A/N: When I read this prompt—Your pet dragon is misbehaving—I felt like the book was having me on. How is it not about HP? Dragon became Draco, and the following is the result. AU, but when, really, has anything I've written followed canon?
The Other
by: carpetfibers
He cannot remember when he first started watching her; perhaps the Yule Ball in fourth year when she strolled in, a stranger in glitter and pale blue, with dark eyes that warmed with her smiles and glowed with her laughter; perhaps before then, back to the Potions dungeons as her teeth grew and stretched, escaping her lips and ruining her features; perhaps that afternoon when she balled her fist and struck him down, that first touch between the two of them.
He can remember, beyond the pain of the impact, the feel of her skin, warm and smooth. Nothing strange or foreign or aberrant. Just skin and bone and the heat of blood between.
Muggleborn or Mudblood- terms that equate to the same: she is Other and Different, and Draco cannot remember when he first noticed that she is Beautiful and Lovely and Brilliant, too. He thinks of his parents, of his father and his mother, the first resolved and the second frightened, and he resigns himself to a new habit.
He watches and files her many pieces to his memory.
Slughorn assigns her as his partner, the one afternoon he arrives late to class. The potion they brew sends spiral shaped wisps to the ceiling, before the color settles into a color that reminds him of a nautilus, the sheen mirror-like and glistening. He breathes deeply and carefully, but he cannot ignore the scents from beside him, the thick cloy of her hair and the faint touch of coconut lotion that he knows she applies in the morning, after breakfast.
He smells yellowed papers, dusky earth and the faint pull of bergamot.
He's convinced the potion is a failure, but Slughorn claims it a success, and he cannot separate the scent of Amortentia and Hermione Granger.
He watches that night, at dinner, as she pushes the food on her plate from one edge to the other, as she glances at the couple conjoined at the end of her table, the red and blond a swirl and mix of teenage hormones. He watches as she frowns into her plate, blinks too quickly and then leaves, a swirl herself of youthful emotion and clutched books.
He wonders what the potion showed her; he does not hope for the impossible. But Draco admits, to himself and a sodden ghost, later in the darkness of a flood bathroom, that he'd rather it be Potter than Weasley.
The weeks go too quickly as he fails at his task time and again. He barely tries, so perhaps it's no accident that his efforts lead nowhere. Snape cajoles and entices and begs for trust, but Draco likes his godfather too much to share. More and more of his time is spent in the flooded bathroom, with Myrtle listening to his woes, the ghost a willing ear and confessor.
The morning Potter finds him in tears, because the year is nearly over and Draco knows what's expected of him- because the days become less and less that he can claim some degree of innocence and childhood. The morning Potter finds him, Draco almost welcomes the curse the splits him in two. The pain is familiar and softer than the Cruciatus, and the heavy heat of his spilled blood is a comfort.
Blackness and bliss find him almost immediately, and he hopes to never wake. To sleep through to eternity having never opened the cupboard- having never killed a headmaster or classmate. He welcomes the escape and inhales the lovely scent of coconut and bergamot; he regrets having only known the feel of her skin from the rake of her fist along his cheek.
He wakes, much later, to a sunset and aching chest, and Hermione Granger sits beside his cot, her hands curled together near his own. She shakes her head and frowns and makes to reach for him before pausing.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "Harry won't say it, because he's convinced you're evil and terrible, but you nearly died, and someone should say it."
"I am evil and terrible," he tells her, enjoying the sight of her worried gaze and tense brow. Her hair, unkempt and mussed by sleeplessness, is lovely in the dying light.
She touches him then, takes his hand into her own, and the warmth of her skin is not unlike his own. "We're all capable of it," she says, "of terrible things and evil thoughts, but the reasons do matter. Protecting your family and friends- your reasons are not too different from mine."
Draco struggles to sit, the pain spotting his vision, and when she begins to withdraw, a call for Pomfrey on her lips, he pulls her hand back into his, cupping her palm and lifting it to his cheek. She stills, and he sighs at the feel of her skin on his.
"Let me help you," she says, voice trembling. "Whatever it is, I could help. You needn't be alone-"
"Thank you," he interrupts, his eyes watching her quivering lips and dark gaze that gathers with tears. He cannot remember when last someone wept for him, and the pain that churns near his heart is not from Potter's curse.
She leaves minutes later, and it's on an awful, grey afternoon not soon after that he stands atop the Astronomy tower, his wand pointed toward the great wizard who even now seems to look down on him kindly and all too knowingly. Draco's aim wavers, and he hears Hermione's words echo softly in his ears.
Reasons matter, and he has his reasons- good ones like his family and his friends and the many people that make up the few he truly cares about- but the cackles behind him, the calls for death beside him, grow ever more dim as he thinks of the feel of her hand in the hospital wing, of the undeserved kindness that she gave to him.
When he lowers his arm, finally, and kicks Dumbledore's wand back toward him, he doesn't shield or duck or make any attempt to block the near-instant rush of curses that are thrown at him. Like before, he welcomes the pain and the blackness.
He does not wake for many days after, the damage severe and devastating enough that his mother is allowed visitation and a chance to say her farewells. His father is gone, disappeared to the forests and caves that the Dark Lord takes refuge in. Dumbledore lives, Potter lives, and Snape a spy! Great men's best laid plans thrown to the wind due to a group of school children and a different choice.
He drifts, unconscious and distant, and small words and impressions float past him: Aurors to arrest, the Headmaster to protest, and he recognizes her voice mixed in with the rest, insistent and adamant, and he wonders if her friends have deserted her as she steps forward in his moment of need. He knows so many more of her touches, now, soft brief glances of her fingers along his brow, her lips on his cheek, and her palm against his own.
Draco sleeps, eventually, and when he does not dream, reality beckons to him. He wakes to pain and brightness, and the sharp crush of her embrace. He's too weak to return it, but he inhales the deep scent of her hair and skin, and he is all too suddenly more than he was before.
"You helped," he tells her, lips dry and voice cracking. "It was because of you-"
"Shush," she says, smiling and crying, her fingers combing through his hair and brushing his cheeks. "You made the choice- not me."
Draco does not know when the tears begin to fall, but he feels the difference of them from before, when he hid away with Myrtle and the damp bathroom. The clutch in his chest is painful and full, and he cannot remember when he last felt a happiness so easy or bright.
Hermione Granger is lovely, he thinks, and never before had he been so thankful that she was the Other and the Different that his parents warned him of; their designations were for wrong reasons, but they were right. She is unlike anyone he's ever known, and happily happily so, he will watch her as long as she's willing.