Last Chance
Chapter Four
I had been speculating for rather a long time if when people lay unconscious, they actually discerned what was happening around them. Did they know if their flowers got changed and their relatives squeezed their hands tightly, hoping for a response, but they just couldn't move an inch? Today I finally had an answer to those silent questions, for I woke up what felt like a minute after everything went dark. Only I lay in the hospital wing, curtains drawn around me, the light of daybreak surrounding me.
I slowly pushed myself up to sit against the rail of my bed, detailing the place. There were a few untouched boxes of sweets – mostly Berty Bott's and Chocolate Frogs – a bouquet of hanging daffodils and a get-well card from the rest of the silver four. I bent over to smell the flowers with a faint smile. They still smelled like her. Had she been here or did she only send them from her personal gardens? I would have been content with both. I was about to try to swing my legs over the bed and have a look for Madam Pomfrey as I heard his light steps on the stone floor. I would have recognized the sound of his hundred Galleons brogues everywhere. Definitely not ready to face him again, I quickly lay back down and shut my eyes just in time before he pulled the shades open.
"Hermione, I know that you are awake, the card was on the right of the narcissus, not on its left." stated Draco.
I hesitated for a second, then finally sighed and opened my eyes, but didn't say a word.
"Please say something … Don't you think that I have been worried enough this past week?" he pleaded.
"I have been gone for an entire week?!" I cried out despite my previous resolution.
Draco only set his sight on his shoes and nodded, just like a child being reprimanded by his mother. Why couldn't he be mad at me and make my job of hating him easier?
"Please Draco; just tell me what for Merlin's beard you are doing! Who deserved whatever this rag contained and was strong enough to knock me down for a week when I only brushed against it?"
He shook his head in disapproval, but his face stayed frightened and pained.
"You know when you reminded me of your secret living-place? Well you need to remember something else if you want to understand my situation. For you the Sorting Hat hesitated; you could have ended up being a Gryffindor and do all sorts of stupid stuff to be there for your friends, but you became Slytherin because your need to achieve great things was stronger. For me the Hat barely even touched me! I was born so deeply in Slytherin that I don't have the choice of being who I am destined to be. I need this, Hermione, and I need to do it alone if I want things to be back at normal at the Manor. You just can't imagine how things are …" he explained.
"Then take me with you over the Christmas holidays!" I retorted fiercely.
"I already told you that it was impossible! Hermione you just don't understand." His already whispering voice dropped to a barely audible hiss. "It's not just Bellatrix anymore!"
I sustained his desperate gaze for long seconds, defying his trembling grey eyes. And it was without breaking our eye-contact that I argued, separating each word very clearly.
"Draco, if you don't at least let me see this with my own eyes, I will have to take more desperate measures."
His perfect blond brows frowned for a second, but then he finally let go. Though it was clear that he doubted that I was in any position to menace him, he certainly didn't want to try me. I forced a brief smile on my lips and caught his large hand in both of mine.
"We can do this together Draco" I promised.
He suddenly pulled his hand off me with a look of utter disbelief.
"I am not sharing this with you! It is mine; it is my time to prove myself! I am only considering taking you with me for Christmas to shake you off!" he finally defended and stood up from his chair, throwing the flowers to the ground on his way.
A second later Draco had left me in the shatter of the breaking glass. I already heard the hurried footsteps of Madam Pomfrey crossing the room, so I urged to take my wand and fix the damage. Draco didn't need to be both late in lessons and harassed by the school nurse. While the vase could be mended perfectly, the daffodils where definitely ruined. I sighed once more.
"What did you do to Malfoy to get him in such a mood when you only just woke up?" asked a slightly familiar and amused voice.
So these were the hurried footsteps.
"What made you rush so fast through the hospital wing? If you didn't want to be seen near a Slytherin, I think that you failed" I riposted.
She shrugged and ran a hand through her luscious hair.
"I told him that I was looking for his father, I think that he didn't appreciate that. And by the way, you Slytherins care much more about who you are seen with than we do. My brother has been dating a Ravenclaw, Cedric and Cho were from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw." she argued.
