that were bound to show up at the marriage between two of the Golden Trio. Other than that, though, it's going to be a relatively small wedding.

"Oh Hermione! You look exquisite in that gown, I do hope that you have been watching out for the gnomes. They are particularly nasty here and I wouldn't want to see all of Ginny and Molly's hard work go to waste. You most be looking for your groom, right?" A familiar voice says from a few steps up. Hermione looks away from the floor where she's been carefully watching her footing so she wouldn't trip and is met with the whimsical gaze of Luna Lovegood.

"Yes, I've been careful Luna," She smiles at the blonde woman and says, "and yes I am looking for him. Have you seen him anywhere?"

"He's in his room, I believe, but..." Luna trails off as Hermione rushes past her, not bothering to listen to the rest of what the youngest Lovegood had to say.

"Thank you, Luna! Could you please go and find Blaise for me and tell him to meet Harry in the twins' old room? They need all the groomsmen in there to make sure everything is set perfectly.!" Luna sighs but continues on her way down the stairs, now with a new course in mind, as Hermoine ran up.

She had tried to warn Hermione but it appears that bride doesn't want to listen to her today.

Luna shakes away that thought as she spots her husband."Blaise?" She calls. He turns to her with a brilliant smile that makes her stomach dance with pixies. "Darling, they need you upstairs," She says when he is close enough for her to speak in a normal voice. He nods and presses a gentle kiss to her cheek before heading to the stairs that she had just came down.

"Thank you love! I'll see you at the ceremony!" He calls back to her, his voice causing her heart to speed up. They had been married for a year now and he still had that pleasurable effect on her. She sighs contentedly and decides to busy herself in searching for a stray gnome out in the front yard.

Back upstairs, Hermione has finally reached the top landing and was now walking down the hallway with a slight bounce in her step. She was so happy, finally marrying the man of her dreams. Yes, she realizes that they were moving a bit fast but they love each other and both agree that this is what they want to spend the rest of their lives together, making each other happy and helping when the other is down. They are ready for this, the biggest step in their love life.

She comes to a stop in front of his bedroom door and knocks lightly on the smooth wood. There are a few whispers and some scurried movements to be heard from the other side.

It sounds as if there is someone else in there.

" Who could possibly be in there right now? Maybe Harry was trying to help him shake off a few last minute nerves or perhaps Mr. Weasley was-"

She stops mid-thought as she pushes open the door and is met with a heart-wrenching, sickening sight.

"Hermione?" He says, staring at Hermione with indifference. He doesn't seem to care at all that he's been caught, he's simply surprised that he's been caught in the first place. In the second it takes for her to feel the sadness, it is even less time for her to fill with an indescribable fury.

"You bloody prat!" She screams after entering the room, closing the door and casting a silencing charm so no one can hear the war that is about to take place in the room. "How dare you do this to me! And on our wedding day as well, you sick, twisted prick!" The girl clinging to his arm jumps slightly at the angry volume of Hermione's voice, which only draws the brunette's attention to her. Hermione scans the girl in disgust, taking in every feature of her.

She has blonde hair, obviously dyed, that is more of a yellowish color really. She, originally, looked to have been wearing a small black dress but that is now discarded on the floor and she now stands in such a state of undress that Hermione felt herself blush for the indecency of the blonde. But the blush is gone just as fast as it appeared when the realization of what had been going on in here became clear to her.

"Not only did you have a girl in here, but you were going to shag her as well?" Hermione screeches, pointing an accusing finger at her soon to be ex-fiancé. "I thought you loved me, you self-absorbed, conniving, twisted, little weasel!" Her voice raises another octave. Said weasel, who has remained in bored silence the entire time, suddenly looks enraged. His eyes gain a fire that Hermione has never seen the likes of before and, despite her fury, she finds herself taking a half-step back in fear before rightening herself and once more standing her ground.

"For your sake, I am going to choose to ignore the names you called me," He says in a dangerously low and threatening voice," and point out one word from your rant. Loved, as in past tense. I don't anymore, haven't for a while now, in fact." He shrugs and turns to whisper something in the other girl's ear. She giggles, only furthering Hermione's rage, then slips back into her black dress. With it back on, Hermione notices how her bust is practically bursting from the neckline of the dress and it barely covers her backside. No wonder the Weasel went for her.

"How long?" Hermione asks through tight lips.

"Oh, I'd say about..a year?" He seems to ponder this, looking to the other girl who only shrugs, then back to Hermione with a small smirk, "Yeah, about a year." He looks down and examines his nails as he lets the information sink in.

"A year?" Hermione squeaks, "but you only just proposed to me two months ago! If you didn't love me, why did you do it?" She asks, suddenly fearing the answer.

"Because you were easy! I figured that I could have you and as many girls on the side as I wanted because you would be too blinded by love for me. What I didn't count on was you being so obsessive that you would come looking for me today but...what's done is done I suppose." He shrugs again and turns his smirk back on her.

Hermione could burst into tears right then because he is terribly right. She had been blinded by her love and now that love came crashing down in broken pieces all around her.

She can feel all her anger leave her, replaced with a hollow aching in her chest that stung with each breath she took. How terribly cliche, so like the romance novels that she feels almost ill with herself.

In an attempt to make it stop, she presses her hand over the spot that the pain was centered but nothing made it go away. This is worse than any curse she had taken in the war. Worse than any of the sadness that the deaths of her fellow wizards and witches had caused. It is as bad as the torture she had experienced in the drawing room of the Malfoy Manor but at least that had only been physical. This is not something that can be seen, or that can be healed by any spell or potion.

