Obviously.
I.
He pushed open the portrait hole and climbed into the Head's Common Room, book of the day in hand. The fire crackled cheerily in the corner, suffusing the room with warmth, and there was a homely feel to the room that he found nowhere else. He would have smiled slightly and thrown himself onto the couch, had it not been for the person currently sitting on it, with her nose buried in a book. He made to walk past her, coolly, calmly - perhaps he'd throw a glance in her direction, a polite nod -
"Draco."
... There was something wrong with this picture. Somehow.
First of all, it started with the fact that she never called him by his first name. Ever. It was always "Malfoy" with a tinge of contempt, though that had recently been lightening to a cool aloofness as they'd slowly adjusted to life back in Hogwarts after the War. It wasn't that they were suddenly okay with each other - it was their ambitions that kept them civil. They both acknowledged that it was an immense privilege to be given the positions of Head Boy and Head Girl, and neither wanted to lose out on the prestige and respect their leadership roles would afford them. So they put up with each other, mutually coming to an agreement without ever speaking more than three sentences to the other in any one exchange. It was a quiet connection they shared, one of a few that surprised them by popping up every now and again.
But back to the situation at hand - she would also never call his name like that. It was... unnerving, to say the least. She was too reserved, too distant from him, and he liked it that way since he felt then that he owed nothing to her. There was no understanding, no all-encompassing acceptance that he had been worried he'd get from people, her especially; he wouldn't be able to stand it, his sense of pride just wouldn't. But he sure wasn't expecting this, of all things. If he had to put a word on it, she sounded... sultry?
He'd just frozen in place, his mind kind of glazed, in shock. What...? He turned his head towards her awkwardly, expression neutral, trying to get a handle on the situation. Smooth, Draco, real smooth. But hey... this wasn't logical. This was Hermione Granger, so if it wasn't logical, then it just wasn't happening.
She had pushed herself up off the couch, book dropped haphazardly on the floor - that isn't right either, his mind noted - and walked over to him, eyes glued to the floor, looking for all the world like another 4th year coming to ask him to the Yule Ball. His expression turned incredulous. The hell? Wasn't this some sort of extreme compromise of her dignity, all that Gryffindor crap - her usual attitude towards him was simply polite, especially in public, so what was this sudden change in behaviour? His sharp eyes caught another anomaly - she never swayed her hips that much when she walked. It didn't even seem that she was doing it purposely, but the whole way she stood wasn't quite... right.
"Hi." She sounded nervous. His brow furrowed.
"... Good evening." His overly formal greeting would usually put her on edge. She felt he was trying to mock her somehow, though she knew that it was just the way he had always talked.
A small smile. Slight blush, hand coming up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. He felt like shaking her. WHAT? he would ask. Are you about to spurt lines from a romantic book and tell me that you like someone else or some shit to make me jealous? Because that wouldn't work. Not with him, and Hermione Granger. Not in this universe, or any other parallel ones that existed in which he and/or she was still sane. [Sigh, how wrong you are, Draco. :L]
"Can you do me a favour? I need someone to help me deal with this paperwork - it's about the next Quidditch match and the new seating we're going to buy for it. McGonagall set me the task of determining which woods to use and how we're going to protect them against the elements and things, but I'm lost at the differences between osage orange and hickory wood, as well as how to safely charm them..." she trailed off, and Draco raised an eyebrow.
"You usually go to the library for these sorts of things. Why are you suddenly asking me?" His tone wasn't quite as bewildered as he felt, but she should pick it up. She was perceptive.
"The library's closed right now. I can't just break in, those are the rules." She looked at him a little quizzically. Well, she obviously knew the rules but... not herself. This was getting more and more weird by the minute. The Hermione Granger he knew wouldn't have a second thought about "breaking into" the library after hours. Madame Prince had a soft spot for that Hermione Granger.
So what the hell about this one?
His mind whirled with a thousand possibilities - random kid playing a stupid prank with Polyjuice (though they'd have to be one hell of a smart kid to brew that), perhaps Granger had just taken a particularly powerful Pepper-up Potion this morning (she had been sick the past couple days), or maybe a Death Eater -
Come to finish him off? Shit.
