Disclaimer: If I owned these characters I wouldn't be needing to pay off student debt
A/N: Hello there! I'm Saki and this is my first HP fanfic! I've been writing fanfiction for a couple of years, but I've never felt competent enough to take on HP because it's my oldest fandom and something so very close to my heart and so I was terrified of not doing it justice. I still am, but I'm hoping that this piece would fare alright. The title is inspired by "Searching for a Feeling" by Thirdstory, so if you would like to give that a listen, it would be great! I also have a playlist that goes along with this fic that I may share later :)
I plan on updating weekly if possible, depending on my schedule! I have a few chapters written up so far and a few more planned out. Please let me know your thoughts! Cheerios!
Prologue: Between the Lines
First Year
The library was her safe haven.
Hermione Granger strode through the doors of the library, head high, books held to her chest tightly, and fighting stinging tears that threatened to spill from the corners of her eyes. She noticed Madam Pince's piercing glare as she stormed by—immediately, she softened her steps to reign in the loud clicks her loafers made on the marble floor, and lowered her head just a smidge. She couldn't afford to be in the strict librarian's bad books. Not today.
Not ever, really—if that Weasley boy and the other Gryffindors were to continue to label her as an "insufferable know-it-all" every time she tried to help them with their schoolwork.
The library was the only place in this castle that she felt comfortable in anymore.
She made her way past the long tables that ran down the central aisle of the library, where a scattering of older students sat, and rounded a bookshelf towards the end of the room. Squeezing through the gap where two shelves that met at an awkward acute angle, she reached a large, round desk that fitted perfectly into a semi-hidden alcove. Today, an older Ravenclaw was the sole occupant of the table. He looked up briefly as Hermione approached, perhaps surprised to find a first year in the library this early in the term, but returned to his copy of Advanced Potion-Making without another word.
It was one of those rare early October days in the Scottish hills where sunshine still bathed the castle, catching glittering dust speckles in the air as it filtered through the aged castle's windows. Hermione only spared a second to relish the peace of the alcove and the rays of sunlight hitting the desk before taking a seat and opening up The Standard Book of Spells to the last page she stopped at. She was two weeks ahead in the assigned reading, not that that was ever a bad thing, she reasoned, unlike what the boys said of her. How else would she have known to warn them against the perils of wrongly enunciating Wingardium Leviosa? Ronald Weasley could have scorched his stupid eyebrows off.
Instead he had mimicked her voice, to the amusement of the other boys with him—Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, though at least Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom had looked somewhat uncomfortable.
Hermione let out a long breath, feeling her tears retreat. She looked down at her textbook and began to read.
000
Second Year
"Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size, and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad…"
Hermione's breath quickened as she read on, forgetting for a second how odd it was for her to find this now, a singular torn page left on her library table, between sheets of parchment.
"Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death…"
She knew then. Harry hearing the noises in the walls, the petrified victims, Hagrid's depleting flock of fowl…
She grabbed her quill and scribbled a note on the page before shoving her scattered notes and books off the table into her book bag and darting out of the library, page scrunched up in her fist.
She was unaware of the pair of silver-grey eyes that watched her leave from between the shelves.
000
Third Year
Hermione didn't like to think of herself as a possessive person—but that was the only way to truly describe how she was feeling then. For two years she had occupied the alcove, occasionally sharing with other students near exam time as the library got busier, but it was really her alcove. Her spot. Her escape whenever Ron and Harry's pestering for homework services got too much.
So when she rounded the usual corner today, seeking the solace of her alcove in the busier-than-usual library, and found a certain Slytherin sitting at her table, her hand closed around her wand in her pocket almost instinctively
Draco Malfoy looked up lazily from whatever book was open in front of him and raised an eyebrow, before his expression turned into a quiet sneer.
No one else was at the table. The alcove was relatively hidden between the two shelves anyway, but even so, everyone knew well enough to stay away from Draco Malfoy, even when he wasn't flanked by his usual burly cronies.
