The worst day ever had begun when she crept up the stairs to the Gryffindor girl's dormitories after everyone else had gone to bed, and opened her trunk to find it wasn't her bloody trunk.
She had scrambled up the stairs, a bit woozy after the butterbeer she had been sipping on throughout the night, up to the room she shared with 4 other girls who were already conked out. They had returned that evening to begin their fifth year at Hogwarts, after a summer of rising tensions and Death Eater attacks. The train ride had been bearable with Harry and Ron, but the Gryffindor girls had thoroughly exhausted Hermione and themselves and passed out in bed earlier than usual this year. Looking around at her friends, they weren't exactly sleeping beauties. After they had all passed out, she found them all with their makeup smeared across their faces seemingly having thrown the contents of their trunks across the room in an attempt to get ready for bed.
She had crept up the stairs quietly, having taken her shoes off in the common room so that when her delicate feet hopped up the stairs, they did not make the usual clunking sound which would make a deep echo and wake everyone in Gryffindor tower. Upon entering her room, she had stubbed her toe on Parvati's bed and has to bite her lip to swallow the "For Godric's bloody sake!" that was desperately trying to escape her mouth.
She then limped over to her bed to find her trunk next to her bed and in her tired and slightly tipsy stupor did not recognise that this was not in fact her trunk. It was dark, strong, old wood and the lid of the trunk was covered in leather. The leather was a dark, expensive black with silver metalwork and intricately detailed patterns carved into the metal.
Flicking her wand, she whispered the passcode she had locked her trunk with yesterday evening when she had finished packing her clothes and books for Hogwarts. Then she had gone to bed, in preparation for the long train journey from Platform 9 ¾ which she would embark on tomorrow. Like she had done yesterday, all she wanted to do now was sleep. There was nothing wrong with the traditional Gryffindor party, held in the Common Room on the first night of term to welcome the new students, as well as everyone else, back to Hogwarts. As far as she knew, every house had a party, and Gryffindor's were always rumoured to be the best, or at least the loudest.
She was exhausted, had not really enjoyed the party as much as everyone else and was slightly tipsy... It was at times like these that she wished she could just manage to cast a simple bloody unlocking spell. Flicking her wand again she whispered "Yule Ball", and smiled, having chosen her password wistfully yesterday. She often thought about the Yule Ball, how her and Krum had danced, how she had wanted Ron to ask her so badly and he hadn't and how Draco kept pausing to stare at her for just a second too long as he scanned the room.
That evening, she had been one of the last left at the Ball, and when Krum had excused himself as he would have to be up for early Quidditch training, she had stayed. Perhaps it was because she was afraid of going back to the Common Room and facing her two best friends who she had scolded like a mother. Or perhaps it was him.
The crowd had been dying down, leaving a few stragglers for the last song. The last few partiers were deterred and even Neville and Ginny hadn't wanted to stay for the slow dance, all deciding that the situation might be too awkward and romantic for their liking. Hermione couldn't quite believe that out of sheer determination not to return to the Gryffindor Common Room, she had managed to be the last one standing at the Yule Ball. Believing she was alone, she had muttered about wizarding parties being awfully dull.
She had continued to snack on the frozen bites at the table to her left, with the sound of the rock group behind her singing a ballad for an empty dance floor.
Behind her she heard Draco huff as his friends left the Yule Ball early, with even Pansy giving up just five minutes before the end. He sauntered over to the other end of the table and snatched up a glass of punch as if her presence was a insult which he was taking very personally. "Why everyone seems to be unable to appreciate the traditions of these events I will never know," he muttered to himself under his breath. He took a sip of his drink and waited impatiently for the end of the night, mumbling about what tradition required from his pureblood friends and how they had shown themselves up.
"You sound like a pretentious twat," Hermione heard herself say, feeling overly confident after the evening of attention. He just sounded like he was regurgitating what his father told him and furiously trying not to lose sight of his Pureblood values, sighed Hermione, rolling her eyes.
His face sharpened as his jaw became terse: she saw him lose control for a fraction of a second only to regain his composure almost immediately. Breathing heavily under the labour of not snapping at Hermione, he looked as though he could break her.
"Would you dance with me?" he offered, trying to restrain the animosity he felt towards her. He held out his hand like a Pureblood was taught, when he was taught etiquette and dancing and how to play chess (the wizarding kind), and looked at her with pure loathing. He seemed to be sure that she wouldn't accept his offer. After having satisfied his need to act like a gentleman and follow tradition, he would be able to blame the failure of his efforts on this uncooperative 'Mudblood'.