I knew that I should have been absolutely stunned by her insolence, but at the moment I couldn't help being somehow amazed. This girl unquestionably had something. Blaise always had the most refined tastes of us all. Though Pansy did make a good choice with Draco, she wasn't the first thus I never really took it in account.
"Yeah and Weasley is dating Brown, one of the Weasley twins that Johnson girl from Quidditch, Finnigan is seeing the Gryffindor Patil twin … So, what brings you here so early? Are you trying to get a shot at slitting my throat while the others are at breakfast?" I mocked.
"I see that you are a real fan" she laughed. "But if I really wanted to get at you, my wand would be enough, anytime I want. Other than that, even if it might surprise you, I actually wanted to see how you were doing. People do that sometimes you know. They care about other human-beings."
"Oh so now we are friends or something?"
She shrugged once more.
"We are not as rancorous as you are. Don't think that I never noticed that you and Blaise were the only ones who never really helped when Draco was on one of his new plans to ruin Harry or whoever stood in his way. I don't believe in wholly good or bad people and despite what you might want to show, you're not a bad person Granger."
I sat there in utter disbelief for at least a minute. Everything she just said was rumbling through my brain, fighting with my very core principles. Was I really considering a friendship with Ginny Weasley? Sure she was by far a better candidate than Pansy for those matters, but did Slytherin-Gryffindor friendships even exist? I promised myself to look that up at the library as soon as Madam Pomfrey would let me leave the hospital wing.
"Well then you will be relieved to hear that I am doing very well. I guess that you can go and enjoy your breakfast in peace now."
I could have sworn that a quick smile crossed her pink lips.
"Thank you for authorizing me" she taunted and stood up to leave just as Draco had. Somehow hurt, just as he had been.
"Ginny, wait!" I called after her.
She stared back at me, probably as surprised as I was for the use of her first name, and threw a questioning look at me.
"I'm sorry for what I said last time. About you looking for a home in the broomstick cupboard. It was mean and stupid of me."
Her smile became even wider and she acquiesced, accepting my request for forgiveness. She hesitated for a moment as she separated two curtains to leave.
"Don't worry too much about that. You're not in that much of a better position yourself anyway, am I right?"
My face turned red up to the root of my hair. From shame or rage, I would never know.
As I left the hospital wing two whole days later, only too nervous about the amount of work I would have to catch up with, I very quickly realized how it was to be in Potter's shoes for a second. For a whole day being, I couldn't make a move without being scrutinized from head to foot by groups of students chatting in low voice, as if they were looking for a hidden monstrous scar somewhere. Even though the rumours were reaching wild heights, apparently no one had a clue that Draco was involved in what happened to me – whatever actually did happen to me.
Most of the people pretended that I had been cursed – the non-Slytherin and even some of us adding that I fully deserved it for being so irritating in lessons – and that Dark Magic had been implicated. In these times, I could somehow believe it myself. Others made up that they saw me duelling a first year and that I lost dramatically. If the Weasley twins hadn't left the school last year, I would have bet on them for this one. All in one, things actually smoothed down better and quicker than I expected, even if a couple more students appeared to have fled Hogwarts in the week of my accident.
What did change on the other hand, was that I couldn't help feeling like Weasley and Potter had started looking at me differently than as "Draco's friend", since Ginny came to see me. Did she say anything to them? Or did she expect me to go and talk to her in public from now on? Neither of us took a step forward in any case, and the weeks flew by without any disruption. Not even Blaise seemed to bother about me betraying his secret dating life anymore. It was only a week before the Christmas holidays that things got a little bit tensed.
Draco was once again bitter that Slughorn kept inviting Blaise and me to his little club happenings, Pansy was hoping for him to get in and take her as a plus one and I was still thinking about a way to convince Draco to have me at the mansion over the holidays.
"Draco if you really want to go, I can still tell professor Slughorn that I changed my mind and then you can go as my date. My friendly date" I added after Pansy's venomous look.
It was the third time this week that we were having this discussion.
"I don't need to be invited by sole pity, Hermione!" retorted Draco as he jabbed his spoon into his porridge with such fierceness that some of it exploded onto Pansy's face.
