Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I make any sort of profit from this hobby.
Chapter 1: Miss Muggleborn
The library was almost empty, as it most often was this late at night. Hermione Granger, one of the few strugglers spread out among the many dark bookcases, had spent her evening finishing several assignments for class. There was only one left, although this particular one was the trickiest, and she knew professor McGonagall wouldn't hesitate to mark her down for any minor fact she might get wrong.
She sighed and rubbed her eyes with the back of her left hand, her quill perched on the long parchment before her.
Transfiguration. Bah.
Right now she even doubted wether or not she would ever need the stupid subject, enjoying feeling like a three-year-old declaring to her mommy that no one would ever need to brush their teeth every day.
Bah.
Sometimes it was tidious being Hermione Granger, prefect extraiordinaire. Sensible in the extreme.
She took a deep breath and checked her progress so far. Her brow wrinkled a few times, and after scribbling some notes on a piece of paper she took off into the room containing the largest reference books. It was quite a small space, stuffed from floor to ceiling with heavy tomes, one window overlooking the grounds.
She muttered veiled complaints about idiotic assignments while she settled down at the floor, browsing one particularly heavy and boring old book, taking down the references she'd spotted missing from her essay earlier.
The light from the lanterns flickered in their holders on the walls, casting warmly lit shadows over the girl, her wavy hair the color of golden honey in the gloom.
"Gonna hog that book all night, Granger?"
Hermione's head shot up and her brown eyes narrowed.
"What if I am, Malfoy?" Her voice was calm. She tilted her head, looking up at the boy lounging against the door frame. "Shouldn't you be somewhere cold and damp, plotting evil deeds?"
Draco Malfoy snorted. His platinum blond hair fell around his face and shone almost gold in the dusky light, his features oddly lit up by the flickering flames. "And let you of all people maintain the lead in our year, uncontested? Ah, no. I don't think so." He stood up straight and walked over to her, a calculating gleem in his silver grey eyes.
Hermione stiffened but smirked provocatively down at her notes and calmly kept checking her facts. "Well, you'll have to wait. I'm sure McGonagall won't mind giving you a detention for not completing the homework."
Dracos eyes narrowed. "Tss, Granger. Didn't think you had it in you to be as devious as a Slytherin, I wonder what your Head of house along with your fellow housemates would say if I were to tell them about their perfect wondergirl and how she treats people in need."
Draco leaned back against a bookcase, crossing his arms in front if his chest, looking quite pleased with his subtle threats.
Hermione glared at him. "Why, they'd probably applaud me" she said nastily and closed the big book with a dull thud. She started to wish she hadn't left her wand by the rest of her things out in the library. "And now you definately won't get the book!"
At this, Draco got a dangerous look in his eyes and started striding over at her, when it suddenly went pitch dark in the room.
Hermione squeeked in surprise. "What did you do?" She hastened to get up from the floor, trying to get to the door but tripped on the large book she'd left down there and fell painfully.
"I didn't do anything!" Draco retorted angrily and Hermione could hear him fumble along the wall so as not to fall like she had. "What the… The door is locked!" He started banging on the wood, muttering "Stupid librarian hag, she must've locked us in!" His voice sounded incredulous.
By now Hermiones eyes had started to get used to the darkness. She rubbed her knee, having landed on it when she fell down. "Oh no, that explains why the lights went out." She sighed.
Draco whipped around from the door. She could see only the gleams from the fine strands of hair whisp around his face as he hissed through gritted teeth, "Prey tell, miss know-it-all, why that is, and why that fucking door won't let me out!"
Hermione felt her temper rising, once more wishing for her wand, some of the more painful hexes flickering through her mind. "Stop ordering me around you stupid git!" She had gotten up from the floor and strode over to the door and the seeting Slytherin standing there. "A simple Alohamora should do it." she said, looking up at the towering boy, irritatedly urging him to do as she suggested. When he didn't move, she felt her shoulders sag. "No wand?"
Draco shook his head. "It's over by my table" he muttered and started striding angrily across the small room, his black school robe billowing around him in a way that almost made Hermione want to laugh hysterically, as it was so alike the way professor Snape's robes moved. She wondered quietly if perhaps all the Slytherins practised this in their spare time.
Turning around, Draco scowled and she looked iratedly back at him. "The light and the doors are controlled by magic" she explained, keeping her tone of voice as to a child. "There are no living flames allowed in the library and its immediate areas, as its content is so valuable and a fire in here would be devastating. I guess Madam Pince left just now, and shut everything down. She must have missed us being still here."
Hermione sank down and leaned her head back on the cool wood of the door, closing her eyes. "If we'd only had our wands, this wouldn't be a problem."
She couldn't belive her luck, being stuck with a bloody Slytherin in a space as tiny as this, and on top of it all it had to be with Malfoy. A perfect end on a perfect day, she thought bitterly.