She stood between the towering shelves that led to the alcove—her alcove—and stared down the boy with her jaw locked and her head high. Cold, grey eyes regarded her in return, full of disdain and challenge, mocking her, daring her to step closer.
She would've hexed him if not for the potential lifetime ban from the library that she could possibly incur. But Hermione was smart. She knew how to pick her fights.
She turned and settled at a table down the next aisle instead, between a Hufflepuff Prefect and Katie Bell from Gryffindor. Katie offered a small smile which Hermione returned, and settled into her homework for Ancient Runes.
When she looked up three hours later, it was to the sound of Madam Pince closing up the library, all the while throwing the last few difficult occupants out rather unceremoniously by charming their bags to float out of the vast room on their own accord while students chased after them. Hermione locked eyes with the librarian and hastily began packing her items before she incurred her wrath, while watching, with a great amount of satisfaction, Draco jogging hastily after his book bag as it drifted out of the library.
(Later in the year, Hermione would add this trespassing of her property to the list of reasons justifying her breaking of Malfoy's nose in the grounds.)
000
Fourth Year
After running into the blond Slytherin boy in the library a few more times over the course of the past two years, Hermione decided that it was about time to pick this battle. She had more or less figured out why he was always in the library—for pretty much the same reason that she was. Malfoy wouldn't be second to her in grades in every class if he simply hung around Crabbe and Goyle all day. Every time she had seen him in the library, he was bent over stacks of textbooks, furiously working through essays and assignments, much like she did herself. He studied as hard as she did...
…Which only served to tick her off further, for some reason. And how dare he take over her spot in the library to do his studying. He was here again tonight. Hermione gritted her teeth this time and pushed through the gap between she shelves and sat down with solid determination at her table. She was not giving up her spot this time to some twitchy little ferret.
A twitchy little ferret that she had easily punched and broke the nose of last year.
She saw him look up and sneer as she unpacked her books, sitting directly opposite him to maximize the distance between them on the round desk.
"Granger. Sod off."
Hermione continued to calmly withdraw her notes from her bag. She didn't need to look up to know that the Slytherin's scathing glare was fixed on her.
"I said sod off you filthy Mud—"
The shrill shushing sound that the librarian made was welcoming to her ears as compared to Draco's impending insult. Hermione briefly looked up at Madam Pince, hoping her eyes communicated some form of gratitude but all she received in return was a quiet, threatening, if-you-dare-speak-again-you-are-forever-banned glare from the librarian.
She could feel Malfoy seething at her from across the large table, but did not remotely glance his way when he begrudgingly sat back down. She was mildly annoyed that he didn't pack his own bag and move to another table as she had hoped but continued to work, spreading his parchment out in a wider area around his seat to take up more space in an attempt to force her off the table.
But it was fine, she figured. Two could play at this game, and she was sure that by the end of the day the alcove would be rightfully hers again.
000
Fifth Year
She had almost become accustomed to running into Malfoy here at least once a week now, since she was quite literally almost always in the library with the impending O.W.L.s and research on duelling spells for Dumbledore's Army while he came, almost like clockwork, every Thursday evening.
So when he wasn't at their—no, not their, her—table tonight, Hermione found herself glancing around, wondering where he was. She uttered a mental curse a moment later, realizing what she was doing.
It wasn't like she was concerned, but if he wasn't here studying like a proper student, then the only other things that he could be up to were much less savory. At least, when he was around, she knew that he was just trying to beat her at Charms or Potions, but now he was probably terrorizing first years with the rest of the Inquisitorial Squad.
She got out of her seat about half an hour later, having finished the reading for McGonagall's class the week after, and passed through the shelves back into the main area of the library, hunting for advanced spell books to continue her research for DA. She wandered into a quieter section of the library, where there were no tables in order to accommodate for the closely packed shelves, with eyes fixated on on the spines of books to locate the second volume of the spell book series she had been perusing the night before…
And that's when she heard it—a girl's sharp breath, followed by the unmistakable sound of wet lips smacking together. Hermione snapped out of her focused search and squinted down the aisle she was in. It was empty. The sound had come from the next aisle, and as she turned her head to the left, she could see a gap in the books a few steps ahead.
