A/N: This is my new project, a multi-chaptered story that goes AU after fifth year. This is the introductory chapter, with the actual "plot" starting from the next chapter on. More information at the bottom!
When he was six, he decided that he didn't like being inside very much; especially when the bright, very inviting sun rays were drawing thick, ancient pillars into the dusty air of the library. One window was slightly ajar, but no breath of air dared enter the room.
He put a scrap of paper between the yellow-tinged pages and silently shut his book, carefully balancing it onto the already shaky tower of books next to him. It stacked nearly as high as he was tall and that had to say something – after all, he was tall for his age!
Pushing himself up, the boy jumped from the cushioned bench he had sat on, his bare feet soft against the hard, wooden floor. Stealthily, he padded over to the window, carefully peeking behind every bookshelf so as not to be discovered. He drew himself up onto the windowsill and opened the heavy window completely. The air outside was even thicker and extremely humid, and the landscape in the distance flickered like a fading dream shortly after waking.
Never warm enough.
A small black bird passed by, flying towards the opposite wall of the mansion and landing on top of its roof. When the boy squinted just so, he could spot another bird of the same colour, bouncing around its friend and picking at something that looked like a heap of sticks and dirty leaves.
In an erratic flutter of wings the first bird took off again, darting by the window at a speed seemingly impossible for such a small creature, first turning left, then right, and finally vanishing into the adjacent forest.
We could go after him, you know.
The other bird stayed with their small nest for a few more seconds. When it left, too, the boy saw it. The sunlight reflected on something between the leaves, just slightly, but it was definitely there.
Gold.
A treasure.
When later that day, one of the house elves found him on the roof, clutching a golden Galleon in his small hands and feet dangling down the wall, he was reminded by mummy to never put it off again, or I'll be very sad if you hurt yourself!
"Damn this thing!"
Hermione was sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall opposite her two best friends Harry and Ron. The sound of Hogwarts' students enjoying their lunch over carefree laughter was to her a liberating song of juvenile innocence. After the Ministry's public acknowledgement of Voldemort's return last summer, things had been rather difficult. Not trying to stay hidden any longer, the Death Eaters' raids on Muggles and Muggle-borns had become ever more frequent and Hermione had grown ever more worried about her parents' well-being. And then there was Harry who had drawn into himself since the death of his godfather, sometimes sitting around staring into space, lost either in the past or in his future tasks.
But today, sitting amongst the loud chatter of her friends, Hermione felt like a normal teenager living in a world without the dreadful foreshadowing of a terrible war. Sitting in one of the most enchanted and enchanting places she knew, she heartily tucked into her meal. She had a bag nearly bursting with treasures – some of the more interesting textbooks – between her feet, which was a pleasure all in itself, and she gladly let the thick warm beams of sunlight streaming through the Great Hall's roof bless her with the last warmth of autumn. She felt deeply at home.
She and her friends were thoroughly enjoying their lunch after a horrid two hours of brewing a most disgustingly smelling potion, or rather the most disgustingly smelling potion she had ever had the displeasure of brewing. The heavy fumes had seeped deeply into their robes and hair, blessing every inch of them with their lovely fragrance, and thus Hermione was anxious to take a quick shower and then begin on her homework assignment. This week, they were supposed to find out why exactly the use of Dandelion instead of Mandrake roots would make their potion more potent as a fever and cramp reliever, but could on the other hand lead to some disturbing side effects like a permanent blue tinting of the skin in the abdominal areas.
"Why isn't it moving?"
Ron's complaining voice vibrated in the air and struck it gently in a dissonant chord, but the way the tip of his tongue was making a concentrated effort of wetting his lower lip – something that simply wouldn't have been on his mind in more dire circumstances – told her that nothing was seriously amiss.
And just so, when she was shifting her eyes to what he was complaining about, she noticed that he was waving his wand rather furiously at a small Chocolate Frog which was sitting peacefully upon its wrapping, which in turn was spread over the redhead's already empty plate, heavily wrinkled.
"Hermione, do something!" he pleaded when a small shower of sparks hit the offending object in front of him, gaining nothing more than slowly melting it. Staring at the offending little figure that was slowly dissolving into a puddle at its legs, Hermione asked him what had happened while putting down her fork and trying to suppress a grin.
"My Chocolate Frog is broken! I got it for Halloween and only opened it now, but it isn't moving at all!" As to accentuate his point, he poked at it with his hand, making a hole in its already slightly melted frame and leaving his fingers stained in a light brown colour.
"I have no idea how to help you, Ron," she replied with an as serious voice as she could muster, which wasn't serious at all. "Looks like some sort of manufacturer's error to me. Maybe the Croakoa went bad?"