I rolled my eyes. These boys would kill me one day. They invite a girl to a ball, they are doughty knights, but if a witch dares inviting them, it is a sheer disgrace. I was about to retort, as I felt a soft and cold finger brushing my shoulder. I waited a few more seconds before I looked up, avoiding any suspicions from my friends. Indeed my bat-like professor was just leaving the Great Hall after following the Slytherin table on his way out.
"I just remembered that I forgot my runes dictionary in the dormitory, I have to leave now if I want to be in time." I pretended as I stood from the table.
Not even Draco looked up. Well of course a couple of first and third years were looking in my direction, but I knew better that it was more for Draco and Blaise's sculptural features than mine. So I simply left the room to join the dungeons and professor Snape's office, somehow even more anxious than the first time this occurred. I didn't even have the time to knock before he spoke.
"Come in" he commented, his deep, nasal tenor as peculiar as ever.
"Sir?"
"Close the door"
I obeyed, suddenly very eager to get this over with. Sharing a closed room with him had never been the favourite part of my every-day-life. It wasn't even for how sallower his skin looked like in the only light of the candles in the dungeons or how darker and more threatening his charcoal eyes looked like in the darkness, but rather for how more human he seemed. When he was just a teacher, he had that untouchable, unquestionable aura, but right now, like so many times over the summer, he seemed so much more human, vulnerable and approachable.
Nevertheless it was probably just my imagination, because I had never, ever, seen Professor Severus Snape being truly weak or just even sentimental. For the exception of the night of Halloween of course, though once again I would say that it was mainly because of the firewhisky he always buys for the occasion.
"So?" he simply asked.
I swallowed with much difficulty.
"Well I tried to talk to him, but he stays so reserved. He doesn't want to "share" whatever plans he has. It sounds as if he thinks that he can get acknowledged over his father's mistakes by doing whatever he does."
Professor Snape clenched his teeth in displeasure.
"How naïve you can be. You have to ruse him into trusting you, you cannot wait for him to unwrap, or it will be too late."
"But I don't want to force him! He already seems extremely stressed about all this, sir."
"You are being by far too sentimental. It might have been a blunder to rely on your judgment Miss Granger. You worry too sturdily about his comfort to do your bidding properly. I will have to take this in my hands." deliberated Snape.
"No, please sir. Leave me at least the Christmas holidays. If he knows that I talked to you …"
Professor Snape's eyes narrowed. Evidently, he didn't approve of me thwarting his plans. However I couldn't risk missing my best chance to finally resolve the mystery of Draco's behaviour. In the end, the head of my house acquiesced half-heartedly and gauged me for a second over his crooked nose. I didn't need a second to understand that he was going to do it again. Legilimency and then erase my memories of it. This time I had done my research about the sudden blank feeling that my last chat with him had left. But I decided to let him.
"No trace of resistance today, Miss Granger?" he snarled.
"I know that I can't go up against you anyway."
The only pleasant thing about someone like Professor Snape practically raping your mind is that he manages to stay gentle somehow. He never touches the memories of my nights with my angel, or those of my childhood with my parents or whatever doesn't concerns what he is looking for. As long as I keep my mind blank from the thoughts I don't want him to see, he won't go looking for them.
As I walked out of his office a few minutes later, my mind was perfectly clear this time. No memory charm. My brain itself though, was still too preoccupied with the little time I had left to crack fort Draco to see that I was walking straight into someone. I lifted my eyes onto Draco himself, holding an elegant peacock feather in his hand.
"I thought that you were going to our common room. You're basically on the opposite side of the dungeons" he wondered, startled.
"Yes I … I went to the potions classroom to tell Professor Slughorn that I would definitely not come to his Christmas party." I lied. "What's with the feather?"
He appeared quite puzzled for a second, but after that he was too keen to share his thoughts to pay any more attention to my less than inspired tale.
"It is for the list in the common room. You're leaving the castle over Christmas."
Soo this is probably my longest chapter so far, but at least I am sure to be in time with what I have planned. Chapter five will be concerning Christmas and chapter six one of those lovely smuts that you can feel free to skip if you're not really into that or simply under-aged. At least one chapter should come next week. For a second one a can't promise anything, especially since I wanted to post it along with the seventh chapter, so that people who won't read the sixth one still have something to read.
As usual, tell me what you thought, I am all ears and open to constructive criticism!