I wrote this at 2am and I'm beyond tired, so I'm really really sorry if there are some mistakes with grammar or anything. Just let me know and I'll fix it ASAP. Just a little one-shot I wrote for Halloween. Reviews are always lovely and greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading and enjoy! :)
Dumbledore. Who else? Only Dumbledore could break centuries of school tradition by turning the Halloween feast into a full blown party. Only Dumbledore could decide to assign all sixth year students with tasks as seventh years were 'studious pupils who would be far too busy preparing for their NEWT's to help organise a party'. Only Dumbledore could so enthusiastically encourage house unity that he would think pairing up a Gryffindor and Slytherin a good idea. Yes, it could only be Dumbledore who could believe that pairing Hermione Granger with Draco Malfoy might possibly end well.
And that was how Hermione Granger has ended up sat in the room of requirement with Draco Malfoy. It wouldn't have been too bad, thought Hermione, if only they'd been given a task in which she didn't need to help the clueless ferret every five seconds. Maybe they could have helped with hanging the decorations up in the Great Hall. A quick wingardium leviosa and they would have been finished without any unfortunate need to interact with each other or force tolerance and civility. Not that either of the two were being particularly civil towards their assigned partner. Quite the opposite.
Now Hermione, being a muggleborn, found completing tasks without magic to be no problem at all. She had been brought up that way after all. However, the same could not be said for Draco Malfoy. Hermione highly doubted that the prestigious pureblood who prided himself so openly on his flawlessly magical background had ever done a days labour without the use of a wand in his life. So, it came as no surprise to Hermione that their current task was driving him to the point of insanity.
"I don't see why we can't just use magic!" Draco seethed at the knife embedded into his pumpkin.
"Because Dumbledore said so! Now will you please be quiet and get on with it, that way the sooner we can finish and the sooner I can get away from you." Hermione cried exasperatedly.
"Believe me, Granger, there's nothing I'd like more. But, seeing as this pumpkin has robbed me of my knife, there may be a slight flaw in your plan." He sneered at her.
Placing her eleventh perfectly carved pumpkin off to the side with the other ten, Hermione turned to face Draco who was sat on his own cushion – supplied by the ever helpful room of requirement – in front of the fireplace. She tried to muffle her laughter as she watched him tug at the knife which had gotten stuck whilst he was attempting to carve out the mouth.
"Shut up, Mudblood." He snapped. "It's not funny! Wait until my father hears what the old fool has got us doing now. He'll be out of here before you can say 'cauldron cakes'. What's the point in teaching us how to use magic if we're not allowed to use magic?"
Hermione just rolled her eyes and snatched the pumpkin out of his grasp, ignoring his protests of "Hey, I was doing that".
"You're so childish. It really isn't difficult. Honestly, if you'd just calm down for two minutes and try to remember you're not brutally murdering the bloody thing, maybe you wouldn't keep getting the knife stuck."
"Well, you do it then, if it's so bloody easy!" He shouted, throwing his arms out to emphasise his point.
"Oh, be quiet." Hermione sighed, wiggling the knife free of the pumpkin's grasp. "And I have done it. Eleven times. How is it that you're only on your second? Useless..."
"Shut it, Mudblood."
"You are infuriating!" Cried Hermione, throwing the half-carved pumpkin so that it hit him square in the chest.
"Watch what you're doing or I swear to Merlin I will come over there and hex that bush off your head!"
"Empty threats."
"Sure you want to find out?"
"Honestly, what is your problem? You can carry on insulting my blood or you can get to work and get out of here. You choose."
Grabbing another pumpkin, Hermione retreated back to her own cushion, grateful for the silence that greeted her remark. If it wasn't for Malfoy, she would have rather enjoyed the task Dumbledore had assigned. She'd always loved Halloween as a child, always loved carving the pumpkin with her dad and handing out sweets to the other children trick or treating with her mum. It was tradition. However, eleven pumpkins in, she had long ago run out of facial expressions to give them. Pen poised on the orange flesh, she reluctantly turned to Malfoy who seemed to have gotten his knife stuck again.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake, just stop! You're driving me mental and we'll never finish if you carry on. Come over here. You can draw the faces on them and scoop out the seeds, I'll carve them out."
"If you think I'm going to do what you tell me to do then-"
"Malfoy!" She yelled. "We are going to be here all night. And possibly all of tomorrow night if you don't get over here and start cooperating. Now, draw, scoop and deal with it."
"This is absolute bollocks." He stated as he reluctantly began to drag his cushion to her side of the fire.
"Deal with it." She repeated.
"How many more do we have left?"
Glancing at her unfinished pile, Hermione answered, "you don't want to know."
Draco took the pumpkin from her lap and she threw him the pen. He didn't hesitate as he began to draw on the face.
"Just use magic. He'll never know." Draco shrugged.
"He's Dumbledore. Of course he'll know."
"It'd do him good to take his nose out of-"
"Draco!" She held a hand up to silence him. "Be. Quiet."
Immediately, his hand froze on the orange fruit and he turned to look at the girl next to him.
"What?" Hermione began to fidget nervously under his gaze.
"You called me 'Draco'." He stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Well, that is your name isn't it?"
"Yes. You've just never used it before, that's all."
"Don't be silly, of course I have."
"No, you haven't. You always call me 'Malfoy'. Or 'Ferret'. Depends how much I piss you off on the day." He smirked.
