Chapter 2
A/N: I thought about making this a mystery and having a long, drawn-out sequence where Draco and Hermione are trying to figure out what in the world's going on, but I've already done that – twice. So, this story is going to be much more up front about what's happening and more focused on the progression of their relationship.
Thanks to GreekGirl for betaing even though she was sick! Also, thanks to everyone who reviewed, favourited, etc!
~Frosty
"Can you go in the sun?" She asked, glancing worriedly at a window, where the bright sunlight was leaking through a small crack in the thick curtains.
The blonde hesitated, it was against a Slytherin's nature to be free with information, but Granger was the only one who knew he wasn't missing, and he needed her help. Draco knew he was going to set aside his pride and beliefs for the moment and answer her incessant questions if he was ever going to be free of her.
"I could before, it just hurts. I can't be in the light when I'm not solid though..." Malfoy seemed to have realized that he was pretty much dependent on her at the moment, and he should probably treat her as a human being.
He wasn't so bad to be around when he wasn't sneering at her.
"Hermione, are you all right in there?" Chris asked, appearing in the doorway, shining his torch around the room in search of his cousin.
Before Malfoy had a chance to let go of her wrist, the beam of light caught him. Hermione watched the blond anxiously, a little worried that he was going to burst into flames or something equally dramatic, but nothing happened.
"Hermione, who's this?" Chris asked, snapping her attention away from Malfoy.
His eyes darted down to the hold Malfoy had on her wrist and then back up to her face, a question in his eyes.
"This is... a friend from school. He's just come to tell me that... there's going to be a reunion very soon and we're needed for the planning committee."
Judging from Malfoy's snort and Chris' confused look, her lie was nowhere near believable.
"We should be going now, don't let your creature thing escape." She added.
Well, her lie hadn't been convincing, but her distraction had. Chris immediately scrambled back into the other room, presumably to grab more torches and keep the 'shadow monster' in the tent.
"I always knew Muggles were inferior, but that man's level of incompetence is worrying for the species." Draco snorted.
"He managed to catch you so either he's a little more competent than you give him credit for or you're a lot less competent than you like to think." the brunette responded. When she didn't receive a scathing response, her chocolate eyes glanced over at the blond. Was he sulking? He was! Very mature.
Hermione walked into the entranceway and opened the door, looking at the sunny streets outside and then dubiously back to Malfoy. He was leaning as far as their arms would allow away from the sunlight that was streaming in and appeared to be attempting to tug her back with him.
"New plan." She announced quietly, shutting the door with a bang that shook the house so Chris would think they'd left.
"I'm going to have to take you side-along." Malfoy didn't seem all too pleased by her whispered sentence, but what was he expecting her to do?
The both of them threw glances over their shoulders to make sure Chris hadn't heard. Hermione had a feeling that Malfoy might be a little weary of her cousin since he'd managed to trap him with only Muggle instruments. Maybe Malfoy would come out of this with a new respect for Muggles and their technology.
It wasn't necessary to warn the prat to hold on, so she only gave him a significant look. She knew he understood when his held onto her wrist tightened minutely. They disappeared without a sound and popped back into existence in Hermione's living room.
"Where are we?" Malfoy asked. His lip curled in distaste as he took in her flat. It wasn't large or decorated nicely, obviously she was too busy working that she didn't really have the time for pointless things like making sure the drapes matched her throw pillows but it was comfortable, so she didn't really care how it looked, though now that she was seeing it from a stranger's perspective, perhaps that exact shade of blue didn't look the best with the purple pillows...
"We're in my flat. I needed somewhere to think about what to do about our problem. I'd ask you to sit down, but I want tea and you can't exactly let go if you want to stay visible." Hermione wanted to hit herself the second the words left her mouth; our problem? It was completely his problem! She knew that in the same situation, Malfoy would have let her stay trapped in a tent and found her entire situation hilarious, so why was she helping him? Stupid conscience.
A long arm snaked around her and closed the curtains on one of the windows; he then walked to her other side of the room and did the same for the only other window. The hand dropped her wrist and she watched as he disappeared.
