Draco Malfoy plus Hermione Granger equals Hate.
When they are in the same room together, students everywhere are ducking for cover, and cowering just from the glares they send each other.
Seventh year.
Their relationship hasn't exactly improved with time.
Hermione assumes that Draco Malfoy's future is pretty much set in stone already. Of course, he will follow in his father's footsteps. He will become a death eater. He will be a cold, ruthless killer.
He will die along with all of the other prejudiced pureblood scum.
Even if he helps the good side for now.
Because Draco has no feelings. Just like Lucius.
And he deserves what he gets.
Right?
She is coming to learn that there is no longer malice behind his words. Taunting becomes teasing. Hate becomes annoyance.
In a time of war, there is already enough hate.
She will not add to it.
She does not want to hate him.
Draco Malfoy plus Lucius Malfoy equals Bad Faith.
Draco looks exactly as his father did at his age. Handsome, mysterious… cold.
He, however, is not following in his father's footsteps. In his first and only moment of fatherly love, Lucius told Draco that he was wrong. He told Draco to follow a different path.
Draco now sits in an arithmancy classroom, ignoring the annoying beauty, the stubborn witch next to him, trying to figure out exactly where and when everything he loved and believed in fell apart.
Lucius Malfoy plus Narcissa Malfoy equals Arranged Marriage Gone Wrong.
Lucius has feelings too.
Maybe 'Luc' lost a little bit of his soul when his father forced him to marry the pureblood witch, maybe Lucius gave up on loving anybody when a muggleborn stole the one person he ever loved.
Maybe that was why a year after his son was born, he was bending down on his knee to a man named Tom Riddle, killing that 'mudblood bitch' and allowing his father's prejudice to control his life.
Maybe by the time his son was in his last year of school, it was too late for Lucius to get his son back. Maybe by then he had spent so long pretending not to love his son (to protect him from Voldemort, obviously) that he'd actually started to believe that it was true.
Narcissa Malfoy does not love her husband. She had had sex with him a total of three times in her life- once on her wedding night, once when Draco was conceived, then a third time when Lucius was finally forced to admit that he couldn't possible sleep with her because she was a woman.
Maybe if Narcissa Malfoy hadn't been so intent on keeping her husband in the closet, or so focused on keeping up his 'dark servant' façade, her son would have grown up knowing it was possible to feel something other than superiority and hatred.
Hermione Granger plus Harry Potter equals Far Too Complicated.
Ronald Weasley is an observer. He can see how Hermione flinches slightly when Harry kisses her neck. He can see the hurt in Harry's eyes when she says she is too busy studying to spend time with him. The redheaded boy is not an idiot, even he has noticed that while Harry constantly refers to Hermione as his girlfriend, she has not once called him by its counterpart.
She loves him. He's in love with her. She needs him. He wants her.
She had sex with him once.
He'd tell you they made love.
She used him for a physical release when Voldemort killed her parents.
He fell asleep with the girl he loved, before leaving to kill the man who killed her mum and dad.
He left her behind. He misses her. He wants her to be there with him.
She wants him to survive so that she can tell him the truth about how she feels.
He did love her. Not as much as he loved him, but he cared about her deeply. She was going to have his baby, he had to stay with her.
Except he didn't. He didn't stay with her because she disappeared one day and was never seen again. Being the private person he was, he assumed she didn't want him.
He hates that mudblood for ruining everything between him and Luc.
Severus Snape does not love Lucius Malfoy.
He does not love the man that the boy became, he does not love the cold, cruel servant of the Dark Lord.
He does not love the man that seemed to give himself to the dark.
He loves the boy, Luc, the boy whom he has kissed only in his dreams…
Those dreams come more and more often.
Harry Potter plus Tom Riddle equals The EndHarry Potter fights for Hermione, for the girl he loves.
She hates herself for giving him the false hope, but knows it is the only thing that will win the battle for them.
She is sitting in Arithmancy class next to her former enemy as Harry heads towards the battlefield. She isn't allowed to leave; she is not allowed to fight.
All of the battling she does is from the sidelines, working out strategies, planning attacks, lending cures to obscure curses, with Draco Malfoy at her side.
She learns that he is intelligent, she finds his company comforting.
It feels like coming home.
She feels guilty for hoping Harry won't come home soon.
Harry is victorious, of course he is. Harry Potter, saviour of the wizarding world…
He is in a coma.
You'll never guess who is at his bedside.
Severus Snape plus Harry Potter equals Acceptance
Harry Potter has a skilled potions master at his beside, trying to alleviate the pain. Severus Snape knows that Harry is not James, but that isn't the reason. Severus Snape is just glad to be rid of Voldemort. Deep down, Severus Snape hopes that Lucius will change now that he has been released from the Dark Lord's services. Unfortunately, Lucius is scheduled to be kissed in Azkaban.
Draco Malfoy is sorry. He is to be an orphan, same as Hermione.
Funny, blood stopped being important to him so long ago. Only now will she believe it.
They are more connected now than ever before.
Draco Malfoy plus Severus Snape equals Pain
Draco tells him that he is falling for a muggleborn. Severus Snape sees only the boy he once loved, in the face of Luc's son.
Draco tells Snape that when you love someone, you save them. Because unknowingly, they have saved you.
Hermione Granger saved Draco Malfoy.
There is a mysterious break-out of Azkaban soon after Draco's advice. The walls are melted with potions, and there seems to be a suspicious amount of clothes left on the prison floor.
The dead guard would have told you that he saw a smiling, yes, smiling Lucius Malfoy sneaking out of the hole, with slightly puffy lips and a glint of lust in his frosty eyes.
Draco Malfoy wishes he could be happy too.
Harry Potter plus Hermione Granger equals The PastHermione Granger is a puzzle. Like a particularly difficult sum, that Harry is only beginning to try to solve. He wakes up to find that she doesn't love him. He wakes up to find that she is a completely different girl to the Hermione he fell for. Maybe it is her parents' deaths. Maybe it is that she got to know Draco Malfoy.
All he knows is that she is happy. She has finally realised that all the sums, and arithmancy, and potions and knowledge and trivia are not happiness. The happiness is one sum, one love, one kiss.
Draco Malfoy plus Hermione Granger equals Love Beyond All Reason.