He felt like laughing with the absurdity of the situation. A Death Eater, in the form of Hermione Granger, had come to kill him. This strangeness knew no bounds. But he snapped back to reality, survival instincts not long ago buried rose to the surface, and he was on high alert. He smiled at her. Best to play along, but don't get too close.
"Ah, sorry. I forgot that one little fact. Sure, I'll help you - just give me a second, I want to make myself a cup of tea." He sidled off to the little kitchenette in the alcove off the side of the Common Room, walking not too fast, but purposefully. Being the person he was, he had a little something hidden in the corner here for any unwanted visitors...
When he got back to the couch, she was seated at the coffee table, scribbling away, her handwriting a pretty, rounded font. Slightly confused, he squinted at the words - if he turned his head just that way to the left...
"Come sit here, it looks like you're having trouble reading my writing." The fake Hermione chuckled. His eye twitched slightly. No. He was not moving. He opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment she turned to look at him fully - the first time in years that she had done so, and the fact that this person was an impostor made little difference, for her eyes were physically identical. The full power of her gaze washed over him - and he found himself frozen again, but this time with wide eyes, looking back into her brown irises, tinged with hazel, flecked with black. She patted the seat next to her, and he had suddenly forgotten the dangers he had supposed he was in. The ring he was wearing, tipped with poison, was completely disregarded. Later, he'd look back and wonder if the impostor had some advanced ability in Legilimency. But for now, he was trapped. And not unhappy about it.
He gracefully slid into the seat next to her, carefully placing his cup to the right of her pile of parchment. She smiled, and pointed out what exactly she was working on, and he leaned over slightly to see more clearly. Suddenly, he was so close to her that he could easily smell her shampoo - she must have moved, since he could see the small freckles that dotted her cheeks, the pink of her lips as she turned fully towards him and leaned further, reaching a hand out to him as - the real Hermione walked in the door.
Hermione's loud "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL?" could probably have been heard in the dungeons several storeys below. The real Hermione standing at the door, that is. She looked at the scene before her, and the only thing her usually eloquent, creative, versatile and educated mind could come up with was: HUH? It was like something out of Inception, she swore later on. Her mind quickly clicked into gear, though, and she whipped out her wand, uttering a quick binding spell to detain the phony Hermione and levitating her towards her. Draco sat back on the couch, eyes still wide, hands left limply by his sides as he fully comprehended the situation he had gotten into. No, that's incorrect: the situation he had been conned into. Well, either way, he was still dead.
The fake Hermione was now hovering in the air in front of Hermione herself, completely silent as she was under the influence of a silencing charm, courtesy of the Head Girl. She didn't want to hear anything this weirdo had to say until in front of the teachers and, preferably, the principal. She took it upon herself to walk - well, float - this fraud to the principal's office, and stormed out the door, but not before throwing Draco a furious glare and spitting a terse, "Follow me or die."
When it was all done, Draco had to wonder why Hermione was so passionately angry at him. It made no sense. I mean, he thought, of course she's angered by someone posing as her - I'm quite sure that's illegal, and it's a serious breach of school rules that even I wouldn't support. But... why the ire directed solely at me? It's not as if I encouraged it, or assisted in the making of the Polyjuice Potion. In fact, I'm glad that I'm alive! He suddenly remembered his fear that it had been a Death Eater - now it seemed presumptuous, to the point of irrationality in fact - which Death Eater would really come after him in that guise? It had, after all, turned out to be Millicent Bulstrode.
He shuddered at the thought that he had almost kissed her. Ugh.
Pushing that traumatising thought aside, he had to admit that he wasn't completely pleased with the outcome of the situation. Obviously, Millicent Bulstrode had been charged with what was, essentially, a lifetime of detention. And it had been found that she enlisted the help of the Patil twins in the making of the Polyjuice potion, so that part was all sorted out. They wouldn't be able to leave the dungeons for the rest of their free time in their school lives. But Draco didn't feel bad for them.