In the weeks following this incident, Hermione would repeatedly scold herself for letting her curiosity get the better of her—but at this very moment she chose to walk forward and peer through the gap between the books into the next aisle, hands shaking slightly at her side.
The first thing she saw was the back of a girl's head—she had dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, but it had come somewhat loose from being pressed against the shelves. A pale hand with long fingers was cushioning the back of the girl's neck.
And then she caught a flash of platinum blond, and the next moment a pair of grey eyes were piercing her through the shelf, over the top of the girl's head.
Hermione's hand flew to her mouth to stifle her gasp—she turned and ran down the way she came before the couple could both turn around and catch her. Her feet carried her through the library with her hand still over her mouth and her heart ramming against her chest for having seen something that she definitely should not have witnessed. Madam Pince glared at her as she passed, but by this point she figured she had raked up enough good karma with the librarian to not be kicked out for brisk walking in the library.
She knew that some people used the library for more than just studying, having overheard Seamus boasting a couple weeks ago about snogging Susan Bones in an unspecified area of the library, earning him a round of whistling from the boys and rolling eyes from Hermione. She knew, and still probed the source of the sounds earlier.
"Stupid," she cursed quickly under her breath, while packing her books up with shaking fingers. She wanted nothing more than to leave the library now, should Malfoy choose to come back to her table and hex her for being a peeping tom.
She touched a hand to her face to sweep her messy curls back behind her ear, only to find her cheeks flaming. Still cursing silently under her breath, she threw the last of her quills into her bag and quickly made her exit, somehow managing to reach the safety of her dorm without encountering anyone she knew on the way back.
That night, Hermione dreamed of her kisses with Viktor Krum—only, by the end of the dream, Krum had blond hair and grey eyes. She awoke with a start, a string of choice curse words running through her head, and did not go back to sleep for the rest of the night,
Malfoy returned to the table the following Thursday, regarding her with a challenge in his eyes and the beginnings of a smirk on his lips as she sat down carefully, never breaking eye contact. Whatever apologetic urges she had felt in the past week vaporized and were replaced with the same fire in her veins that precipitated her punch back in third year. But the moment was gone quickly when he seemingly decided that she wasn't worth his time, and turned his attention back to his books, leaving Hermione sitting there, infuriated and embarrassed at the same time. She withdrew her own books with a bit more force than necessary, pretending not to notice the smirk that he cast towards the table when the books hit the surface.
000
Sixth Year
It was one thing to take a quick nap on the desk when one got tired while reading, but it was another thing to sleep for an entire hour on a library desk. On her desk.
Sacrilegious.
Their silent studying routine had returned, after the never-mentioned-again incident in fifth year. Though since the beginning of this year, Malfoy had spent more of his common library time with Hermione unconscious rather than studying. Hermione was losing her nerve for god-knows-why, even though, to be honest, the snoozing Slytherin opposite her was much more pleasant asleep than awake. He hadn't moved she arrived in her alcove an hour ago. A couple of textbooks were spread out around him, threatening to spill over to her half of the desk.
She had, on multiple occasions since her arrival, been tempted to wake him. The rational part of her stopped her, with the argument that she would get more work done now than when he was awake and threatening to curse her every time a corner of her parchment breached their unsaid division line. Then again, she didn't quite believe that he had it in him to actually curse anyone. Despite Harry's ridiculous theory about Malfoy taking the Dark Mark and becoming a Death Eater, she just couldn't believe that Malfoy would be that stupid. He was a git, yes, but not a stupid one. Even if his grades had slipped somewhat this year, he was still the only one that she felt was a real challenge to her spot as top of the class. (That is, even with Harry's newfound Potions prowess.)