She felt like screaming.
Draco stared at what little he could see of the small Gryffindor girl seated on the floor of the dark room, and then trust his arms in the air, groaning moodily, and sat down on the opposite side, right under the window. "This is all you fault!" he declared angrily.
"Mine?" Hermione hissed. "Please do tell me how this could be my fault. Did I lock the door?"
Draco could almost hear her nostrils flare in the dark, as he met her challenge. "If you hadn't insisted on monopolizing that book, none of us would be stuck in here now!" Then he added, muttering "Stupid Gryffindors."
Hermione almost screeched with indignation: "If you only had remained seated at your table, Madam Pince would've known there were people left, wouldn't she? But no, you had to come and torture me." She glared in the direction of the infuriating boy's silhouette.
After this exchange, they remained silent for a long time. There was no way to establish exactly how long, but the faint silvery grey shadows curtesy of the sliver of the moon in the sky moved slowly over the floor while the two teenagers silently cursed each other in different corners.
After some time, Draco spoke in a slow drawling voice: "Hey Granger… Won't your precious wonderboys miss you when you never show up in your common room tonight? Perhaps they'll come looking for their little princess even?"
Hermione said nothing at first. She knew that Harry and Ron probaby would get to bed thinking she'd already gone to sleep in her own dormitory. Draco seemed to enjoy her silent answer, as he kept going. "Or is it that they simply don't care anymore?" She heard his voice fill with glee at the thought.
"Shut up Malfoy. Harry and Ron knows I can take care of myself." Her tone was irritated and her head had started to hurt. It was gonna be a long night.
"Ah, well… Didn't work out so well this time, did it?" Draco said, tauntingly. "Being stuck with the Big Bad all night, you being- - ."
"Me being what exactly, Malfoy?" Hermione hissed. She didn't want to admit it, but the fact that no one probably would notice her being gone for a whole night had made her glum, and so she jumped on the chance of an argument. "A lesser being? Was that what you meant to say? A mudblood? Come on, ferret, make up something more original why don't you?"
There was silence. Hermione frowned into the gloomth and swept her arms around her legs, as she was starting to get cold. Only wearing her school uniform consisting of a grey knee-length wool skirt and a white oxford shirt in a stone room with no fires was not the best combination. But she hadn't exactly counted on the evening ending like this, had she?
Draco was quiet. Hermione didn't know what he had meant to say when she'd interrupted him, and didn't much care either, but she started thinking about it. She furrowed her brow as she couldn't really remember when it was she last was attacked with that particular racial slur. Sure, she and Malfoy had fought all through fifth year, and their bickering had followed them well into their sixth year, where they now found themselves, but it had mostly been the old Gryffindors –vs- Slytherins, hadn't it?
She felt confused.
"Malfoy?" she asked quietly.
There was no answer, and if it weren't for the fact that she could see the outline of his shining hair in the light from the window, she could as well have been alone in the room.
"You've actually stopped calling me a mudblood, haven't you?" Hermione's voice was brittle in the dark.
She could almost feel one of Draco's eybrows raise in a mocking way. She heard him make a noice somewhere between a smirk and a snort before he answered her. "And they say you are the smartest witch of our age. Pathetic."
Then he continued, his silken voice cutting through the texture of the air, "Things change, Granger. Even you will have to start thinking for yourself soon enough, and not let those dumb-wits you call friends and allies decide everything for you."
She ignored the blow against her best friends. "But what does it mean?" she pressed on. "You don't believe that crap about purebloods being superior anymore?" Hermione's world was slowly turning up-side-down.
This time she was rewarded with a soft laugh. "Why are you really asking, Granger? You want me to join your precious rebellion?"
Hermione didn't say anything. Draco narrowed his eyes, but when she managed to refrain from asking the one thing he knew she was dying to get the answer to, he sighed.
"You want to know if I'll follow the Dark Lord." It wasn't a question.
"Well?" She almost whispered, her voice caught in her throat, wide eyes staring into the dark, trying to make out his pale features.
Draco chuckled bitterly. "Ah, it's the million galleon question isn't it? Will I surrender my will and wits to a crazed maniac, or will I denounce all of my family and the legacy I've been given? Either way, I'm a traitor to someone and I'll probably end up dead."
He said all this quite calmly, and it was evident that this wasn't the first time these thoughts had crossed his mind.
Hermione's head reeled.
More time passed in silence. By Hermione's calculations it should be close to midnight by now, and she felt miserable. She was tired and cold and uncomfortable on the hard floor, and she longed for her own bed. When finally her teeth started chattering, Draco let out an irritated groan.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Granger. Get over here before you freeze to death" he said exasperatedly and unreveled the big cloak he'd swept around himself, pointedly holding out one of the sides for her to get under.
