A/N: A quick author's note before starting the story: I realized that my toothbrush was missing the next day. Weird.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Sadly :(
Where Black and White Collide
3. Saddle Brown
...
"I know that you heard me, Granger."
Undoutedly, it was the git. Draco Malfoy.
Hermione glanced at him slightly and with a huge frown on her face, she stood up and started to walk away from him. However, sadly, she soon realized that she couldn't because the git had caught her wrist again. Hermione flinched at the sudden contact.
"Walking away from me, Granger?" He asked with a sly smirk on his face. Hermione simply glared at him and stared back at her wrist, as a sign telling Malfoy to let her go. Malfoy, however, didn't let go. "I thought we had an important conversation with each other."
"Let go of me, you git." Hermione seethed.
"Really Granger, is that all you can say? Honestly, "git" is the only word that you said to me in the past few days." He replied, still clutching onto her wrist. But, this time, Malfoy wasn't "strangling" her wrist. It was a simply just a way of making sure that Hermione wouldn't barge away. The touch was, amazingly, soft compared to what had happened the day before.
Hermione glared at the boy in front of her and she slowly put her hand inside her back pocket, where her wand was. Just when she had a firm grip of her wand, Malfoy's smirk had widened, making Hermione frown.
"A wand, Granger?" He asked. "Please, I'm just trying to talk."
He then loosened his grip and put both of his hands up in the air to show that he had no other intention.
'What the hell is wrong with him?' Hermione wondered to herself. She then continued to stare at Malfoy, without taking out her hand from her pocket. After a few seconds, Malfoy put his hand down again and reached out to hold Hermione's wrist.
No, she was mistaken.
Malfoy held onto her wrist, carefully, but then he slowly trailed his hand down her beautiful arm until he was holding onto her hand. With a startled look, Hermione glanced down at their hands, intertwined, and raised her glance up to look over at Malfoy. Surprisingly, Malfoy was smiling. Not smirking, not sneering, not anything, but he was smiling. A real, genuine smile.
"Look, Granger-" Malfoy started to speak, still holding onto her hand.
"Wh-What are you doing?" Hermione frowned at him. But, she didn't try to take her hand away from him. She stayed there, with her hand completely covered by his, while she kept on staring at Malfoy's smile.
But, something triggered inside of her.
Rage.
She quickly yanked her hand away from the blond haired boy with an annoying look on her face and stepped back a little bit. A few leaves crunched under her feet.
"You shouldn't do that, Malfoy. I'll contaminate you're pure self with my Mudblood germs. I can't let that happen, now can I?" She spat at him and after her short refute, she turned around and walked away.
But as she walked away, even Hermione Granger herself couldn't ignore the fact that her heart was beating fast. Extremely fast.
In contrast to common belief, his hands are extremely warm.
Damn, I should have waited to listen to what he was going to say. Well played, Hermione, well played indeed.
Draco walked up the steps of the Astronomy Tower again. The steps seemed higher this time, as he trudged along while holding onto the railing.
"Failed..." He muttered out. He then flew himself onto the floor and sat down with a loud thud.
"Fucking failed.." He retorted again, his thoughts revolving around Granger. The green sweater that she was wearing was indeed a surprising look, because Draco never thought that Granger would happily choose green as the color of the day. Never. He smirked at the thought of it.
Her hand was amazingly, cold.
Maybe, she stayed outside for a long time.
"Fucking Granger.." Draco muttered yet again, as he rolled up his sleeve to scratch his arm. Scratching the tiny bug bite was ecstatically blissful.
After a few minutes, Draco then ran down the staircase again, with a proud smirk on his face.
The rest of the day passed by quickly, without any more encounters of Granger.
"Ginny?" Hermione called out, in search of her friend. Sunday morning. Ginny had promised that she would visit the library after breakfast, but she wasn't in the common room.