He felt bad for the Head Girl, now suddenly the topic of all Hogwarts gossip as well as the media. It had reached the press - via one nosy Pansy Parkinson, no doubt - that a female Hogwarts student had successfully usurped the place of the envied Hermione Granger, just to seduce the reformed bad-boy Draco Malfoy (as proven in his prestigious position as Head Boy at Hogwarts), the ingenious student's moment of glory lasting for a brief forty minutes or so but having an immense impact on the social hierarchy of the school. Draco sighed and put down the gossip section of The Daily Prophet. Some things would never be anything but rubbish.
Just then, the aforementioned Hermione Granger stalked in - the real one. She looked frazzled, her hair as bushy as ever and carrying several heavy books in her arms, which she carefully placed on the coffee table before collapsing, rather unceremoniously, onto the couch.
"Not the best day, huh, Granger?" His voice was only tinged with wry amusement - he did feel bad for her. But she took it the wrong way.
"No shit, Malfoy. Since when did you realise that? Since you stopped snogging anything that moves?" Ah. So she was still hung up on the fact that he'd almost kissed a fake her.
... But then. What. His mind was jumping to conclusions. So he pushed it away and reverted to his tried and tested method of responding to her taunts.
"All because I get the chance to snog whoever I want, Granger, is no reason for you to direct your anger at me." His tone was caustic, dripping with acerbity yet searing her with its condescension. Strangely enough, he didn't smirk. Perhaps it was an indication of just how much she was getting to him.
She stood slowly, fury radiating off her in waves, making her appear several inches taller than she usually did as she walked towards him with controlled, measured steps. Her soft footfalls were muffled by the carpet, but somehow he heard the impact of each as if they echoed off the cold stone walls of the room. He remained sitting, refusing to appear afraid. Or even apprehensive. He'd gone through this situation with her a thousand times, and he knew she simply couldn't do anything worse than throw a few insults, cutting as they may be. She wouldn't lower herself to his level again and punch him, as she had done in 3rd year.
But she towered over him for once, and it made her feel powerful. It didn't matter that he didn't appear afraid. For once, she looked down her nose at him, and she was rather enjoying it. In a reckless movement, she reached down and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him closer to her, sneering in his face.
"Don't. Even. Think. That." She was burning inside, all thoughts of social propriety pushed completely out of mind as the strain of the past couple days finally broke her. She yanked on his shirt again, reinforcing her control, and scowled at him, literally so close she could count the individual dark eyelashes framing his impassive grey eyes. "I will hex you. And believe you me, I know a few hexes that would shock Bellatrix herself." She shoved him down again, almost knocking over his chair, and backed up slightly but just enough to remain the centre of his attention.
"Would you like to know exactly why I'm so mad?" she began, and continued without waiting for a response. "Well, there's the first reason that what Bulstrode did was, clearly, a breach in International Magical Law. It's something I could easily take up in court. But wait – what happened in the end? She got a bunch of detentions, and that's it. And what did I get? I get to be the laughing stock of the wizarding world for the next couple of months. Then there's the fact that she got people from within Hogwarts to help her – people that I trusted, people who I defended, whom I shared a dorm with for the most part of my school life – and they just… just agreed!" Her tone shifted from enraged to scathing. "Just for a good laugh, I suppose?"
During her tirade, she had begun pacing from one end of the couch to the other, and when she threw another glare in Draco's direction she found him watching her intently, his expression unreadable even when bathed in the light of the setting sun. She disregarded this – it didn't matter, it wasn't like he was going to use this against her somehow afterwards – and continued ranting because it helped her get this off her shoulders. Harry and Ron had been sympathetic, but… it was her who had had problems expressing herself, for once. There was a niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach telling her that something about the situation really pissed her off, but she couldn't pinpoint quite what it was. Leading to hours of unproductive thought on it, which in turn resulted in more stress that couldn't be eased because she didn't know what was bothering her. It was, most literally, a recurring destructive cycle. She took a deep breath.
In… out...
"I – I just despise this! The thing that gets me most –" she paused suddenly, her thoughts veering off onto a previously unexplored trail. The blessed silence remained for a couple seconds, hanging in the air as she seemed to come to a realisation.
