SIDE A - TRACK 3
[Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger / Hermione Granger x Viktor Krum]
Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don't want to leave her now
You know I believe her now
Something / George Harrison [1970]
Draco looked down at the palm of his hand, his rejected hand, as his brow pinched into an incredulous frown. He couldn't believe Harry Potter had turned him down, of all the… His ramping aggravation was cut short by a tall, elderly witch who introduced herself as Professor McGonagall. 'Gryffindor House' his father's voice mentally supplied. Draco didn't try to fight or hide the scornful look that crossed his face, though he moved against the wall as she directed without protest.
That was when he saw her for the first time.
Draco had looked up, not wanting to waste a perfectly good sneer intending to direct it at Potter when he got a glimpse of wild curly hair just over the idiot's shoulder. The girl underneath the mad, springy tendrils was tiny, tiny and… different.
Draco looked for some vague parallel between this creature and the girls that he had been brought up around and found nothing. There was no poise about her; she held herself with no grace. Her huge eyes were set into warm skin, and they seemed to reflect every emotion, every thought that crossed her mind. She wasn't beautiful or refined, far from it. She was too eager, too kinetic, too everything. But, she was something. She was not bland. Draco could give her that much.
Suddenly her name was called, and she skipped off in a nervous flutter that would have made him snigger if he hadn't felt so adrift with all of the realisations of the last thirty minutes. 'Granger, Hermione' the curt witch had said. Draco belatedly realised what that meant as the sorting hat threatened to sink to her shoulders. The call to the cheering lions was the last nail in the coffin.
His eyes still followed her as she walked to the table, and that's when he saw it, saw her ball up all of her fear and nerves, and her little head lifted up, and her chin jutting out as she folded smoothly between two redheads already at the table.
There was something... not so different after all.
Three weeks they hadn't been talking to her. By his own admission, albeit only to himself, Draco took an interest in the goings-on of Harry Potter, a lot of interest. So he had spotted almost at once when the trio became a duo. They had stopped waiting for her after classes, and she had stopped sitting with them at meals. She was always on her own it seemed. She still couldn't keep out of it though. She always had to stick her nose in. It might have been her worst quality, though in truth there were too many to count.
After Potions, he and Potter had gotten into their usual exchange of insults, and she had just had to wait there and say her piece. Not even her friends wanted her there. Draco had turned instinctively to scream at her, to vent his frustration at her untouchability to her face, like it was her fault.
Jibes about her inferiority died on his tongue when he looked at her features. Anger made her eyebrows knot and her mouth twist, but it was her eyes that held him to the spot. The dark circles that had been deepening from weeks of neglect stood out firmly against her too pale face. He briefly wondered what would happen if he held his hand up against her skin, would there be much difference between them then?
Draco was suddenly aware he had been silent too long, and he managed to stumble out something about them not being worth it before he barged down the corridor. He turned back when he got to the end, soon enough to see her on her own again. He watched her slump with more than the weight of her book bag as she seemed to will herself to move. He waited until she did; it shouldn't have reassured him to watch her walk away.
Draco clutched the conjured ice cold cloth against his cheek for two seconds only to pull it away as soon as Pansy wasn't looking. He placed his fingers gingerly against the bump that was already forming, waiting for the moment that the chill would recede and allow him to feel the flush of warmth her fist had caused.
He would never have believed her capable of punching someone in the face, least of all him. She had flown at him like a banshee, powered by some unknown force as her soft flesh collided with his. He wondered if she realised they had never touched before. Draco did. It was almost his first thought as they came together in the most violent of ways. Which, was incredibly pathetic.
Unfortunately, Pansy came back and held a mirror up for him to view his injury. As she babbled on, Draco twisted himself so he could regard his pinked cheek, he swallowed his sigh and his hope for a scar.
Draco's mouth dropped open alongside everyone else as she walked into the Great Hall draped on Viktor Krum's arm. He'd no idea who she was going to attend the ball with, apart from some flimsy notion that it might have been the Weasel. He had been extra mean to the idiot in the last two weeks to make up for it. He'd had even momentarily thought that it might have been Potter, although, unlike the rest of the school, he was not under the illusion that anything was going on there. Draco watched her more than he watched Potter, which was saying something, and he knew they were just friends. Not that it had stopped him from burning every article about their illicit teenage romance that crossed his path. How scandalous would the press have found it if her interests had fallen in his direction?
Draco's fists balled as he observed the blatant ogling she received for most of the evening, his jaw clenched when he heard the red-headed fool scream at her. It was no secret that Draco disliked Ron Weasley, he had been trained to from the cradle but it was more than that, he hated him for more than just his name and political leanings. Ron could have her, and he did not.
When she ran from the hall, he couldn't stop his legs from moving to follow her, and it didn't take long to track her down. It may have been years since she was almost reduced to a hat stand but she was still small for her age, she couldn't get far. Draco heard sniffing at the end of the corridor and moved into a shadowed alcove. He breathed so heavily he considered silencing himself.
Minutes passed, and her tears didn't stop, and Draco was at war with himself. He could go over now. He could, just this once, and say something, maybe not something nice but something on its way to comforting. No one would believe her if she ever said anything, not that he thought she would, at least he didn't think she would.
Just as he had resolved to go ahead and risk a moment of contentment he heard footsteps in the corridor and Draco instinctively pushed himself further against the wall.
Draco couldn't tear his eyes away when Krum bent down in front of her, and the Bulgarian softly swiped his thumb over her damp cheeks. He had never seen the Quidditch star not scowling before. Even from a distance, he could see that he treated Hermione as if she were a delicate flower, the way they were raised to treat women of consequence. Draco hated him for it.