Hermione knew that he wanted to slink away and continue with his life as usual, but she was not going to cooperate. He wanted more than anyone to avoid any interaction with her because he knew that if he did not, he may start to think of her as a someone… and that could be dangerous in his world where there were only two sides, and any blurring of the lines between these sides might be unsafe. But his own stupid traditions, the same which degraded her in his mind, also led to him offering her his hand for a dance.
He had challenged her. She had gritted her teeth and accepted.
"Why thankyou, Draco" she sing-songed. He would hate her using his first name. She then lit up with fake enthusiasm, "I would love to!"
A look of confusion transformed into sheer horror on his face, as his mouth warped from a grin into a straight line. He looked as though he was about to bare his teeth, but at the last minute seemed to remember that he was too civilised for that. Her warm hand draped itself into his cold firm grip, as he led her onto the dance floor. A quarter of the song was already over when he took her waist with one palm and her little hand in the other and began to swirl her, spin her, twist her. His resting hand on her waist made her blush and they were both overly aware of the minimal space left between them.
But seeing his stony expression throughout, she felt the weight of the war pressing on her body as she felt the weight of his hand grip her waist. She suddenly felt heavy with thought of prejudice and pure or dirty blood. Malfoy's technique was flawless and he never stood on her toes like Ron always did when they had practiced, but she found herself unhappy. But if he was unhappy, shouldn't she be happy with this small victory over him? After all she had done this to irritate him... She felt dizzy and nauseous being so close to him and knowing that all he was thinking about was her "foul" blood status.
In the dimly lit hall, their dance was coming to an end. Her tendrils of hair had come loose from the intricate hairstyle which she had finally let Lavender Brown pull and tug her bushy hair into. Draco watched them unfurl knowing from years of sitting behind Granger in class that she did not attempt to control her hair, ever. He had spent many a Transfiguration lesson contemplating lopping it all off with a quick spell to improve his sight of the blackboard at the front of the classroom. Hermione was falling apart before his eyes as he saw her smile waver, her curls loosening as she spun.
And then he caught her looking at him, almost expectantly. What did she want? She didn't expect him to talk to her while they danced did she?
I'm not bloody Gilderoy Lockhart, he thought to himself.
But then she surprised him, as he saw the famous Gryffindor stubbornness, which he so famously hated, return to her eyes. She turned her head away as they were dancing, looking at everything she could except him just to make a point. When he though he had knocked her down this witch decided to perk back up again. Fan-fucking-tastic.
But Granger stayed quiet. It seemed to him as though she was challenging him, daring him to talk.
"What are you looking at then?" he snarled, still spinning her slowly across the dance floor.
"Just thinking about the irony that your traditions which define me as a Mudblood-" she paused and frowned as he flinched at the word. Normally she wouldn't have noticed as his face did not move and instead remained a cold mask - but being pressed up against him made her acutely aware of the small shudder he felt when she said the word.
She finished her sentence, "The same traditions that make me a 'Mudblood' are telling you that you have to dance with one. The irony is just rather entertaining."
"Very" he snapped back at her, clearly trying to keep conversation to a minimum.
"Sad really how much conventions control your life" she muttered. Her voice had cracked, with her initial plans to taunt Malfoy going out the window as she thought about how restrictive his life truly was. The fact that he had everything made her curious about Malfoy. How could a boy so loved by his parents and worshipped by his house look so...stifled? Hermione did not know if she wanted to know him more - she highly doubted this in fact - but he did seem both pathetic and hateful. She spent a long time over the years trying to reconcile this with herself, never truly reaching a conclusion but instead just removing Malfoy from her thoughts.
Draco furrowed his eyebrows and clenched his jaw. She had obviously agitated him, and his terse reaction added to the already tense atmosphere between the pair. He thought adamantly that he was certainly was not as warped as his father and did not worship the ground Voldemort stood on. He believed in blood purity, yes, but he also acknowledged that the Dark Lord was evil. If it was achieving what his family believed in, how bad could it really be to join him? The intelligent place to be in the war was on the Dark Lord's side. Granger merely had no choice between sides, making it far simpler for her to say what was definitively right or wrong.
"I asked you because I wanted to," he said as he rolled his eyes. "I am not controlled by anyone, Granger."
The fury in his eyes fired up again and she believed him.
But had he just confessed that he wanted to dance with her? Was she the exception to the rule?
They both looked shiftily at their feet, over the others shoulder, even gazed up at the ceiling and pretended to marvel at the night sky in the Great Hall. At times Draco thought that it would be far more interesting to study what was standing right in front of him, but he kept his jaw locked and his head high. He would not break.
The song had ended and Hermione had wandered back to her dormitory, wondering whether she had concocted a potion incorrectly and had inhaled too many of the rotten-smelling fumes.
