"What happened to you Hermione?"
She looked at him in alarm and quickly inspected herself for any mortal wounds she might have obtained without realizing, but he didn't seem to be commenting on her well-being. His eyes remained focused on the inky water that stretched before them.
"You used to be this annoying little girl with bushy hair and disturbing reverence of teachers. What happened? When did you become someone beyond the library?" The corner of his lip twitched and a small breeze ruffled past, rippling the surface of the water. "Do you know that I used to watch you in the Great Hall? It was hardly on purpose, but by some sick twist of fate I would always end up almost directly across the hall from you, since the very first day. You were most interesting at breakfast; it's when you and the gruesome twosome would always fight from an unfinished row the night before."
He trailed off for a moment, sitting in silence, lost in a time long since passed.
"Everything you did was so annoying to me…the way you held your spoon, the books you read as you ate, your obscene facial expressions while telling people off. And tell me Granger, how the hell did your hair managed to survive each meal without bits of food taking up permanent residence in it's snare? I began to accept that you were interesting, but throughout it all you were never anything more than an object; a science experiment. I would watch you to learn your habits and to figure out what would irk you. You weren't a human to me; you were like a potions rat that I would observe with sick fascination. And then life got in the way and I slept in late and I missed breakfast one too many times and taunting you came only out of habit and suddenly I found myself too important to deal with the trivial matters of others." The silence was longer this time and Hermione was tempted to break it. When he spoke again, his words were deep and slow.
"One day, I looked up and you were gone."
She paused, not sure what he meant, not even sure now if he was speaking to her or to himself.
"Uh...where...was I?" she nudged.
"We made eye contact. I doubt you remember. It was fourth year, the day after the Yule Ball. I looked up lost in thought and you were looking up lost in thought and our eyes…met." He rolled the world around his mouth, deciding for a moment whether he liked the taste or not. "For less than a second probably, but I know there was a moment of contact. And just like that, you were gone. Every inspection of you, every annoying quirk, every experiment, every taunt disappeared with a single grotesque realization. Hermione Jean Granger. Bushy haired, insufferable know-it-all, best in our class, impossible princess of Gryffindor, was..." he let the last word release as something between a question and an answer, "...a person."
Hermione looked at him. Looked at his face which was tired and old and unreal. Looked at his hands which were callused and rough. At his dirt streaked suit. At his sudden imperfection. When had he become a person as well?
"And Granger, that wasn't it. That earth shattering realization was not the worst part. It wasn't just the fact that you were a person that shocked me, it was why you were person, how you were a person. You were just like me! I realized you were a person because something in that look told me that we were the same, and I related to you! A Mudblood! A nothing! In all of my calculations and cruel jokes, I had never once considered that the loneliness and anger and intelligence and caring and pain I exploited was the same loneliness and anger and intelligence and caring and pain that I grappled with lying in bed each night with the curtains drawn. You were human! And not only were you human, you were female!" He let out a sort of strangled laugh. "I mean, when did that happen?" This Malfoy was not the cool, collected Malfoy that Hermione had known for the past six years, he was breaking, and it was fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
His eyes grew serious again and he looked at her for the first time since she had taken a seat beside him, searching for something in her face.
"You were unrecognizable. When did that happen?"
Hermione had no answer for his question, and so they sat in silence once again.
"Granger. I need something from you."
Warning bells threatened to sound in her head but she calmed them and forced her body to remain still on the log. She was confused, her mind suffering information overload, which was an entirely new experience for her and she did not know quite how to react.
Draco took a deep breath, and she knew he was struggling to push past the barrier that he had constructed for himself. The one that she had never seen him without before today. It was almost painful to watch, and she was slightly afraid to see who he would be without it.
"I need you to teach me how to change. How to become unrecognizable just as you did. I can't…I can't be who I am anymore. I've tried living like this, being who I thought I should be, for so long. And I thought that if I could just act this way, that eventually something would happen in my mind and I could shift into really being this way. But…but I don't think I can, because that shift…Granger it was right there. Right in front of me. All I had to do was reach out and touch it. But I didn't want to."
He stood up.
"You should know Granger, I consider myself to be a person of high intelligence."
Her eyebrows furrowed. "What does that have to do with anything?"
He smirked, the familiarity of it threatening to drown Hermione in a pool of normalcy.
"It doesn't. I just thought you should know."
And with that he apparated.