'Where did she go?' Hermione thought to herself as she swiftly walked along the corridors. Being a typical Sunday, there wasn't anything special to do and of course, being the typical Hermione, she headed towards the library, without Ginny.
While walking, her thoughts naturally drifted over to her constant worry: her parchment.
Two days had passed since she had lost it and Hermione was interestingly, feeling okay. Although she knew for a fact that Malfoy owned the parchment right now, there wasn't any way to prove it and most importantly, seeing him would be extremely awkward. That was the exact reason why she came up with a clear conclusion: Don't think about Draco Malfoy and let the secret be revealed. It was a hard decision to make, but that was what she had thought of after four hours of rolling around in her bed thinking the day prior.
She knew that her secret would be known, someday. This was just another way of telling everyone about her, well.. her feelings towards Malfoy.
Hermione immediately felt heat rising up on her cheeks as she pictured her hands intertwined in his.
'Don't, Hermione. Don't think about him. At least not now.' She made a mental note to herself as she heaved a heavy sigh. She then imagined what Harry and Ron would say when the secret was revealed. She instantly felt extremely scared, at the possibility of losing her loving friends, and she also felt sorry.
But, really, fancying someone isn't something that could be controlled.
"Fucking Malfoy.." Hermione murmured as she trailed her hands along the dusty bookcases.
"My, Granger. What did I tell you about cursing?" Hermione flinched at the sudden voice and she casually pretended as if nothing had happened. She bit her lip as she walked away from the voice as quickly as possible. But, footsteps followed her.
"Granger-"
"Don't." Hermione spat out, still not looking over at Malfoy, her voice cracking a bit. Protectively, she hid her hands in her pocket. She decided to turn around when she heard a loud chortle.
With a startled look, Hermione turned around and stared at Malfoy, still hiding her hands protectively.
"Your hands are perfectly safe, don't worry." He smirked. "Or maybe, if you want me to hold them for you, I can-"
Hermione stared at the boy in front of her with wide eyes as he slowly made his way towards her. His long arms reached out for her wrist. Ever so carefully, he took her hand out of her pocket and even though Hermione tried to resist by taking small steps back, she couldn't as she soon realized she was backed up against a wall. Malfoy's hand made its way down to her wrist and she soon allowed Malfoy to touch her. She glanced over at him, who was surprisingly smiling that genuine smile, and she couldn't help but smile herself.
"Wha-What are you-"
"Shh.."Malfoy replied back, smiling.
Hermione felt her blush. Terribly. The hand that was holding onto her fingers was now trailing up and up her arm.
Hermione's breath started to hitch as his hand climbed higher and higher, up to her jawline. His touch was beautiful.
Then, ever so slowly, Malfoy leaned in so that their foreheads would touch as he placed his hand on her cheek.
"Mal-" She started. But she couldn't finish her sentence as she immediately felt a searing pain on her cheek. Mortified, Hermione raised her hand and touched her face and grimaced. Her cheek was burning, but not because of her blush. Malfoy had slapped her.
"Naive, aren't we, Granger?" Malfoy replied with a deathly smirk. His delicate hand that had been on her hand a few seconds ago was now throttling her neck again, much more forceful than last time. His smirk had spread wider and wider across his face, giving a devilish look.
No matter how much Hermione resisted, Malfoy took out his wand from his pocket and with a soft murmur, he casted a Silencio on Hermione. The force on her neck was becoming stronger and stronger and now she was finding it hard to breathe. She began to claw at the boy in front of her with her fingers as she was backed up against a wall but, sadly, he was way out of her reach.
Hermione hung her head down and used her long curls to hide her face as they scrunched up in pain.
'Let go of me you damned ferret.' She mouthed at Malfoy between coughs.
Then Malfoy's smirk began to grow larger as he opened his mouth slowly to speak.
"Now, listen to me, Mudblood." He started in a low whisper. "I believe we have some business left to attend to."