It is a broken heart and it is the worst damned pain she has ever felt.

But she has to know. She has to know why he's stopped loving her before she would allow her tears of heartbreak and sadness to wash down her cheeks. She needs to know what she has done wrong to make him fall out of love with her. After all, she has an unquenchable thirst for all knowledge.

"Why did you stopped loving me?" She questions in a sad voice, using the wall behind her for support.

"Why? You were boring. So incredibly and unbearably dull that it nearly drove me up the wall! All day you spent with your head buried in a book, hardly talking to anyone and never wanting to do anything with me. The only time you would talk was to correct me when I was wrong. And that whole damned saving yourself thing, it was maddening! I had to find someone who was willing to let me "relieve tension" because you were too sodding pure to spread your legs-"

" How dare you-" Hermione interrupts his spiel of all the things he hated about her then watches

in horror as his face grows an impossibly dark shade of crimson and he storms forward.

"Don't you interrupt me!" He roars and in the next moment, Hermione finds herself sprawled on the ground with a stinging cheek. It seems as if time stands still then speeds up at the same time. She feels her heart race to impossible speeds while everything else in the room remains as it was.

She isn't too sure about how she's on the floor but, by the looks of his still raised hand and the pain in her jaw, she's able to infer what he had done. Her fiancé-ex-fiancé hurt her. Not only her heart, but now physically as well. The man she is in love with-no, the man she hates with every last fiber of her being- has actually hit her.

She looks up at him and sees that he, too, wears the same horrified expression that she is sure is on her own face. He holds his hand up to his face and peers at it, as if shocked that it had committed such a crime, then he looks down at her.

"Hermione I-" As he takes a step forward to the cowering girl on the floor, her entire body flinches, making his heart squeeze with a painful guilt. He hadn't meant to hit her, hadn't meant to lose control like that, and she needs to know this. But it's too late and the damage is done.

He watches in a sad fascination as she pulls herself up, covering the fact that she feels as weak and small as a mouse faced with a tiger, and stands as proudly as possible in front of him.

"What's done is done," She says, quoting his earlier words with such a venom that he actually cringes. "Leave this instant, and don't you ever come back. You have done enough damage to everyone who loved you all because you couldn't be happy with what you had," she spits. He reels back like he's the one who'd been hit. "I'm sorry I wasn't enough for you, that I bored you, but my books were my only escape from the constant nightmares and flashbacks of the war. It was my way of coping.

"Had you been around more instead of shagging every girl you could get your grimy hands on, you would have noticed how upset I was and could have shown a bit of compassion. But you lost your chance and now you're going to leave. I won't tell a soul about what happened in this room so no one will know. Rest assured though, you bastard, they will know that you did something terrible and they will hate you with all the passion and fury that I do now." Here she stops to take a breath and calms herself before going on to finish. " I am going to close my eyes and count to five, if you aren't gone by then, both you and that filthy woman-"

"Hey watch your mouth, you bi-" The blonde girl starts but is silenced by a deadly glare from Hermione. She gulps and steps back behind her lover to hide from the frightening witch.

"You and the woman had better be gone or I will call for everyone downstairs and you," She says with a pointed look at her ex, "will be taken to court for hitting me. Even in the wizard world, that is a crime that won't be taken lightly." With a final sad look at her ex-friend and ex-fiancé, she closes her eyes and begins the countdown.

"Five...four...three...two...one."

And when she opens her eyes again? He is gone.

By the end of her story, Hermione has fresh tears pouring down her cheeks. But they weren't from grief or sadness like Draco had originally assumed. No, it is quite the opposite. As she sits in his arms, he watches as her face contorts into one filled with a dark rage that he never thought would be seen on her lovely features.

" I hate him!" She suddenly screams into the silence of the room, pounding her fists against Draco's chest with enough strength that he knows will leave a bruise. However, he doesn't get mad or stop her from attacking, he just lets her be. "I hate him so much, more than I have ever hated anyone, with the exception of only two people. He had no right to make me feel weak, to break me that way, and do...that to me on our wedding day! That day of all days, the one where I was going to tie myself to him forever because I thought we were in love. But no, I was only there on that day because I was easy!" She screeches and continues her vicious assault on the innocent Malfoy, not seeming to realize that he was even there anymore, but he let her because it was what she needed to do.

She needs to release her anger and it is better to do it on him then have her go on an insane rampage in search of everyone who ever did her wrong. Besides, in a way he deserves a beating from her. He had treated her so horribly when she had already been so damaged by another person. The least he could do was let her beat on him a bit.

So he sat there, holding her as she beat on him and cries out incoherent words for what seemed like hours until finally, she drifted to a blissful sleep. He looked down at her, surprised to see that she had actually worn herself down so much that she fell asleep in his arms for the second time.

Draco smiles though, saving the story of her past that she had told him for later when he was alone, and carried the sleeping witch to her bed. After tucking her safely under the blankets, he leaned down and, having a moment of conflict between his prejudices and a new, inexplicable feeling, he places a gentle kiss on her cheek.

That simple contact alone sends a thrill straight through to his heart and he shivered at the pleasant, albeit new, sensation. Draco is tempted to kiss her again, just to feel a recurrence of that pleasant shiver, but forces himself to back away from the tempting girl.

"Good night," he whispers, then silently slips out of her room and back into his own.