Ron fixed her with a glance that told her just what exactly he thought of that idea. Frustratedly, he threw his wand onto the table. "This never happened before!" he pouted, nonetheless taking a huge chunk of it and stuffing it into his mouth. His angry frown while chewing furiously on the chocolate – more than Hermione thought could ever fit in someone's mouth – looked more adorable than anything else.
Harry was reading the backside of the card, asking Ron if he could keep it since he already got the same one last time, which was of course unfortunate and he had of course hoped that he'd get a new one for the collection, but still, you can't just let it go to waste...
Letting a fond smile creep onto her face, Hermione turned back to her mashed potatoes. She was glad how well it was going between her and Ron. After shortly trying to be more than friends at the beginning of the term, they had agreed that they simply didn't work, deciding to return to how things were before. To Hermione, everything about them was clear. Sometimes, though, she didn't know if Ron really felt the same way as she did, or if he still hoped for something... different. She briefly wondered if she'd get extra points if she mentioned the possible benefits of adding a bit of Silverweed into the potion.
When Hermione noticed the boys slipping into a conversation about Quidditch, she tuned them out completely and thought ahead on the books she would look into once she'd get to the library. The rest of lunch passed by rather quickly, and although they were all still covered in that atrocious smell, the day was going considerably well – but in the world of Hermione Granger, "considerably well" was almost always followed by something not-really-well-at-all. And more often than not that something went by the name of Draco Malfoy.
The three of them had only just left the Great Hall when they met him in a nearly empty corridor, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, seemingly waiting for someone. Probably his two goons, Hermione surmised. One foot pressed against the cold stones, leg bent, he almost looked peaceful staring into the empty space in front of him – until, of course, he heard them approach.
"If it isn't our beloved golden boy and his sidekicks," he sneered once he spotted them, everything peaceful about him vanquished and replaced by some kind of restless anger. When he pushed himself away from the wall to face them, a strand of hair fell into his face and he uncrossed his arms, brushing it back. He looked at each one of them in turn, eyes narrowing more and more, and when his gaze finally rested on Ron he blinked once, frowned, and then widened his eyes with a gasp Hermione identified as mock surprise.
"Weasel... but... where is it?" was served in a way too high-pitched voice.
"Where is what?" was passed back through clenched teeth.
"The leash. For your Mudblood pet. So she can't run away from you... again." Score.
Ron's ears went as red as his hair.
"You..." he pressed through teeth now clenched so tight and grinding together with such force they should by all laws of physics have turned to dust from abrasion. Rolling up his sleeves, Ron reached for his wand, ignoring Hermione's half-hearted attempts at grabbing his arm while murmuring how he was above all this and shouldn't stoop to that level. He easily shook her off and began to raise his hand, but Malfoy already had his wand pointed at him and was about to utter an incarnation when Hermione heard a shouted Expelliarmus behind her right ear. Harry. Better seeker, better reflexes, she thought.
There was a loud bang.
Instead of just disarming its target, the spell ripped Malfoy's robes completely apart, sending scraps of black cloth flying in all directions and littering the floor like solid raindrops. He was flung into the air and dropped down a few feet further down the hall with a somewhat muffled sound.
Harry seemed as startled by this as the rest of them, and stashing his wand inside his trouser pocket he rushed to the crumbled form of their school mate who had already jumped up again before they even had the chance to reach him. Backing away from them with suspicious eyes, he shed the remnants of his robes to the ground, leaving a trail of cloth behind. His tie was vertically cut in two in the middle in a ridiculously straight line.
"You'll pay for that," he spat venomously, turning around and stalking down the hall with the maximum of pride possible for someone wearing torn and tattered clothes. He went left at the first turn.
"I don't know what happened!" Harry exclaimed when Ron patted him on the back and congratulated him on "showing that ferret".
"I didn't even do it on purpose!"
Ron didn't seem to want to hear his best friend's explanation.
Hermione wondered when the boys would finally come to realize that their behaviour was childish at best, but decided to help them vanish the tattered clothes with a spell, anyway. Distracted by her internal and external scolding she almost didn't notice that there was something else on the ground, glinting in the torchlight.
Draco was rushing down one of Hogwarts' generic corridors towards the common room, all the while sending some of his most patented death glares at anyone who'd only so much as raise his eyes at his general direction. Even wearing nothing but rags and lacking the dramatic billow of his robes, there weren't many people that dared.
Fuming, he clenched and unclenched his wand hand. He didn't know what it was, but every time he saw that Weasel, something inside of him began to simmer and boil like a ripe potion. He was just so bloody stupid, it couldn't even be legal. And the Scarhead – how could he even dare to humiliate him like that? Oh, he'd wipe the smirk off their faces, yet. They'd never see what hit them.