Immediately, a Malfoy-shaped shadow appeared on the wall.
It was immensely disturbing to know that Malfoy was in the room and could see everything she was doing, but she couldn't really see him. Once it got dark enough, she wouldn't be able to see him at all. A shudder worked its way up her spine; magic could sometimes do disturbing things.
Trying to block disturbing thoughts about what she was going to do if they hadn't fixed him by the time night fell, she prepared tea. She set out an extra cup and shot a questioning look towards the shadow in the corner.
"Do you want tea? Can you even eat?" Her mother had always taught her to be polite to guests, no matter who they were. It had been ingrained into her to the point that it hadn't occurred to her to have tea without offering her guest some – even if he was Malfoy.
He grabbed her wrist and started preparing his own cup. "I can eat; I just don't get hungry when I'm a shadow. Just like I can still hear your grating voice, but I can't answer." There was really no harm in answering some of her more harmless questions; maybe it would get her to fall silent.
Ah, blissful silence, how he missed it already.
He watched with horror as Granger grabbed a lollipop out of a vat of them in one of the cupboards and used it to stir her tea before popping it in her mouth. What was wrong with the woman? Was that some kind of strange Muggle habit? Before he could ridicule her strange habits, she started again with her incessant questioning.
"Do you sleep as a shadow?" Curious by nature, Hermione wasn't about to let him get away with giving her so little information when she had so many questions.
He seemed to be thinking back, head tilted to the side in thought and eyebrows drawn together. Did he sleep as a shadow? It didn't seem like it, he felt pretty conscious the whole time, but he hadn't felt tired. "No. I only seem to feel tired while I'm solid," was his absent reply; he was too focused on the implications of the answer to add the proper sneer or condescending look to his answer.
He looked like he was dying to direct a snarly comment at her, but he glanced at the hand still holding her arm and visibly did away with the urge. The whole thing would be almost amusing if Hermione didn't have the sneaking suspicion that Malfoy's presence would very rapidly become unbearably annoying.
Just to test how far his newfound temporary civility would last, she continued. "My guess is that when you're incorporeal, you're in some kind of suspended state... I wonder if you stop aging while you're a shadow?"
"If I knew the answer to all of these questions, I'd fix whatever was wrong with me and get out of here! I think I may have died and gone to some kind of hell where I don't age and can't tell you what I really think because you're the only one who can see me." He growled, attempting to glare a hole in the side of her head. That appeared to be the limit. What, three questions and an observation before he snapped and said something insulting? Popping her lollipop back into her mouth, Hermione watched him carefully.
"Would you like something to eat?" She asked innocently, as if she hadn't just purposely provoked him.
"You're going to cook?" He looked her up and down doubtfully. With all that hair, it would be impossible to cook without getting some in the food, and he doubted she'd be persuaded to wear a hairnet. He'd looked around the kitchen, finding there wasn't much food in the open cupboards, and the large, humming box had also been pretty barren when she'd opened it to get the milk.
Hermione put her nose in the air. "No, I was going to order a pizza."
The git seemed a little doubtful about ordering Muggle pizza –despite the fact that Muggles had invented the food– but his hunger obviously won out over his hatred of everything Muggle.
"No anchovies." He ordered after a pause.
Hermione wholeheartedly agreed with him, but she didn't say anything because that would be admitting there was something of which they shared the same views – and that just couldn't happen, the Earth would implode.
Irritably finishing her candy with a loud crunch that she vindictively noticed made Malfoy cringe, Hermione moved towards the forest of take-away menus she kept on her densely populated fridge-door.
She called in the pizza order while Malfoy held her wrist and watched her intently to make sure she didn't order anything fishy out of spite – despite popular belief held by the general public, Gryffindor's could be just as spiteful as Slytherin's. Draco knew this to be fact, but popular belief was severely biased, and it was all Voldemort's fault.
"As nice as this 'visit' is-" he lifted his lip in distaste to leave no doubt that he was being sarcastic "-when are you going to get around to doing something. I don't know what Muggles do for problem solving, but I doubt even their barbaric methods call for tea and pizza. You might be desperate for company, but I have friends who currently think I'm missing."