Krum spoke too low for Draco to hear the words but whatever he said had the desired effect, Hermione's head came up, and she offered him a hesitant smile, her teeth attacking her bottom lip as her wet cheeks glistened in the dim light.
The way she moved… she had no idea what it did to him.
Draco sped up the steps to the top of the Owlery with his letter grasped firmly in his right hand. He had immediately written to his parents after Professor Umbridge had pinned his shiny silver 'i' shaped badge on his robes that morning. He couldn't wait to run into Weasley.
But, the weasel wasn't the Gryffindor Prefect he ran into. Draco caught sight of her a moment before she realised he was there, she was so engrossed in her letter, and as he was not usually on his own with her in any way, he could resist the opportunity to speak to her, in the only way he could.
"Finally taught your savage parents how to use the postal service have you, Granger? I take back everything I said about you. You really must be the brightest witch of your age to have achieved such a feat."
Draco drank in the explosion of pink that drifted up to her throat, his vision uninterrupted as her mad hair had been dragged back into a loose ponytail.
She huffed but stepped as if to walk around him, but Draco wasn't having that. Lunging forward he made to snatch the parchment out of her hands, she tried to deflect his progress, but he was quicker, darting after the letter like it was a tiny winged ball.
Draco ripped it from her fingers and triumphantly held it above her head before spinning to turn his back on her. "Let's see what Muggle, mummy dearest has to say shall we?" he mocked, though the attempt at humour fell away as his eyes rested on the consistent spiky letters that covered the page, he shuffled, three pages. He recognised the script instantly, the boy's prized signature resided on one of his practise snitches.
"Krum?" he asked incredulously.
Hermione seized his moment of inattention to steal back the parchment and speed away from him down the corridor, Draco wondered if her eagerness spoke to her desire to continue reading her very long letter or just to get away from him.
The way she moved… he didn't like it.
Draco slunk against the cooling stone of the corridor wall and willed his headache to abate, or his hands to stop shaking, one of the two would be nice, he didn't expect to achieve both. He ran his hands over his sternum gingerly, more scars to add to his ever-growing collection. He wondered if Snape had told the Dark Lord yet? Would the news of his attack work for or against him? Who could say?
That was when he heard her voice, Draco stilled for a moment wondering if he was imagining it, again. But no, he could hear the whispered responses of Potter. Before he could question himself, he moved closer.
"Into the… Malfoy was there and… argument…. curse… I didn't know."
Draco's lip curled at Potter's weak explanation of the events that left him fighting for his life on the flooded bathroom floor. If Snape hadn't been there, he would be dead, as it was the boy-who-lived got detention, a fact that he seemed to have just related to Hermione.
"You could have killed him Harry!" her voice was much clearer than the others, he had got her in a snit enough times to know when she was truly agitated, this appeared to be one of those times.
Whatever Potter said in his defence didn't appease her as a moment later she was stomping past his hiding spot, blissfully unaware, huffing loudly and mumbling to herself.
Draco wanted to yell after her, to let her know that he was still suffering. For a moment he imagined ripping open his shirt and showing her the spider web of lines that covered his upper body. How would that affect her feelings? Would it be enough to turn her against Potter for good? He didn't think so. But it was a nice thought. Draco held it with him until he had his breath back and could continue walking without the aid of the wall for support.
Draco felt the air leave his body as she was forced onto her back on the dirty floor at what had once been his home. He felt his heart constrict as the first curse hit its mark. When the blade collided with her skin numbness seeped into to his frame, he couldn't move, couldn't look away.
It couldn't be real. It was probably a nightmare, his worst nightmare but one all the same.
She never told. It was nearly an hour, and she never told. Stupid, brave, reckless, wonderful her.
I don't want to leave her now were his last thoughts before she disappeared again with a pop.
After the battle, Draco watched her as his mother and father spoke to the Aurors. There would be trials, consequences of being on the wrong side. None of it was news. He had suffered from the fate of being on the wrong side since he was eleven.
She was talking to Luna Lovegood, standing slightly away from everyone else as if she didn't know her place. Right then, at that very moment, Draco looked at her and saw the little girl she had been, all the excitement that he'd initially scorned had drained away. This girl, ravaged by war, looked still, unnaturally so for her and though she moved it was as if she was no longer in control of it, fluttering like a leaf in the wind.
Then, a broad chest swept into his view, Krum. He came up behind Hermione and lifted her clean off the floor.
The embrace didn't affect Draco, he'd had years to get used to seeing her like that, she was a very affectionate girl, but the way she sagged in relief into Viktor's hold stabbed at him, the relaxation of her frame mocking his affection.
The way she moved… brought pain.
Draco straightened his tie for the fifth time, to give him something to do with his hands until he could justify another drink. He only needed to stay another hour, and then he could sink himself into oblivion.
He had been to more weddings than funerals that year, which was saying something, something depressing, but something all the same. As was the way of all purebloods in Europe when one scion got married they were all invited, hence his presence here at her wedding. He had never expected to be there.
He watched as Hermione Krum got twirled inexpertly around the floor. For all of Viktor's elegance and grace in the air, he possessed none of it on the dancefloor. It didn't seem to worry her though. Every fudged step made her beam wider until the pair of them were laughing almost to the point of hysterics, some shared joke no doubt.
Draco didn't want to know the specific reason for her mirth, he allowed himself one more resolute glance at the warmth that lit up her face, lit up the whole room, him, and turned around to face the bar, again.
The way she moved… she would never know.
A/N: thank you for all of your reviews and suggestions, as two separate guests requested a meeting with Hermione's parents I am working on that for Track 4.