Is that no one noticed.
As soon as the thought was conceived, she knew it was true. She looked at him again, staring back at her with the emotionless eyes she had known for so long, the same blonde hair and composed expression that screamed arrogance, and she knew she wouldn't be able to tell him the exact nature of her weakness. She couldn't tell him, of all people, that she had always wanted to be recognised for who she was and if someone came and took it all from her, she would crumble. Why else did she work so hard all the time?
She knew her shock had shown in her eyes, but she didn't have any obligation to tell him anything more than what had been said. Instead, she swallowed hard, and turned on her heel to leave. Anything more she said would simply incriminate her further – more blackmail material for him to use, and Merlin did he have ways to use it.
But as she began to walk away, determined to just leave her rant there, he knew she was running from something. Running from him? Somehow he didn't see it that way. Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't. And she knew him. Not as well as he knew her, but she did. So he wasn't the problem.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, ready to bolt once she hit the landing which led to their respective bedrooms. She was hyperaware of her surroundings, unseeing of the ground in front of her as she intently listened for the sound of his footsteps behind her. Halfway up the stairs. Good. Maybe he had enough blackmail material already, and his curiosity had run out since he had already seen the real her, the angry her who surfaced once in a little while, only in private.
Up the stairs. Onto the landing. Her footsteps quickened as she neared her door, and she reached a hand out for the knob – when she felt his hand on her shoulder. She tensed, and closed her eyes. Time to face the music, Hermione. She turned, shrugging off his hand coldly.
"Is what?" he asked, his voice softer than gentle. "What gets you the most?"
"Is none of your business." Her tone oozed contempt, and she kept her chin up, gazing at somewhere between the ceiling and the far left corner of the room. In her peripheral vision, he was mostly blurred.
"Is that Bulstrode took your place."
She was silent, upper lip curling in disdain.
"And you believe that everyone thought it was you. While you were really out on a boat in the middle of the Lake."
She laughed. Chuckled, really. She quirked an eyebrow at him.
"Don't pretend, Granger." His tone was so… parental. She growled, since she shouldn't hit him. Shouldn't. Shouldn't. She repeated the words in to herself, in a sort of silent frenzied mantra.
He took a deep breath. "I knew it wasn't you. From the moment she began talking."
Her eyes widened, hands slowly dropping limply to her sides.
She could only stare. How did he, one who she had considered for the longest time an enemy, somehow simultaneously reassure her of her own worth and give her this sense of... being appreciated, somehow, in a space of about two sentences? She covered her face with her hands, and took a deep breath. When she lowered them, her eyes were bright with tears, but she was together again and they did not fall. A testament to her will - even gravity obeys her.
"How?" Her simple question threw him – again, it reminded him of how they didn't talk if she could avoid it. He knew her well, but only by her actions. Her thoughts? They were still a mystery.
"How... what, Granger?" His sudden inability to articulate her thoughts jarred her back into reality. He didn't know her. Really.
"How... did you know." Now it was a statement.
"You told the Weasley girl that you were heading to the Lake that afternoon."
"No, not that. You know what." Again, another statement. He was beginning to get annoyed.
"Granger, I listen to you talk all day in class and all night on your telephone to your friends if they're not in the room with you. I'd be damn stupid to not get to know your personality, seeing as it's so distinct."
The words had slipped, scathing, from his tongue, almost not of his own will. He watched her crumple slightly, retracting into herself and drawing on the reserves of strength she was famous for possessing.
In a sudden motion, she jerked her hand up, poised to slap him – he raised a hand in response, lifted as if in defence – but when she stopped suddenly, he didn't. He reached out to her, and lightly took her wrist, pulling it gently toward him.
"Sorry." His voice was almost inaudible.
Hey guys. :) Review please! Oh, and please tell me if you see anything too impossible by the real HP plot, because I wrote this on the fly and didn't think too much about that. :L I think I might also have a second chapter underway, but I'm still not sure whether I like the fic ended in this way or not... tell me if you want a second chapter, okay? :P