A/N: Much to my chagrin, I do not own Harry Potter. I wish I could live in it, though.
Confrontations
She was a shit packer. Because she was well aware of this fact, she always started the process of packing two weeks in advance. Even then, she was almost always packing until the last minute. Thus, it was no surprise that she discovered herself trailing behind on the day of her departure. Fuelled by the end-of-year excitement, her mind-boggling excuses of friends had run off to the train by themselves, leaving her struggling to lift her four heavy trunks up and above the stairs leading to the annoyingly raucous locomotive.
She peered through the window of every train car until she came across one with a blind curiously drawn. She tentatively knocked, stepping inside out of impulse rather than a conceivable reason once the door had unexpectedly flung open. Her mouth froze as she came face-to-face with a blonde Slytherin lazily sprawled over his seats. Surprisingly, he was alone. He slowly lifted his left eyebrow, lowering his copy of Anna Karenina. If she wasn't completely bewildered, she might have laughed at the sight.
"Sorry, I was… looking for my friends."
"I see."
"Sorry."
Nearly wincing from the embarrassment of repeating her apology, she quickly turned to leave.
"I'm sure you can find your friends in the next hour or so. Stay, won't you?"
It was when the familiar warmth of relief had slowly coursed through her heart that she realized she was expecting his invitation. She turned back with feigned reluctance, seating herself opposite of him. She busied her hands by smoothing her robes and tucking her wand in her left pocket. Then she decided to speak.
"So, how have you been?"
"I've been doing well. You?"
She lifted her eyes to meet his cool, gray gaze. Her lips stretched into a smile that reflected nervousness and truth.
"Likewise."
He closed his book with a thump. Her eyes skimmed the cover once more.
"I didn't know you read Muggle."
She detected a brief glint of hostility in his eyes, but they soon disappeared to reveal vague amusement.
"Let's just call it character development."
She gaped in protest.
"I didn't mean it like that-"
"Calm down, Granger. It was just a joke."
He cleared his throat then continued.
"You haven't changed one bit, have you? Still tight-wound and fidgety."
"I am not fidgety-"
"You're fidgeting right now."
She let go of the hem of her robe in one violent motion and crossed her arms, giving him a good-natured glare. He barked out a small laughter.
"Well, I must offer my congratulations."
Her brows furrowed in confusion. It was only when his detached gaze traveled to her right hand did she register the twinkle of a gemstone from the finger closest to her heart.
"I bet Weasley writes you sappy love letters every night."
His tone was ambiguous, although one could argue that it was a badly delivered attempt at humor. She quickly retorted.
"We are not engaged. We are not even together."
"Right."
"This is a graduation gift from my grandmother! I just like wearing it on my ring finger."
He huffed in surprise, blowing the fringes out of his eyes. An awkward silence ensued until she felt the need to break it with a good-humored chastisement.
"I'm disappointed. I thought I did better than to come across as a witch who would entrap herself into the sanity-draining prison of marriage. At the age of eighteen, no less."
His eyes crinkled, exuding a level of cautious fondness.
"You're right. I would be sorely disappointed if you let any wizard snatch you away after graduation."
She pursed her lips in approval.
"So, what is your deal? Any future plans?"
"My immediate goal in life is not to follow the path of my father, and so far, I think I've been successful."
She scowled.
"Maybe if you stop applying yourself to such dismal expectations, you would truly prove your worth, Malfoy."
"Ah, judgment. The ever-unchanging Granger."
She tightened her hands into fists at his sarcastic drawl. She was well-accustomed to his quirks and qualms, and an infallible tendency to stray the conversation from anything remotely serious was certainly one of them.
"I've had far too many classes with you at this point to even try to deny your intellect. You're smart, you're passionate, and you're exquisitely cunning. Why don't you just-"
"What? Try harder?"
His expression hardened and she felt the air of friendliness dissipate like an exhaled breath in winter. She detected venom in his change of demeanor.
"Since you seem to forget this ever so often, let me remind you again: I am not your charity case. I am not some lost boy, billowing in the wind just to be smothered by your motherly care. You and I have trodden this path before, Granger. It did not end well."
His imagery irked her. He was always unnecessarily dramatic. However, what infuriated her was his mention of their troubled history.
"Yes, it bloody hadn't, because the last time I checked, you very much went ahead and revealed to the entire school that you were a Death Eater."
"Like I had a damn choice in the matter!"
She was incredulous.
"Had you ever considered about me? About how I would have felt after you practically killed the one man in my life I respected most and run off to join the side that wanted to murder me?"
He scoffed, seemingly disgusted.
"Save it, Granger. We were just fucking. Your heart was set on Weasley."
"Really, now?"
She wanted to scream. It was so characteristically Draco; one minute they were reeling from friendly banter, and the next minute they were at each other's throats over some impertinent matter that they had dug up from the past. They were treading familiar grounds, and her inner logician warned that they never escaped unscathed. However, the petty and responsive side of her was urging her to see this argument through.
"You just said yourself that you were my charity case. With shame, I admit part of that is true. I was naive enough to believe that I could fix you."