Hermione stared at him.
Draco raised an eybrow and sighed. "Look, if they come here tomorrow, finding you unconcious or dead, who do you think they'll blame?" he grimaced. "That's right. Me. So the Gryffindor princess is not to be harmed by the evil Slytherin." Then he added: "Not tonight anyway."
Hermione snorted, amused, but had to admit that she didn't feel like mustering up strenght to say no to some warmth right now. So she hesitantly scooted over to seat herself under the window, next to Draco Malfoy. Once she'd got under the thick cloak – being careful to stay as far away from the pale boy as possible – she almost groaned with pleasure and her eyes fluttered sleepily almost at once.
Draco watched in the corner of his eye how the petite girl who'd infuriated him on so many occasions fighted to stay awake. He guessed that she – like him – didn't like to lower her guard in front of someone considered an enemy, and he could respect that, even if she did make him furious most of the time with her foolish Gryffindorness.
Heavy eyelids flickered on the fair Slytherin boy and he silently cursed both the librarian and the universe for putting him in this situation. Someone would pay for making him sleep on the cold floor next to the annoying golden girl. Frowning for himself, he got as comfortable as possible under the cloak and thought about the brief exchange of sincerity that occured between them earlier.
He had indeed resisted to keep up with the worst of the bigoted assaults, and it was years since he blindly trusted his father's believes about pureblooded superiority, but one could not go around and announce that to the world any old way. Not when the people with power were the ones who thought you stood behind them. No, Draco Malfoy looked after Draco Malfoy, and he was not about to declare alliegience to some foolish idiots who surely would get themselves killed in a heartbeat.
With these thoughts running through his mind he slowly drifted off, seated on a cold floor in the reference books room, next to – and sharing his cloak with! – none other than Gryffindor know-it-all Hermione Granger. Sometimes life throws you interesting cards.
Both teenagers fell asleep there, stiffly seated against the wall, careful not to touch each other while they tried to get as much cover from the chilly night as possible. But the next time Draco Malfoy drifted out of a light unconsciousness, he noticed the girl next to him having tipped her head in her sleep, and was now leaning more or less onto his shoulder. Draco blinked slowly, feeling disoriented and not sure if he was awake at all or if it was all a dream. As his eyes fell downwards again he felt himself drift into sleep once more.
It was some time later, the light in the room had gone from dark to the soft bluish grey of early dawn, when Hermione drowsily woke from her uncomfortable sleep, finding herself lying on the floor. This was to be expected of course, as the small room itself didn't offer any sort of furniture. What was making her heart jump was the fact that she was lying side by side with Draco, who was embracing her from behind, his arm slung over her waist.
Everything felt surreal, and Hermione, feeling confused in that sleep befuddled way someone does when not knowing if you are awake or still sleeping, didn't think to move.
It was actually quite nice, the way his arm held her close to him.
But it's Malfoy. Evil Slytherin.
An evil Slytherin whose breath softly caressed the back of her neck while he tightened his hold on her, hugging her nearer him in his sleep. Dead tired still she let her eyelids close again, slowly floating off into semi-sleep in the warmth of Draco Malfoy's arms.
When the lanterns on the walls at last came to life, giving the room a warm feeling again and announcing Madam Pince's arrival to the library, Hermione and Draco awoke. He slowly untangled himself from her and they got up, looking fleetingly at each other.
Hermione took in the boy in front of her; pale skin on chiseled features and platinum blond hair, no longer gelled in place as when they were younger, but falling whispily in front of the now stormy eyes. He had grown as of lately and was almost a head taller than her by now.
"This was wierd" she said, her eyes never wavering as she looked up at him.
Draco actually chuckled at this and bent to pick up his cloak from the floor. He examined it for dust then put it on again.
Hermione grinned. Surreal indeed.
"You better not tell the wonderboys you spent the night with Draco Malfoy," he said lazily, seemingly at ease with the wierdness of the situation "or they'll probably try to defend your honour or something stupid like that. I guess you wouldn't want them to get hurt." He smirked.
Hermione shook her head and frowned. "You actually do like to feel despised, don't you." She turned to leave, starting to long for breakfast.
"Just want to give them a fighting chance, Granger" she heard him say mockingly before she shook her head and open the now magically unlocked door.
They went their separate ways in search for their bookbags and wands, but still ended up leaving the library together. The petite Gryffindor and the Slytherin prince walked the dark corridor side by side without more drama than some minor insults and the usual stabs at their fellow houses. None of them really knew if it was a consequence of their lack of sleep or just the queer feeling that something basic had changed in the universe.
When they reached the stairwells and were to part ways, Draco turned to Hermione. Confusing her utterly, he smirked as if thinking of something funny and then bowed his head slightly at her and said: "Well, good night and good morning then, miss muggleborn."
And then he was gone.