He'd been watching her for some time now. He didn't exactly remember when this had started, but that really didn't matter. It had happened, and he couldn't stop. He'd tried. Many times.
No, something about her made it very difficult to forget her completely. Maybe it was because he had been so alone that year, with his awful task set in front of him. Maybe it was because, no matter how hard he tried, Pansy just did not do it for him. Maybe it was because his father was in jail. He didn't know. But he was just obsessed with her now. She possessed many things that he wanted.
She'd been tutoring him lately, as well. He'd been recommended/blackmailed to do it by Professor McGonagall. He thought maybe she knew what he was planning to do, or at least had suspicions of the Death Eater's son, and if he was busy enough he wouldn't go through with it. But he'd made time. Hermione would sneak off too, he saw, because she was always breathless from running, and she would sit at a table far in the back where they would be hidden. Maybe Ron and Harry wouldn't like her helping him, anyway. Maybe she did it to make herself feel better. She was helping out a Slytherin at the brink of the war. Maybe….
He and Hermione would meet in the library before dinner, and she'd sit as far away from him as possible in the beginning. By the end of the session, their chairs were barely apart, and she was so close he could feel her breath when she turned to look at him, to more clearly explain things. Sometimes she'd even let go of her wand, and set it aside next to the book as she talked with her hands. Maybe it started then, when he saw that she trusted him.
Maybe it was that game, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, and she had been sitting in the stands in her Gryffindor scarf, next to Weasel, and he had thought he saw the Snitch over there. And he went up, and he saw that Hermione was cold, and Ron was hugging her, moving his hands up her arms quickly to warm her up. And it made him so angry, because Ron just smiled at her, and when she smiled back there was something special there. And Draco knew she had other secrets. Maybe it had started then.
Maybe it was the first time she walked up to him in the hallway, and she asked him in plain sight of everyone if they could cancel their meeting today, because she had an essay due the next week, and everyone stared, but she didn't mind. Harry and Ron glared at him. And he'd agreed, of course. And Hermione smiled at him, and walked back, and people were talking but no one said anything. And Ron questioned her and she told them the truth. Maybe it started then.
Whenever it started, it hit him on that cold day, when the Gryffindor team was practicing, and she had been watching Ron and the Chasers practice when Harry offered to teach her to fly better. She hadn't flown since First Year. Draco was watching them twenty feet away, hiding under the stands. And suddenly, Draco saw someone's dark shadow underneath the stands close to them, and he burst onto the grass, and he started to run toward her. She was floating then, and Harry was about to instruct her to rise, when something sparked, and the broom lurched, and her arm was loose, trying to grasp onto anything. Draco grabbed onto her arm before she sprang into the air as if the broom were catapulted.
Hermione screamed, her entire body flat on the broom as she clung to it for dear life. His arm was straining, as was hers, and she opened her eyes and saw him there, hanging, and she stared at him with wonder. Vaguely they heard Harry shouting at them. Vaguely they heard Ron shout back, and the Chasers being ordered to fly toward them. But really, Draco just took her in. Took in the feel of her hand inside of his. Took in the hair that framed her face. Took in the way her robes billowed downward as they rose higher. And then they stopped suddenly, and she was almost tugged off the broom with his weight. But she held on.
She held on.
And she smiled at him, warmth in her eyes.
And he couldn't help but smile back.
Someone was there then, and they took hold of the broom. Someone had grabbed a spare, and gave it to Draco. He slid onto it and let her hand go slowly.
"Hermione, are you okay?" they asked.
"Yes." She answered quietly. "I think my shoulder's dislocated."
"I'll fly her down," Draco said. Finally his eyes cleared and he saw it was Ron that was questioning her. He looked at him sourly.
"That's okay, Malfoy. I've got it," he said bitterly.
Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but Ron whisked her out of the sky, and the others followed him. Draco watched them land, then get Hermione over to the hospital wing. He rolled his arm in his shoulder as he gently touched down. It was sore, but it was where it should be. He checked under the stands, but there was nothing there.
Later that night he snuck out of his room, out into the Slytherin common room, and then into the halls of Hogwarts. He stood outside the hospital wing for a long time, summoning up the courage. He didn't have much courage lately.
She was laying in one of the beds, and she seemed to wake as soon as he was near her. And she smiled at him.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes." She paused. "I didn't think you'd come."
He just stood there.
"It wasn't me. I saw someone…"
"I know. I know it couldn't be you."
It could've been him. A year ago, a month ago, it could have been him.
"I'm glad you are okay," he whispered.
He paused. He wasn't sure why he'd come. He certainly wasn't going to say anything.
"I'm glad you came." She finally whispered it.
"So, tutoring tomorrow?" he asked. She nodded, something in her body falling.
"Alright. I'll see you then," he said. And he turned and walked out. And he heard her sigh, but he didn't ask questions. He'd see her tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow it would be different.
She didn't think this would happen.
They'd been counting on him. They had thought that if he was there, they'd win for sure.
But at the end of the year, Hermione found out about Draco's plan too late. Harry told her all about it, how he had cornered Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower, how Snape had taken the Headmaster's life, and how he and Draco had disappeared into the night.
Some part of her still could not believe it. She lay in her bed that night. She was expected to sleep, but no one with a true guilty conscience could close his or her eyes. She kept seeing Draco, and the face of Snape as he hurriedly told her and Luna to go to Professor Sprout, who had fainted. If only they hadn't let him go. Maybe Draco would have been caught and reprimanded. Maybe Snape would have been sent to Azkaban instead. Maybe Dumbledore…
Maybe Dumbledore would be alive.
Hermione lay in the darkness. It must have been three, four in the morning, but time didn't matter anymore. All she could see was Draco's face, now gaunt and pale, like it had been yesterday, the last time she would tutor him. His eyes had been shifty. And she had put her hand on his, and asked what was wrong, and he had looked at her with something special in his eyes.
And his lips had touched hers. And she knew something was wrong in the urgency of his kiss, the way he seemed to need her. She knew that something was terribly wrong. But she didn't care. She just wanted him. She should have cared.
And his hands were everywhere at once. And it felt so good to let herself go.
And when they had parted, Draco had said "goodbye" in the strangest way. And she felt like he was leaving for good, but she tried to persuade herself that she would see him tomorrow.
She hadn't. She sat in the library for an hour before going to the Great Hall. She had wondered, "Did he regret it? Was it all a mistake?"
But it hadn't been. He'd been scared of what she'd think, of how she'd act, of keeping it from her, who was so good. He had known that if he went to see her that last time, he wouldn't be able to go through with it. She didn't know this.
She pulled the blankets to her chin and tried to sleep, but visions of Dumbledore's dead body and Snape and Draco wouldn't leave.
She started to shake savagely, and the blanket seemed to fall away from her. She grabbed at them. She was so cold.
She held on.