"Oh." Was all she could say in reply.
Shaking it off, Draco continued with the face of his pumpkin. After scooping out the seeds, he passed it over to Hermione who was watching him carefully.
"What?"
"Nothing." She shook her head and turned to the pumpkin.
"What?" He pressed.
Hermione hesitated, cutting out an eye before deciding to answer him.
"It's all an act, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"This." She gestured to him. "You."
"What the hell are you going on about, Granger?" He scowled at her.
"I can see it. You insult me like it's second nature to you-"
"That's because it is." He interrupted, smirking.
"No, but that's the thing. I can see it. You don't mean any of it. They're just words to you now, not like back in second year. You meant it then. You believed it. But now..." She shrugged and looked away, blushing slightly. "I don't know."
"That is the biggest pile of shit I've ever heard."
"Is it?"
Hermione looked back at him and almost gasped at the intensity of the look he was giving her. Was he... angry? No. Hurt? No. Surprised, surely. Maybe even guilty. He held her eyes for a moment longer than necessary before he forced a laugh and grabbed another pumpkin.
"You've lost it, Granger."
"Maybe."
She was right. She knew she was. She was Hermione Granger, she was always right. That's what she was good at. It had taken six years for the thought to materialise, but it was there now, prominent and demanding at the very front of her consciousness; maybe there was more to Draco Malfoy than she, Harry and Ron were accustomed to. Of course, it was hard to believe that the cold hearted and insulting Slytherin she'd met all them years ago could change. But, the evidence was there. It was in his eyes. She could see it, even if she told herself she couldn't. He needed someone and that realisation scared her for reasons she couldn't quite begin to comprehend. After all, he was Draco Malfoy and she was Hermione Granger. They were enemies, they would repel each other until the end of time itself, they always had.
An hour passed. An hour and a half. Two hours. Neither spoke, just carried out the task they'd been given silently. Every so often, Hermione would glance at him and she could have sworn she saw him looking at her through the corner of his eye. Was that a blush?
The flames were beginning to die down in the grate when the silence was eventually broken by Draco's voice. Hermione wasn't sure if the reason it caught was because of the long silence or a result of their earlier conversation.
"Last one."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
"Yeah."
Could that really be called progress? Surely not. But he was being civil to her. In all her years of knowing Draco Malfoy, Hermione had never known him to be civil. He passed the last of the pumpkins over to her and she began to carve, her attention still on her internal battle. It was unsurprising that his sudden movement to get up made her jump and lose her grip on the knife. The next thing she knew, a sharp sting began in her finger and she glanced down to see a small gash where she had been clutching the dropped knife.
"Bugger." She winced, placing her finger into her mouth.
"You're bleeding." Draco stated, standing above her.
"It's just a cut." She mumbled around her finger. Pulling it out, she began to inspect the injury. It wasn't too bad, though the amount of blood said otherwise. "Honestly, it's fine. You can go if you want to."
Draco seemed to be debating with himself on what to do before he eventually bent down in front of her, albeit hesitantly, and grabbed her wrist in his hand to inspect her cut.
Hermione watched him carefully, not once allowing her eyes to leave his face and her wound quickly forgotten about. He was touching her. Skin to skin. She was bleeding and he wasn't screaming at her to back away should she infect him with her 'dirty' blood. She didn't know what to think. So she tried her best not to. However, being Hermione Granger, that wasn't the easiest of things to accomplish.
After assessing the cut, Draco took out his wand from his robe and pointed it directly at the wound, muttering a quick healing spell. Hermione's skin quickly began to stitch itself back together and was soon fully healed, but Draco didn't let go of her wrist.
"I'm not saying you were right." He muttered.
"Pardon?"
"Before." He explained. "What you said about me. I'm not saying you were right."
"You're not screaming at me and insisting that I was wrong either." She whispered
"No..."
There was a short pause before Hermione spoke again.
"Thank you. For healing me, I mean."
"Not a problem."
"Draco, I-"
However, Hermione found her sentence cut short and any thoughts of what she was about to say shrivel up into the deep crevices of her mind as his lips met hers. Shock immediately overcame her senses, but he didn't pull away. Just waited patiently for her to respond. And she did.
Hermione soon found her arms wrapped around Draco's neck, her fingers playing with the ends of his platinum blonde hair at the nape of his neck as her lips moved in perfect rhythm with his. She was acutely aware of him bringing them both to a standing position as he snaked his arms around her waist to bring her body closer to his. And she melted against him, her body seeming to fit perfectly against his. As the initial shock wore off, she deepened the kiss and neither pulled away until they both felt faint from lack of oxygen.
They looked at each other. Just looked. The sound of their heavy breathing and the dying crackles of the fire was all that surrounded them until Hermione spoke.
"I still have one more pumpkin to finish." She murmured shyly, her face quickly heating.
Draco noted the blush on her cheeks and found that somewhere, in the back of his mind, he thought that it made her look even more beautiful.
"Yes, well..." He cleared his throat. "You should just er... Just leave them here and I'll meet you tomorrow. We can set them up in the Great Hall then."
"Tomorrow..." She whispered to herself.
"Yeah, tomorrow." Draco confirmed. "I'll see you tomorrow then, Granger."
"Bye, Draco."
And for the first time in their six years at Hogwarts, as he turned to her with his hand on the door handle, Draco Malfoy smiled at Hermione Granger.