#or arthur reacting to everything like a child by wanting merlin's magic to solve his problems or tell him how things should be

[mooremars]

I can't sleep so I'm doing some reading and had a realization.

Now that my media consumption has become dominated by all the Arthurian legend stuff I have managed to avoid up until now, it turns out that more I read and watch, the more I become completely convinced that removing magic is actually the only way to make specifically Arthur's character work in Camelot for me. I already thought it was the right call for story and thematic reasons but turns out it also solves the mystery of why I keep hating this character that by every metric I should really love.

[colubrina]

Never have I ever... written a Hermione Riddle/Draco Malfoy fic!

I did once, but so many people said it didn’t work I pulled it.  But I will copy at 2K words of it below the cut for you.

from never have I ever

Hermione did hate having to pretend.  

She’d whinged to her father at first.  “But why,” she’d said.  “And if I can’t be your daughter why can’t I just be a half-blood.  Why this?”  

Her father had delivered one of his lectures on power and manipulation and pointed out how she’d learn far more about what people really thought if she watched them as a supposedly powerless outsider.  “How people treat the weak, my darling, will let you see their characters.  That will be useful to you when we,” he’d paused.  “You know.”  

She did.

It didn't mean she liked it.

As she got older, however, she realized he was right.  People revealed things to her they'd never share with a pureblood, or even an established half-blood.  Ron Weasley, her housemate and theoretical friend, had parents with a hilarious fascination with Muggles that masked bone deep prejudice and he was one of the supposed liberal faction, part of Albus Dumbledore little crusade of light.  Her father laughed until tears ran down his cheeks when she acted our Arthur Weasley asking about rubber ducks.   Theodore Nott sneered in a rather pro-forma way at her blood status and then, once her academic prowess became known, sat with her in the library if no one else was around.  

"Pragmatic," her father said approvingly.   She lent Theo notes, borrowed his, and never commented how he failed to notice her in public.  She found his quiet competence restful and understood the constraints that kept him, son of a Death Eater, pureblood scion, and member of Slytherin from being friends with the Muggle-born Gryffindor.  Those would change.

Draco Malfoy, however, was a different matter.  He had no subtlety.  He was rude and vulgar and a crude little show off.  As they got older he started to eye her when he thought she wasn't looking and she looked back.  He became pretty, so very pretty, and she began to fantasize about how he'd react when he found out who she was.   She liked to picture him confessing long suppressed love and apologizing.  "I just didn't know what to say," she imagined him muttering.  "My father… you know.  I thought he'd disown me if I… can we start again?"

She doubted that would happen, however.  The idea of Draco Malfoy admitting he was wrong seemed unlikely, and she had no intention of humiliating herself to pursue him.  No matter how much she liked his cheekbones, or the way his eyes flashed when he was being clever and cocky, he'd be unlikely to ever show up at her door with flowers in hand willingly, even when he did find out she was Tom Riddle's daughter.

Not that she'd want a boy who only wanted her for her heritage anyway.

She hated admitting her father was right.  

And she hated that she wanted the smug bastard.  Stupid Draco Malfoy with his biting wit and pointed laugh.  She did, though.  She wanted him a lot more than Ron Weasley, who she flirted with in order to disguise her growing fascination with Malfoy, and she wanted him more than Cormac McClaggan, who couldn't take a hint to go away, and she wanted him more than Harry Potter who, thank Merlin, was as uninterested in her as she was in him.  She decided she'd have him, too, because she was the Darkest princess their world would ever know, the only child of Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Black, and if she wanted a boy she'd have him.  Her father laughed and told her she was a minx but he was happy to give her any toy she wanted.

So she smiled at Malfoy, and every time he sneered “Granger” at her in his arrogant, nasal voice she smiled a little bit more.  

When her father finally made his move and took over the Ministry, sending Harry Potter on a fool's errand with what appeared to be a toy from the late, unlamented Dumbledore, a used Snitch, and a book of fairy tales she looked forward to seeing Draco Malfoy's expression when her true identity was revealed.  She beamed at her father as he presented her to his followers and their children at her eighteenth birthday party.

Theodore Nott looked like a mystery had finally been solved and smiled at her;  you'd have to know him well to see the relief in his eyes when she smiled back but she saw it and enjoyed the confirmation of the sudden shift in her status.  Greg Goyle just looked confused that Hermione Granger was someone else, someone important.  Draco Malfoy, however, looked horrified.  She could see him tallying up his sins in his brilliant mind and his pale face got paler still when he realized just how many there were.  It was beautiful.  It was everything she'd hoped for.

Lord Voldemort said, “My lovely daughter has sacrificed so much as I regained my strength.    We needed to hide her from the likes of the Order of the Phoenix until the time was right but We could have hidden her as any number of things.  Instead We decided to hide her as the lowest of the low so she could watch all your children and determine who was truly trustworthy.”  He turned to Lucius Malfoy.  “Don’t you agree, Lucius,  that such a sacrifice on her part deserves recognition.”

Lucius Malfoy, properly nervous at being singled out mumbled that of course, that he hoped his family had never been seen as lacking in support.  Voldemort had to wave his hand at the man in annoyance to get him to stop.  

“She’s asked for one little gift for her birthday,” Voldemort said.  He regarded her with delight.  “A request that shows Us she is truly her mother’s daughter.”