"I have a feeling, Mudblood, that you do not quite understand the... social hierarchy of the wizarding world yet. And today, I am going to teach that to you, as your dear... friend." His smirk widened and he dropped his hands. Hermione began to gasp in huge amounts of air and began to rub her sore neck. Then, she raised her glance and charged over at Malfoy with a huge glare on her face.
She had never felt so... humiliated all her life.
She stomped over at Malfoy and lifted her hand up to hit Malfoy, but couldn't. The damned idiot had caught her, again.
"Trying to hit me, Mudblood?" Malfoy looked down at Hermione while smiling. But this time, the smile was not "genuine" this time. It was full of lies and disgust, and Malfoy wasn't trying to hide his emotions.
Disgust.
'Get away, you filthy git!' Hermione mouthed at him again and while glaring up at him, she slid her hand down to her pocket to take out her wand. However, she soon noticed that her wand was gone.
Startled, Hermione glanced up at Malfoy again with a huge frown on his face, only to realize that he was staring back at her with a huge smirk, holding her wand with his other hand.
"Slow... slow..." Malfoy tucked her wand inside his pocket, out of her reach and began to whisper again.
"Now, listen carefully, Granger. In this wizarding world, there are a lot of witches and wizards- good and bad. But the important thing is that, it is does not matter whether you take the "good" side or the "bad" side. The really important thing, my dear, is about who you are."
"You, Granger, are a Mudblood." Hermione glared over at Malfoy and tried to get away from him, but she was again shoved against the wall. "A filthy Mudblood, in fact. And Mudbloods are nothing. Surely, you would be able to understand, being the brightest witch of the year." He asked Granger with a sly grin.
"Mudbloods are nothing, Granger. They can't even be classified. They don't even belong in the hierarchy, in my opinion." Malfoy's wand began to trail along her jawline.
"Anomalies. Mudbloods aren't human, Granger. They're disgusting, vile, soulless creatures without the right mind and yes, I do believe that they must be wiped out of our world. You are an Anomaly, Granger. You weren't meant to be born. Purebloods always hated Mudbloods, my dear, and they will soon be gone from our world. "
She felt her heart itch. She balled her hands into a fist and although she was aware that her breath sounded harsh and ragged, she didn't care. Fury was running through her blood. Her heart continued to itch.
She started to see red.
"I have to say, Granger, that one day you'll be gone. When Voldemort gains more power Granger, you'll be gone for good and I can guarantee that I will be the first one to visit your grave. I'll conjure a few flowers, place them on top of the soil and laugh at you for being nothing but an anomaly. A mutation, in fact." Malfoy smiled at her.
Hermione had so many things that she wanted to scream over at Malfoy as she felt her body tremble with rage.
"So, don't you dare, Mudblood, touch me again or I would really, kill you here. At Hogwarts. I'll be damned if someone actually cared about your death."
With that, he left.
He left Hermione there, in between the bookshelves of the huge Hogwarts library.
Hermione felt her body droop and the next moment, she realized that she was lying on the floor, crying her heart out. Gladly, the Silencio had been countered.
"Hermione! Where have you been?" Ginny asked in a hurry, as she ran towards her friend. "What.. what happened to you?" Ginny Weasley was always good at reading someone else's emotions and the moment she laid her eyes on Hermione, she knew that something had happened to her.
Tear stains.
"It's.. It's nothing, Ginny. Really." Hermione murmured as they walked towards the Gryffindor dormitory together. Ginny frowned, but didn't say anything.
'Damn you, Zabini.' Ginny thought, her mind fuzzing with worry.
...
I never gave much thought to the pairing [Ginny/Blaise] (because Dramione was all I actually cared about) but my friend insisted that my first fic should include small doses of Blinny. I'm not sure how it would turn out, maybe I would write it, maybe I wouldn't later on, but well I'm going to give it a try!
To the wonderful reviews, Uknw120 and Ailac Malfoy, thank you! You guys made my day!
Thank you for reading and please, reviews are always welcome! ;)