Oh, I'd love to see that.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
No. Not possible. He must've imagined it.
Shaking his head he went on, pushing through a particularly heavy oaken door and making his way down a winding staircase, step after step further into the shadows of the dungeons. To him, this infamous "darkness" of the dungeons wasn't only literal darkness – after all, there were more than enough torches embedded into the walls to light everything but the darkest of cracks in the stones – but rather some kind of increased pressure on your soul and a more absolute silence than you could find anywhere else in the castle. A heavier atmosphere of sorts. The feeling was hard to describe, Draco had to admit, but it was probably the reason why many people said they felt goosebumps when they went down these steps.
Of course, that could probably also stem from the fact that the students from his house weren't exactly well-liked and the dungeons were Slytherin territory, without question. He let his hand trail along the slightly wet stones, tracing every crack and mould in and between them, and it didn't take long for the well-known humid smell to well into his nose. Draco liked the feeling of the dungeons.
It's been so long. And lonely.
He tripped over one step and crashed down the few remaining stairs, landing painfully on his back. Holding his breath, he rolled over to the side and immediately reached for his throat. There was nothing there. He spun around in circles on the ground, looking and groping into every big enough gap, but the only thing he found was dirt.
The blood was pounding in his ears and he heard a rat scuttling closely along the wall of the potions classroom, tail hitting against the stacked glass jars in a nearly melodic rhythm and how could he not have noticed sooner?
Don't panic, he told himself. Pushing himself up, he hurried to the common room and up into the dormitory, stripping off his remaining torn clothes and casting them unceremoniously to the ground. He looked in every pocket, no matter how small, twice or even three times, but of course it wasn't there either. He would've never consciously taken it off.
Changing into more presentable clothes, he took a few moments to calm down and decided that he'd probably lost it somewhere in his fight with Potter. That was the only possibility, really. Just as he was about to leave and search the corridor where they had fought, Crabbe and Goyle came up the stairs, their arms full of food. "Hey, Draco, we thought you'd wait for us!" Goyle grunted, unloading his 'treasure' unto his bed, crumbs scattering everywhere."Not now," Draco muttered in response, leaving them behind and slamming the door.
Why do you fight it?
His brisk walk turned into a sprint and he might as well have flown up the stairs, down the corridor and the next and the other until he was back at the place were they had fought. Of course, there was nothing there, either. They must've taken it with them.
Fight yourself?
He might not get into the Gryffindor common room, but he would bet his life that he could at least find one of the Golden Trio.
Upon pushing the door to the library open, the heavy scent of old parchment assaulted his nostrils. Where normally this would have supplied him with fond memories of hours upon hours of most comfortable reading surrounded by thick cushions (his mother distracting Lucius to keep him from witnessing how Draco would read such "inadequate literature"), today he only felt a slight irritation at the stuffy air. Yes – sometimes, the way too old memory of how his parents had taken a week-long vacation in Paris during which he'd spent his time doing nothing more but read books his father would've thrown a proper fit over would force itself into his mind for a few short but relished seconds. Not today.
He found her in a secluded corner near the entrance, bent deeply over a ridiculously thick tome and scribbling onto some paper. Two more books and a few sealed scrolls were scattered all over the small table and one piece of paper near the edge was in high danger of tumbling to the ground. He sneaked up on her and deliberately pounded his hands on the empty space right next to the wavering paper with force, both pleased and strangely annoyed when the item began its inevitable trip to the ground. It landed face down.
Granger jumped so hard at the sound, it was a surprise that she didn't throw her quill at him. As it was, she only dropped it onto her paper, splashing a huge drop of ink onto it which quickly spread like spidery blue veins. When she snapped her head up, her hair was thrown into the air, tumbling down in a great gushing wave and breaking on her shoulders. A ripple of fresh flowery shampoo tore through the monotonous library smell. Sadly, it ebbed away far too quickly.
"What do you want?" she snapped with a voice that sounded as though it could rip something in two, fixing him with her eyes. Eyes that betrayed her surprise, no matter how much her voice might have tried to hide it behind anger.
"I think you've got something of mine," Draco said, keeping his voice schooled infuriatingly calm while ignoring the small flames of fear that had been swirling and steadily growing inside his stomach. He needed it back.
Swirling, swirling, hypnotising.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she huffed, puffing her cheeks and sitting up straighter. An orange sun's beam, having managed the tedious travel through one of the mucky windows, broke through her hair in one golden arch.
Feisty liar, liar, liar.
