Waiting to Save You
By punknpotter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
POV: Alternating Draco & Hermione
Summary: There are so many secrets between Hermione and Draco, but that's not the only thing going on between them.
Expected # of chapters: 20
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Action & Suspense, Drama
Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter isn't mine. They belong to the genius herself, J.K. Rowling.
Chapter One
Hermione
The water feels good as it slides over my ears. I move stealthily through the water, because I know I have to save him. He looks at me helplessly and I have no time to cry. I know he needs me, and he's at the other side, waiting. When I reach him, he's coughing and shaken. I pull him out of the water and I jump back in, because I know I have to go back to the other side. I look up at Draco Malfoy, anticipating a thank-you. He looks at me coldly and walks away, dripping, his shoes making noise on the ground. I look down, and swim to the other side. I shouldn't have used that as my motivational tool.
Sometimes I imagine saving Harry. But he doesn't need me. That's why it doesn't work half the time. I stop halfway there. I know Harry knows how to swim, I've seen him. I've imagined saving Ron, but he's not the one I want to save.
Nobody knows that Draco and I have known each other since birth. Nobody knows that I didn't use to hit him on school-grounds. Nobody knows that he kicked me when I kissed him when we were ten. And nobody knows that I once saved Draco from drowning, at this very same pool. Maybe that's what gets me to swim to the other side.
We have secrets, Draco and me. We have secrets that we've never told anyone. Like the time when we were kids and he couldn't say my name properly. He said it, "Her-mine". Sometimes, it sounded like, "You're mine". And that's not the secret. The secret is that I wished that was what he was really saying. The second secret is that he got angry at me for days when he found out I was a witch, because he didn't think he'd get any real powers by the time September came. And the third secret is that we kissed, for real, in the passageway between Hogwarts and Honeydukes, in fourth year, during the Yule Ball. We haven't talked to each other since.
Draco and I met because our fathers met four years before we were born. They became business partners in the Muggle world. It was called 'Granger & Grimshire' at first and became known as The Charms Endeavor. A few years later, we were millionaires. The Malfoys didn't despise Muggles. They merely used them. But Lucius and my father came to respect each other, I suppose. That's why Lucius hasn't killed him…yet.
Draco was the reason I went to Hogwarts. Draco used to be the reason for everything. He took a stick and waved it around and sparks and illuminated shapes moved in the space before us. And then I started to pick up random sticks and pretend I could make that happen too. I was under the impression that Draco could make anything happen, and I couldn't. I still haven't been proven wrong.
When I first walked on Diagon Alley, I realized that the stick was a wand, and that it was Draco who made me believe in magic. I wish I could still believe in him.
I hit the edge of the pool and kicked off again to the opposite direction.
Let me tell you one thing: that J.K. Rowling isn't allowed to tell the whole story. That's the reason the Harry Potter series isn't a biography. It's fiction. A lot of the real points in the story are the points about Harry. There's no truth in the 'lovely Weasley-Granger get-together', and honestly, shippers don't know what they're talking about. They think that 'Half-Blood Prince' is enough to back up that romance. It's not. It's not true at all. But sometimes, I wished it were.
Draco
I am hiding for the billionth time behind the bushes near the Grangers' pool. It really doesn't help being next-door neighbors, you know. And just to make things clear, I am not some kind of snotty pervert. I am Draco Malfoy, bush expert.
From the look of Granger's face, she's been here for a few hours. She gets that intense look in her brown eyes that I've seen so many times before but still haven't gotten tired of staring at. I get this strange feeling that someone is staring at me a lot. I know she never gets that same feeling. I know, I've tried…drilling holes into her shoulder blades with my eyes, staring at her thick brown hair from the back of the class. She never feels that. Or maybe she doesn't want to.
I don't know why she doesn't flaunt it. But if you've seen the inside of their house and the inside of her wallet (which has a tiny picture of adorable little me), you'll know what I mean.
The truth is, I'd like to talk to her, and I'd like to spend time with her more often, but there aren't many Yule Balls…and there's the matter of Lucius trying to make friends with people from my house and getting them to spy on me. And the matter of pothead Potter and weasel-faced Weasley (and my lack of talent for coming up with good insults.)
And then there's the racing.
There are so many sides to me. There's bush-hiding Draco, staring-and-gaping-at-Hermione Draco, insult-machine Draco, sexgod Draco and then there's Thomas Andrew Grimshire.
Thomas Andrew Grimshire was invented when I was 11 years old. That was the first time I ever set eyes on a Kart. I joined the International Kart Federation under that name. Nobody ever found out because of my second biggest secret: I'm a metamorphmagus. I tell you, if J.K. ever mentioned that in the story, it would be a lot less interesting, really.
When I'm being Tom Grimshire, I have black hair and my features are a bit more sharpened. I put on an earring on one ear, and I'm shorter by a few inches. And outside of my family, only one person knows about it. And I'm staring at her black swimsuit right now.
"Who's there?" Hermione says out loud, looking around.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Okay, Draco, back away slowly and apparate off the property. She'd hear me pop out if I just suddenly apparated.
"Who's there?" she repeats. She knows someone's there. She knows I'm there. She's looking sort of uneasy as she kicks off again into another length.
I back off against the wall of the property and I don't hit it. I hit wet hands, flexed and annoyed. I turn around and she looks at me and says quietly, "What are you doing here?"
I purse my lips carefully and look her in the eye. "My broom fell out of the window," I said quickly, looking down for a second and letting my eyes travel to the open window closest to the other side of the wall.
"You could've used magic," she said almost immediately. I was stupid when I was around her. She breathed then turned around back to the pool. "Leave, Draco," she says without looking back, "you're not supposed to be here"
The beginning of the summer, and I'm already banned. I snort. As if something as short and plain as that is going to stop me. I'm waiting for the day that anything she tells me to do will actually be done. And I've already become some sort of a slave for her.
I disapparate with a sigh and plop onto the bed. Something crunches under me. I reach for my back and pull off an envelope taped on it. Draco Malfoy, it says.