His face was turned away from her as he rested his head on his stacked arms, but Hermione knew what she would see. Lately, Malfoy had been turning up in the Great Hall with dark crescents under his eyes, like he hadn't had a good sleep in months—which was understandable, given that Lucius was now in Azkaban for his slip up in the Department of Mysteries the previous year. But that was just the beginning of it. His usual pale skin had perhaps lightened another two shades and had adopted a sickly grey undertone. He looked perpetually exhausted in all of their N.E.W.T. classes, spending half of lecture period either dozing off or staring into nothing.
Not that Hermione had paid particular attention, but it was difficult not to, with Harry constantly going on about his conspiracy theories that Malfoy was now one of them. She unconsciously glanced at his stacked arms, and then at the pale blond locks that fell messily over them—just as he groaned and stirred. She snapped her eyes back to her book.
"G-Granger…" He croaked out, voice hoarse from lack of use. She briefly nodded and glanced at him to acknowledge his existence. He still looked ill, despite his rest.
"Finally awake, Malfoy?" She whispered back, gaze falling from his bloodshot eyes to the sunken hollows of his cheeks. He responded with a quiet groan as he rubbed his palms into his eyes, and Hermione returned to her book.
A few silent moments passed without any signs of books opening or quill scratching. Hermione glanced at him again, and this time his head was in his hands and he looked… broken. That was the only word that came to mind. His shoulders were slumped forward and he looked like he was taking deep, shuddering breaths to calm himself.
This time, her gaze lingered for a second too long. She met his grey eyes as he looked backed up. Instead of the usual cold, hardened grey, she looked into an empty swirl of slate.
"Granger," he began again. She was taken aback by the lack of hostility on his face—in fact, if the tension in his brows and the trembling corners of his mouth were any indication, Hermione would even venture to say that he looked pleading. "Granger, I—"
"Shh!"
Malfoy positively jumped and looked frantically to his left, where Madam Pince stood and scolded them with her penetrating glare. Hermione swallowed as the librarian walked away, and turned back to Malfoy, who now stared down at his lap, his fists clenched and set atop the table.
"Malfoy?"
As if snapping out of a trance, Malfoy's eyes shot back up to meet hers, still wearing an unreadable expression, but Hermione knew that she wasn't going to get to hear what Malfoy was about to say. He stood up so quickly that he almost knocked over his chair. Slinging his bag over one shoulder and scooping up the rest of his books into his arms, he fled without another word.
When Hermione came to her senses, she realized she had stood up as well, apparently in the middle of wanting to follow him. She froze there for a second before settling back down into her chair with a sense of nagging unease at the pit of her stomach that she ignored.
Two weeks later, Harry stumbled into the common room, covered in blood that was not his. It took a while for a shaken-up Harry to recount the tale. How Malfoy was crying, of all things. How terrified he had seemed. How the proud, arrogant Malfoy had fallen into pieces in the boys' bathroom. How Harry had hit him with a spell he learned from that god-awful potions book of his.
Malfoy didn't return to the library for the rest of that school year, and while Hermione got her wish to have her alcove back to herself, she never could shake the feeling that she had missed something important by not following him out that day. It wasn't until after wrenching a grieving Harry from the cold, dead body of their headmaster that she found out why Draco Malfoy had been tormented for the whole school year.
000
Seventh Year
Her safe haven was torn apart.
Part of the east wall of the library had collapsed, giving Hermione a broad view of a partially cloudy May sky and the grounds below where more rubble laid. She took step after tentative step into the vast room—bigger now because of the torn walls and collapsed shelves.
It was over.
Harry had, with some help, settled into a much needed sleep in one of the stretchers that McGonagall placed in a side room off the Great Hall for some privacy. Ron needed time to properly grieve with the rest of the Weasleys. After giving the family of redheads hugs all round, her feet had carried her through the ruins of the castle to this room on the fourth floor where she had always escaped to. She needed a moment away, just a moment, away from Tonks and Remus's lifeless, joined hands, away from Fred's frozen smile, away from Lavender's torn throat. Away.
