A Man Can Change - A Draco/Hermione Story

The Ferret & the Golden Trio

I DO NOT OWN THESE CHARATCERS: J.K.ROWLING OWNS THEM. This is just a fanfic written by a huge HP fan!

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Dreams had always confused Draco. Since he was a child he could remember having the most strangest of dreams. He would often relay them to his ‘friends’, and they would say that most often, they either didn’t remember their own dreams or they weren’t as strange as his.

      He found it odd that children told him this, as he remembered every single dream the next morning, never forgetting even a single detail of one. Even through his teenage years he would remember them, no matter what was going on around him.

      Depending on what was happening during his life, the dreams would revolve somehow around his feelings at that time. For example, when he first learned of the inheritance he was to receive, his emotions were overwhelmed and extremely happy, and his dreams around that time mainly involved carnivals full of overwhelming magical creatures and shows.

      And when the Dark Lord was in their home, he was scared and disgusted, so this played out in his dreams also, and they always contained disgusting, retched creatures that would scare the crap out of him. Sometimes on the nights he was most terrified, he was even scared to fall into the dream realm.

      But the dream he had last night had been different to any other he had ever had in his life. In this dream, he had friends. And they were real friends, like Hermione. They were doing what normal friends do at school. Travelling to Hogsmeade laughing and having fun, flying around the Quidditch pitch for enjoyment rather than competition, hanging around down by the lake and so forth.

      He had fun in this dream, and he felt a bit depressed when he was awoken by it. He couldn’t figure out what had woken him from his slumber but it sounded like a small tapping noise. Slowly, he swung his legs over the side of his massive bed and jumped down to the ground, rubbing his eyes of sleep.

      The tapping noise sounded more like a knock, and it was coming from the bathroom door in his room, so slowing, he trudged over and opened it. A small amount of hot steam flew into his face as he opened it. He figured Hermione had just had a shower, and speaking of, she was standing there in her Gryffindor robes with her hair cascading down the sides of her face, which had a sheepish look on it.

      “I’m so sorry to wake you, but it was getting late and I thought you might want to be woken for your first class.” He smiled down at her and thanked her. She walked back through to her room and shut the door.

      The first thing he did was place his ring on the counter. Stripping off the track pants he wore to bed, and taking off his briefs, he stepped into the hot water and washed his body of sleep. Draco always enjoyed a nice hot shower to wake himself up in the morning, and the shower used to be the one place in the mansion he could think to himself, without others being around him with their ‘judging little eyes’.

      Stepping out of the shower he walked over to the mirror and stood, staring at his dripping, naked body. Hermione wouldn’t have realised it, but she had also healed and cleaned away old scars from his childhood, from the beatings his father gave him when he did something out of order, and something Lucius wouldn’t expect his son to do. He was glad they were gone. They were just another reminder of the life he used to have.

      But the one thing on his body that he hated the most, the one thing that would never go away was that black tattooed Dark Mark on his left forearm. He knew that it would always be the one thing that would remind him of his horrid past as a forced Death Eater.