Twin spots of color formed on Hermione cheeks. Draco Malfoy had a talent for making her go from calm to furious in the blink of an eye. He obviously wasn't expecting the hand that came up and slapped him, as he let go of her wrist in surprise and pain when it made contact. If only all of her problems could fade away like he did...
"That's not the way you speak to someone who is doing something nice for you!"
She called to the seemingly empty flat. "You're a horrible prat who's never been anything but vile to me and I've gone out of my way to help you – something I didn't have to do. If you can't keep relatively civil, then you know where the door is!" The door creaked dramatically as she opened it, adding its own opinion on her 'guest' – at least that's what she wanted to think. Hermione watched intently to see if a shadow slid by her and out into the hallway.
When he didn't, her brown eyes glared around the room fiercely. "I'm taking your continued presence as agreement that you're not going to make comments like that again and will make an attempt at civility. And I'm eating your pizza!" She added as an afterthought.
Hermione didn't end up eating Malfoy's pizza; he grabbed her wrist as soon as the deliveryman was gone. "I won't apologize for my words, but I'll attempt to censor them more closely in the future." It looked like it pained him to say something almost apologetic to her; he must've really wanted the pizza.
She knew it was the best she was going to get out of the blighter, so she opened the pizza box and twirled it to face him as acceptance to his almost apology.
After their meal, the two of them spent a few hours flipping through every book she owned on curses –she had a large stack of them for work- in a surprisingly civil silence. Neither of them were able to find anything of any assistance, which probably explained why none of the Healers at St. Mungos had been able to diagnose Malfoy.
Hermione was practically falling asleep on the pages before she finally gave up the search. She'd really wanted Malfoy gone before she went to bed, but it seemed that wasn't something that the universe was going to allow.
Stupid universe.
That night Hermione made sure to turn on all the lights in her bedroom. She knew Malfoy wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole, but it was comforting to know he couldn't even enter the room without disintegrating or whatever it was that he did.
It wasn't until the next morning as she was brushing her teeth that the brunette noticed something strange. In the place where Malfoy's fingers had circled her wrist, there were thin, barely noticeable swirls. They were pearly white and so pale she'd only noticed them when her wrist had passed through a sunbeam and they'd sparkled.
Holding up her arm and turning it back and forth, she examined the disturbing new development. It was highly unlikely that something strange but unconnected to recent events would appear on the exact spot Malfoy had been touching her while under the sway of some strange magical affliction.
"Malfoy!" She yelled. He didn't appear.
Looking around the loo, she realized that there were no spots of shadow for him to use to get near her. With an annoyed sigh, her slippers scuffed across the floor and into the living room so she could shut the curtains.
A large hand grabbed her wrist and Malfoy appeared almost immediately.
"You screeched, oh shrill one?"
An attitude improvement would have been nice, but at least he wasn't insulting her blood... Ignoring his sound of protest, Hermione grabbed his wrist and moved it to her eye level.
"Let go of my wrist and show me your hand." If her theory was correct and the marking was from Malfoy touching her, it made sense that he may have developed a similar marking.
Malfoy didn't take well to orders…
"Granger, what are you on about?" He grumbled, but didn't resist as she pushed his fingers back and looked at his palm.
"Granger?" He asked when she paled.
Hermione didn't say anything, but she turned his palm to display the black swirls covering underside of his hand in a mark that looked like it would match up with the swirls she'd developed almost perfectly.
"What have you done to me?" He demanded, grabbing her shoulder with his free hand and shaking her.
Hermione slapped away the hand on her shoulder and glared at him. She maneuvered so that he was behind her and opened the nearest window, moving his grip to her other wrist and thrusting the one he usually grabbed into the sunlight.
Her eyes weren't on her wrist aside from a quick glance to ensure that it was doing the same thing it had done earlier; she was watching Malfoy's reaction.
It didn't disappoint; his eyes widened almost comically as he stepped back as far as their arms would allow.