She squeezed past the shelves that still met at that same awkward acute angle despite the destruction that surrounded it. The windows that surrounded the alcove had shattered in the fight, leaving behind a view out to the Great Lake. Hermione raised her wand shakily, muttering Reparo a couple of times, and the window had restored itself.
If not for some debris that still laid around the table, the alcove looked as it always did. Semi-hidden, quiet, with sunlight filtering through the window. The corners of her mouth barely raised a fraction of an inch.
She nearly reached the exit of the library when Madam Pince walked in, and her hand immediately flew to her mouth to stifle a cry that fought its way out of her throat. Hermione watched the older woman's eyes glaze over as she surveyed the damage to her beloved library… and finally land on Hermione. Hermione smiled weakly, and laid a hand comfortingly on the librarian's arm.
"We can rebuild this."
Madam Pince's nod was barely noticeable, but returned Hermione's gesture with a small, shaky, tearful smile nonetheless. She moved into the center of library as Hermione made her way out.
For some reason, she wasn't surprised was she noticed him in the hallway just as she stepped out of the library. Grey eyes met her brown ones through the loose locks of blond hair that fell in front of his forehead. His black suit was covered in dust and debris, and there was a bruise to the side of his head. He was too far away for her to make out his expression, but she couldn't move herself from where she stood.
She should hate him. Hurt him now when she had the chance, to make him pay for what his family had done, what he himself had planned but failed to do. Yet bubbling just beneath the thin veneer of hatred was simply a mixture of disappointment… and pity.
They remained like that for a moment longer—he, near the staircase at the end of the hallway, her, right outside the double doors to the room that they had begrudgingly shared for their school years. All the feuds that had transpired within the library felt so innocent now compared to the weight of what had just happened. The aftermath of the war hung heavily in the air between them.
Finally, Malfoy spun around and hurried down the stairs. The sudden movement broke Hermione out of her trance and she headed towards the same staircase with hurried steps of her own. He was gone by the time she reached the top of the stairs.
When she re-entered the Great Hall, Ron immediately came over, nursing a tin mug of tea in his hands.
"You missed it—the Malfoys just got taken away by Kingsley."
She gave him a brief nod, choosing not to say anything.
"Lucius deserves to be sent to Azkaban for life. Obviously his last stint wasn't long enough—"
"Ron, Narcissa did save Harry's life."
Ron sighed with a heavy shrug of his shoulders. "Yeah, whatever. But for all the crimes they committed before today—I still think they deserve whatever's coming to them. Even Malfoy."
"Can you get me some tea?" She implored quickly, wanting to change the subject. Ron muttered a " 'course" under his breath and limped back to the refreshments area. Hermione turned around to face the Entrance Hall, imagining the Malfoy family being herded out of the castle by the Aurors—Lucius, his proud frame finally defeated; Narcissa, her hand likely on Malfoy's shoulder, for Draco's safety was all that she sought in the past few hours; and Malfoy. Malfoy.
She thought back to Malfoy's unfinished sentence in sixth year—the haunted, terrified look in his eyes, the guilt that weighed on his slumped shoulders. Did he walk out with the same weight still crushing his sinewy frame? Did he walk out still pretending to have it all held together? When he had confronted them in the Room of Requirement the night before, his hands were shaking. He had spoken with feigned resolution of handing Harry over to Voldemort. His cronies had been absolutely vile, but Malfoy—Malfoy had simply looked afraid.
She wondered now, more than ever, what he had been so desperate to say that he was willing to confess it to her—the Mudblood that punched him and hexed him and, in his mind, did not deserve to walk the same ground as he did.
" 'ere you go, 'Mione."
Ron reappeared at her side, handing her a tin mug of her own. She accepted it with a quiet "thank you" and cradled the hot metal mug in her hands.
"It's all over now, isn't it?"
"..."
" 'Mione?"
"…It is."
A/N: I'll be following up with this next week, but this whole long ass prologue was basically to set the stage. I'd love to hear your thoughts! :)