The next day she concluded that she had clearly been delusional.
Pulling herself back to reality, she thwacked her wand a couple of times as though a quick tap would fix the problem. She spent the next 5 minutes furiously whispering "Yule Ball" in different voices, pitches and even accents. After failing miserably at an Irish accent she sighed and resorted to trying a beginners level spell: "Alohomora"
"Bloody typical" she barked to herself as the lock clicked and the lid flipped open, "the simplest bloody spell."
She began rummaging through the items in the trunk, desperately trying to find her pyjamas so that she could struggle into bed and forget her incompetence.
Then it finally dawned on her alcohol debilitated mind. This wasn't her case…
She nearly peed her pants when she realised what she would have to do next. Having faced a fair number of monstrous creatures in her time at Hogwarts, she knew that this was most dangerous. She would take the fangs of the three headed dog, a herd of centaurs or a dragon over this. She dreaded it even more with every step she took down the stairs from her dormitory, knowing that to wake the woman at this time of night was very risky.
McGonagall.
She had to face McGonagall.
She could just imagine the livid look on her face, the curlers in her hair pulling her face tight and causing the glare she would shoot Hermione to be twice as cutting. The image of McGonagall was not any less formidable knowing she would be wearing a dressing gown and slippers in stead of her teaching robes, her professor was scary whenever she was angry regardless of the time or her dress sense.
Hermione was so screwed. She looked like she had been drinking at the party, and awake after hours. This was a surefire way to get detention for a month, but she had to do it… unless she wanted to sleep in the clothes she was wearing now and then wear them tomorrow as well, which surely wouldn't go down well with the rest of the students who would be wearing uniform and not muggle clothes. Godric help her.
She trudged across the Common Room which was now covered in cups and glass bottles, confetti and random belongings which people would claim in the morning and stopped when she heard a raised voice outside the portrait hole, clearly irritated and arguing with 'The Fat Lady'. She heard them thumping the portrait assumed it was just a drunk Gryffindor who was too drunk to remember the new password.
She crossed the room and opened the entrance and it was in fact a drunk student. Not the kind she expected though...
Malfoy stood outside the Gryffindor common room, breathing heavily from his heavy blows to the portrait. He leaned against the doorway and regained his composure, straightening his back and sharpening his glare. What was he doing here? She glanced down at his shirt sleeves which were rolled up to his elbows, exposing his forearms. Perhaps in her drunken stupor, or because of her earlier reminiscing on last year, she saw images of those arms wrapped around her and remembered the light pressure of his grip on her waist.
He opened his mouth to begin berating her and she interrupted with a hiss, "Draco, shut up!"
He had stopped thumping the door and stepped back, or perhaps you would say toppled back in his drunk state. He was ambivalent to her, unsure of whether to taunt her or to play with her. He knew what he wanted to do, but he also knew what he should do.
Now she just looked at him, revelling in the fact that he seemed weaker like this. Without the barriers he put up normally, she thought it was quite fascinating to watch him. A flash of confusion wiped across his face and was quickly smothered by a look of resignation. His reaction could have been worse, she supposed. Fortunately, Draco's lack of aggression towards her meant that she could get to the bottom of why this prat had found Gryffindor Tower. As quickly as possible.
Why was he here? Was it about that night last year? No, don't be silly.
Draco still looked shocked that it was her that answered his calls from outside the portrait hole. He clearly didn't expect her to wrench open the door to the Common Room and shush him.
Suddenly she realised she was more tipsy than she thought, as she began swaying.
Or was that him that was swaying? Oh crap it was definitely him.
Suddenly, he lurched forward and fell onto her. She was suddenly very aware of how close his body was. His breathe tickled her ear and she shuddered as his lips grazed her neck. He bowed his head further into her.
Burying his face in her massively curly hair, unable to face the shame he felt, he tried to ignore the voice telling him that this was not right. He felt her squirm slightly as she reached her arms under his to grip his back. He pressed his lips to her neck, brushing them against her skin so lightly it could have been mistaken for an accident.
She attracted him, like a moth to a flame. That's what this was. She had turned on a light and he had flown directly into it, being consumed in the process. She was damaging, but he kept engaging with her.
He could not see, but she was damaging the assumptions he had about Muggleborns. As these assumptions were slowly proven wrong, the foundations of his belief might crumble. However, with Malfoy they were stubbornly held together by his family loyalty and an ego which told him that he could never be wrong. He wondered why he was attempting to interact with her so much if she was below him. Why did she make him question things, even things which were accepted and safe? He breathed in again and though of what his parents would think if they saw him in such a compromising position.
Why hadn't he just waited until he was sober?