Many of the assembled Death Eaters looked increasingly nervous at that proclamation.  Even before Azkaban, Bellatrix had been unstable.  Now she hadn't even been permitted to attend her daughter's party because of her insanity and unpredictable violence; the idea Hermione might take after her mother scared them all.

Hermione managed to avoid licking her lips as her father crooked his finger and beckoned Draco Malfoy forward.  “Congratulations, Lucius,” he said.  “You’ve just given your only son to Our daughter for her birthday.”  

“My Lord,” Lucius whispered but someone next to him had the presence of mind to step on his foot and shut him up.

“Darling,” Voldemort said to Hermione.  “Remember, don’t break your toys.  It’s not like I can get you another one.”

“I promise,” she said as she smiled at Draco Malfoy, who looked like he was trying not to pass out.  “I’ll be good.”

“That’s what she said about the unicorn toy,” Voldemort said fondly.  “Little hellion snapped it in half in three days.”  The Death Eaters all laughed.

That was when Draco fainted.

. . . . . . . . . .

When he came to he kept his eyes squinched shut and tested his limbs and determined he didn't seem to be tied up in any way and he could even feel the familiar pressure of his wand against his hip.  When he risked opening his eyes  he was in a bland room and Hermione Granger - no, Hermione Riddle - was curled up in a large, beige chair with her nose in a book; she didn't seem to realize he'd regained consciousness.  He studied her through the fringe of his hair.  

She was as damnably beautiful as she'd been for years.   Her dark hair sprang out around her face and, now that he was looking, he could see the similarity to his Aunt Bella's own locks, though Hermione's hair was more of a rich brown than the black of her mother's.  He knew her eyes were dark, so dark he'd gotten caught in them a few times, always yanking himself away with a muttered slur.  There were girls you dated, girls you married, and girls if you got caught with your mother burned you from the family tree while, quite possibly, your insane aunt tortured you to death.  He'd known which category Hermione was in.

Or, well, he'd thought he'd known.

Fuck, he'd been wrong. So wrong. He couldn't have messed this up worse if he'd set out to ruin his life on purpose.

He considered knocking her out and making a run for it but dismissed the idea as that of an idiot.  Where would he go?  To the Order?  He hated them anyway, and if he showed up on their doorstep telling them Harry Potter's Muggle-born friend was really Lord Voldemort's only child they'd laugh themselves sick before dumping him at St. Mungo's, where he'd sit, trapped, until Hermione felt like fetching him.

She turned a page.

"Do you plan to kill me?"  he asked.

She looked up at that.

"Can't stand the thought of the filthy Mudblood not being quite what you thought?"  

Draco thought he heard a little bitterness under that and thought with more than a little rancor that she didn't get to be the pissy one in this situation.  She was the one with all the power, as she had just demonstrated by demanding he be handed over to her as a gift.  "It seems like a reasonable question," he said.  "Or hurt me? I'd like to get it over with if that's the plan."

Her jaw tightened and he was shocked to see she seemed upset.  "I wasn't planning on it," she muttered.

"Do I get to ask what the plan is?"

She slouched lower in the big armchair until it seemed to swallow her and finally said, "I didn't really think past the part where I got to see you be shocked and horrified that I wasn't the nobody you thought I was."

Draco pulled himself upright and sat so he leaned against the headboard and looked at the girl who was huddled into the chair and looked more like a lost soul than the terrifying dark princess she'd been at the earlier celebration.  "Did you like that part?" he asked, the words coming out more gently than he'd meant them to.

"Yes," she admitted.  She looked up at him through lashes so long and dark he'd have thought they were enhanced magically if it weren't for the way he'd seen the woman wear cosmetics only once in all the years he'd known her.   The lashes were real.  "I liked that part quite a bit if we're being honest."

"I would have," he said.  "If you'd been a shite to me for years and then you found out I was young Lord Voldemort?  I would have reveled in that."

"I've fantasized about it for years," she admitted.  "Every time you were an arse I thought, just wait.  You'll see."

Draco bit the inside of his mouth and swallowed hard.  She'd thought about him for years.  She'd wanted him for years.  "Why me?" he asked, trying to keep his voice light.  "You could have had anyone.  Could have anyone. I'm sure if you wanted half a dozen boys to wait on you, your father would hand them over."

"He's always spoiled me," she said.  "When I was home, that is.  I think… he wanted to make up for having to hide me with the Grangers."

"Why me?"  he asked again.  

The sun shone in through the sheer curtains and dust motes swirled around and he watched them sparkle for an eternity before she said, "I wanted… you're so… it's stupid and it's pathetic."  She closed her book with an audible snap and stood up on her impossibly long legs.  "Never mind.  I've had my fun seeing you turn white and faint like that.  You can go and tell your father I released you."

Drqco stood up and took a step toward the door and then stopped and looked at the way she stood, half-resigned, half-defensive.

"Go," she said again.

He'd always thought he'd known what category she fell in.  It was the out of bounds category. It was the not-to-be-touched category.  It might not have been fair, it might not have been right, but bravery and battling the world wasn't something he did, not even for a pair of dark eyes that glistened right now as the woman they belonged to folded her arms across her body.

"I'm a coward," he said, reaching one hand out to cup her chin.

"I do know that," she said.   She sounded sullen.  She had her lip thrust out in a classic gesture of sulky petulance he suddenly found unbearably adorable.

He lowered his mouth to that lip. "I am not, however, stupid," he said right before he kissed her.