"At least you have the audacity to admit-"
"I am not bloody finished. You were also my first Slytherin friend. A really good one at that, in fact."
His eyes grew wary. His wet his lips to demonstrate his thinning patience.
"Granger-"
"You were also a frequent visitor of my dreams. In those, you weren't brooding all the time or… or calling me questionable names. You were happy and lovely and… consumed by the thought of me. Of wanting me."
She lowered her eyes, suddenly mindful of the level of vulnerability embedded in her short spiel. She cleared her throat.
"So, no. We weren't just fucking. What happened was you broke my fucking heart and I was too much of a coward to confront you."
Oh, good lord. This was not how she wanted to end her last year at Hogwarts. To Hermione, confessing long-harbored feelings to an estranged lover was equivalent to snogging Snape at the Quidditch field after her house has garnered a victory. Never to be thought of, much less put into action.
His eyes were calculative and judging, demonstrating fine-tuned detachment where she hoped she would uncover a speck of honesty. She suddenly felt the train car close in on her. She rose from her seat.
She tensed as he abruptly stood with her, his cool and cunning gaze wiped clean from his face. He seemed frantic, even.
"Please, don't leave."
He closed the distance between them and softly wrapped his fingers around her left wrist. His minty breath pleasantly brushed across the bridge of her nose. She looked up at him, but his eyes were cast downward.
"How do you feel about me now?"
"What?"
The question was designed to stall her response, not to clarify what she had, much to her shock, heard word by word. His steely orbs were now fixated on her face. She found herself scrambling for coherency. Somehow, her lips managed to whisper.
"We haven't talked to each other in a year."
He remained silent, his gaze firmly trained on her as if urging her to say something more.
"My sixteen-year-old self would have spewed some heart-laced rubbish. But now… well, I don't know you at all."
She felt strangely glum as he let go of her wrist. He retreated to his seat, balancing his arms on his knees. She listened as he opened his statement with an imperceptible sigh.
"And that's a good thing, Granger."
In that moment, she perversely wished he had called her Hermione. Trying her best to ignore her inappropriate train of thoughts, she asked him the one question she knew she wanted to ask since the night Dumbledore fell to his death.
"And how did you feel about me?"
Why did you never say goodbye?
He raised his head. She absently noted that he smelled like a freshly ironed shirt with a dash of apple cider. It was distracting.
Why did you decide that I was a stranger to you?
His eyes radiated hollowness.
"You were the one thing I wanted to protect most."
For whatever reason, the Hogwarts Express came to a screeching halt. She reveled in this momentary distraction.
She was attempting to reciprocate the gravity of his response, but it wasn't possible. The previously dormant, intuitive part of her whispered that she had known his answer all along. An aptitude for self-preservation tended to digress an individual from the destructive path of one-sided affections. And Hermione was brilliant at survival.
What she hadn't anticipated, however, was the groundbreaking relief of hearing the truth travel from his lips, of feeling his masculine verbalization access the part of her that knocked the air out of her.
She hesitantly approached him then, placing her right hand on his head. His hair was more brittle than she last remembered. Her fingers met his pale locks, processing a wave of startling intimacy. Something akin to nostalgia tickled her skin as he wrapped his arms around her waist and placed his forehead right above her navel.
"You would tell me things I needed to hear and listen to me like no one would. You would respond and react to me like I was everything that was new to you. Losing you was out of the question."
His breaths traveled across her spine as he spoke.
"You always wanted to me to be better. To be good. But to deliver to your expectations meant risking it all."
"Draco-"
"I know it was completely selfish."
The guilt and self-doubt were palpable, and it broke her heart. So she did what she did best; sinking to her knees, she placed a soft, lingering kiss on his lips. She wished her message was delivered.
I forgive you.
Ginny was growing with worry. The train wasn't showing any sign of moving, and her friend has been missing for the past hour. Not to mention that the air was so unbearably hot. Restless with irritation and concern, she wandered down the corridor.
So far, her quest to find Hermione Granger has been unsuccessful. Until she decided to rudely yank open the door to a train car that happened to host a familiar blonde Slytherin and a soundly asleep Gryffindor nestled next to him. Her ring gleamed under the sunlight, showering the floor with a pleasant, blue wash. Her eyes met the silver hues of Draco Malfoy.
"So you decided to wait until the absolute last fucking minute. Cute, Malfoy. I was convinced it was all a lost cause."
He paled. If that was even possible.
"What?"
"Hell, you've been in love with her all year. You're telling me you expected me to be oblivious?"
He opened his mouth then closed it again, unsettlingly resembling a toad in the midst of a mating call. She decided a minute spent with Malfoy was a minute too much.
"Don't worry, I'm happy for you. I've had enough of listening to Hermione complain about just about everything that had to do with you."
"What do you mean-"
"I mean she is obsessed with you."
He looked dumbstruck.
"By all means, good luck."
With that, Ginny closed the train car shut, a satisfied smile hanging off her lips. The train screeched to indicate its rebirth.
Finally, they were getting somewhere.
Fin.