He stepped around the table, crossing his left arm over hers and poising his hand on her book. His other hand grabbed the rough wooden back of her chair. She wasn't exactly trapped – her right side was completely free – but it was a small cage, anyway.
How easy it would be to just take it from her, would it not? Take it, take it, take her.
She didn't scramble away. She didn't even lean away. She simply turned her head, slowly, facing him but never moving a muscle in her arm, face, body. She was perfectly still as a porcelain doll, letting him tower over her without really acknowledging it.
"Are you trying to scare me?" Her voice sounded slightly humorous.
No, because that would be fun.
"It's a necklace. With a small red ruby pendant."
He studied her face closely, looking for clues of recognition. She blinked once, but otherwise her face was calm. Too calm for Granger. And there was the smell again. Only shampoo, no perfume. He saw her heart beating in her neck, thump, thump, thump, much faster than his own, engraving itself in soft flesh.
Why don't you just take your sacred treasure? Take it, Draco.
No. No, he wouldn't.
Or can't you?
"Listen, Granger," he spoke quietly, not wanting to draw this out any longer, not able to draw this out any longer, "it's an ancient family heirloom. I... I wouldn't want to lose it." He added the stutter for good measure, being sure that it would be able to influence noble Gryffindor Granger.
It worked.
Her eyes began to soften and she sighed, retracting her hands and laying them on her lap. Draco saw this as a sign to step back himself and did just that, standing silently aside in a slight hover.
Boring.
"So it really was yours," she murmured, cheeks slightly red, while bending down and rummaging in her ridiculously huge and stuffed bag. "I've got it here somewhere." She nodded along to her own words in agreement.
How could a person have so much hair, Draco wondered suddenly.
Then she had her hand outstretched to him, the delicate chain slipping through her fingers like sand, a glinting ruby in the middle of her palm. He took it quickly, clenching his fingers around it protectively, shortly closing his eyes to appreciate the well-known hum of old magic.
Only...
Interesting.
He snapped his eyes open again, bringing the necklace close to his face. It seemed unmarred, but of course that couldn't fool him. "What have you done?" he asked loudly, all pretences of calmness forgotten, letting his arms drop to his sides, his fist driving the chain into his palm.
"I didn't do anything!" she argued, flapping her hair over her shoulders and crossing her arms over her chest almost condescendingly. "It looks perfectly fine to me. Whatever is wrong, you probably caused it yourself during the fight."
Now, that was it.
"You broke it!" he shrieked, not caring if his voice sounded like a banshee gone wild. He took one step closer to Granger who only raised her hands in a placating gesture, raising from her chair. She nearly tripped over it. Only a small consolation. He furiously waved his hand around in the air, not really sure what that would accomplish, but it felt strangely good.
"Don't lie to me! It was perfectly fine this morning." Another step closer.
"I told you, I have no idea what you're talking about!" She flushed.
Look at those ripe red apple cheeks.
"Must I remind you that this is a place of quiet and learning?" Madame Pince had appeared out of nowhere, standing between two shelves and resting her hands on her thin hips, scolding them in an exaggerated whisper. Granger turned beet red now, stepping around the table and mumbling intelligible apologies to her, fumbling around with some of the scattered papers. To Draco, it looked as though she was only creating more of a mess.
When she was seemingly convinced that they would behave, Pince turned around again and left after pinning them with one last dark glare, thick cloak billowing and bellowing behind her in fury.
Spoilsport.
Granger raised her head again, meeting Draco's eyes. "Look, I'm sorry," she said after a soft sigh, stuffing her things into her bag, "but I really don't know anything about it. Maybe it broke when you fell down." She stopped her motions with a book on magical forest-herbs in her hand. "I could try a repair spell if you want?" Draco snorted a bit too inelegantly.
"I think that won't be necessary." As if it would work, anyway. Not on such ancient magic.
Something purred deep inside of him.
Granger shrugged, resuming her packing. When she was done, she slung the bag over her side, nodded to him once and left without another word.
Swirling and burning.
The only thing left behind was the piece of paper that had dropped to the floor. Draco knelt down to retrieve it. Written on it was nothing more than a half-finished sentence about Silverweed, crossed out in one straight line.
A/N:
Please note that this is still a WIP, even though I already have a few things planned out. The Dramione (and the plot as well) are going to develop quite slowly (or as slowly as I can bear), but don't fear, for romance will blossom in the end! On the same note have I tried to keep the characters as in-character as possible in the beginnings since I wanted to have everything OotP compliant.
I appreciate all kinds of reviews, about anything that crosses your mind – concrit too! Especially. If anything pops up that sounds weird, just point it out if it bugs you since I'm no native speaker. But I try really hard to make everything the best I can.