"Do you know what this is?" She questioned, hoping he'd snap out of whatever episode he was going through.
Draco wasn't paying attention to whatever she was nattering on about; he was remembering something Snape had once told him. What had the greasy well of dark knowledge said?
Something something dark curse something, hide this box where no one will ever find it and don't look in it.
Of course, Draco's curiosity had gotten the better of him and he'd taken one tiny peek in the box, but there had been nothing there, so he assumed no harm had been done. Now he'd developed this slight difficulty.
That didn't bode well... His lips twisted into a frown as he realized how useless the little information he'd managed to retain would be. The only thing that could be learned from it was that they both needed to talk to Snape.
"I have a sneaking suspicion I might know," he evaded. No doubt she'd go in for the kill if he told her what he suspected had happened, and he liked living – had gone through a whole lot of trouble during the war to stay that way. He wasn't about to waste all that work because Granger was pissed.
He didn't even have magic to defend himself should she start hexing...
Did he?
Curious, Draco felt his pockets for his wand. He'd been through quite a bit in the last few days, and while he wasn't able to use magic while he was a shadow, maybe he'd be able to while he was touching Granger?
He saw her tense as her hand darted into a pocket when he raised his wand.
Despite her actions, she seemed to sense somewhere in her bushy head that he didn't mean her any harm, since her widened eyes only watched him wearily.
Looking around the room, Draco decided on the couch. He changed it to a pale cream that matched the pillows and the carpet much better. It was defensive magic really; the thing had been visually assaulting him since his poor eyes had landed on the thing. Okay, his magic was still working perfectly fine. Ah, magic, he'd missed magic. While Granger was still to confused to object to his actions, he waved his wand several times, altering the entire room to something more sophisticated.
"Malfoy, why are you redecorating?" The thought that the curse had finally got to his brain and made him fancy himself an interior decorator was an amusing one, but she really didn't want to deal with a Malfoy even more mentally unstable than usual. Not that she was complaining really, the room looked much nicer than it had before – though she'd never tell him.
"If I'm going to be here even a second more, I'd prefer not to be visually assaulted... I also needed to make sure my magic still worked, I have to apparate us somewhere." He figured that she'd bitch less if he explained some of his actions, and he really needed her to bitch less if he was going to retain his sanity.
Hermione frowned at the prat, but had to admit that the room looked much better than it had before; she'd never been very good at matching colors... or furniture. But letting him redecorate under her watchful but confused eye and letting him Apparate to some unknown location were two completely different levels of trust.
"Where?"
"Spinner's End," he sighed with resignation; Severus was going to kill him.
And then Granger was going to bring him back and kill him again.
Before she could begin with the annoying questions he knew she was about to start throwing at him, Draco adjusted his grip so he was holding onto her tighter and spun on the spot, pulling her with him.
Hermione looked around the room into which they'd appeared; it was dark and musty, which was good for Malfoy since he would've been in pain from contact with the light had the room been bright.
A dark figure separated itself from the shadows, wand raised and a menacing look framed by greasy hair.
"Ah, Draco. I thought I might be seeing you soon after I saw the paper. You just couldn't keep your pointy nose to yourself, could you boy?" Snape lowered his wand to the ground when he saw that they weren't a threat.
"I gave you one small task and you somehow managed to bugger it up on a previously unheard of scale."
Hermione watched in fascination as Snape continued to chastise Malfoy and the blond didn't sneer back or object, he actually hung his head in shame – or possibly embarrassment, since Hermione wasn't sure he was capable of shame.
Who'd have thought Malfoy could actually feel embarrassed? Who'd have thought Malfoy could actually feel?
Snape seemed to notice Hermione's presence then, he turned his dark eyes to her and scrutinized her from head to foot. "Miss Granger." He greeted with a small nod in her direction.
When his scrutinizing gaze landed on Malfoy's grip on her wrist, his expression darkened and he turned back to Malfoy.
"You've gone and landed yourself in even more trouble than I thought, haven't you?" He asked Malfoy in a menacing voice, looking like he'd enjoy nothing more than to strangle the blonde.
