Chapter Four: Dark Arts Books
Hermione returned to Hogwarts a week later, clothes disheveled, eyes lined with red and surrounded by Harry, Ron, and Order of the Phoenix members. She retired to her rooms and asked to be alone. The Order of the Phoenix members cast several protective charms around the Head Girl's rooms and departed. Harry and Ron entered the chambers next to Hermione's.
Draco was sitting at his desk, reading the Daily Prophet. With a strangled cry of rage, he crushed it and threw it into the fireplace.
"Worse than usual?" Harry asked dryly. Draco started. He hadn't heard them enter.
"Bloody hell, Potter, don't scare a person like that."
"Do you think you can keep the angry screams down?" Ron asked. It was the first time he'd spoken to Draco in ages. "Hermione's right next door and she's kind of upset right now."
"Right, right," Draco said, running a hand through his hair. "Sorry. Did you two want something?"
"Yeah," Harry said, flopping down on the couch next to the fireplace. Ron sat stiffly next to him. "Hermione's closing herself up over this. Won't talk, won't get angry, just cries."
"And Harry, the bloody idiot, blames himself," Ron added.
"Sounds like something he'd do," Draco agreed. "So it's your fault the Dark Lord killed Hermione's parents, is it? Well, you're probably right. He probably did it to hurt you, Potter. There's no way it couldn't have just been the twisted product of a twisted mind. Yes, it was definitely your fault. Just as though you said the words yourself."
The callousness of his words did not snap Harry out of his self-blame, as Draco had intended. Also, Ron was looking at him with intense hatred once again.
"Look here, Potter," Draco said finally. "You can't blame yourself for the actions of the Dark Lord. That's what he wants you to do."
"Exactly," Ron said, latching on to Draco's last words. "You don't want to be doing what Voldemort wants you to do."
"I guess not," Harry said. "But what about Hermione? She probably blames me, and no matter who blames who, it all boils down to the fact that this is killing Hermione."
"And you think I can do something about it?"
"You're pretty much the last option," Ron said reluctantly.
"Fine. I'll see what I can do."
Draco knocked softly on Hermione's door and slipped in, holding a pile of Dark Arts books and a thick roll of parchment. He found Hermione lying on her couch, her face streaked with tears. He set the books on the table and sat beside her.
"Your friends are worried about you," he said.
"I don't care," she said, her words muffled by the pillow.
"I'm worried about you."
"I don't care," she said again.
"Do you care about anything?" he demanded.
"No. Go away."
"I won't," he said. "Hermione, your parents are dead. Who killed them?"
There was a long silence.
"Who killed them, Hermione?"
Once again, she didn't answer.
"It wasn't Harry Potter or Ron Weasley. It wasn't Professor Dumbledore or any of the Order of the Phoenix. It wasn't a muggle. So who was it?"
Once again, a long silence.
"I'll tell you who it was, Hermione. It was a group of Death Eaters—wizards and witches who follow an incredibly powerful Dark Lord and who believe that purebloods are superior to both half-bloods and muggles. Don't you want them to pay for killing your parents?"
"Yes," she said, very softly. "I want them to go down."
"Do you see these books, Hermione? These books are my father's most private collection of Dark Arts books. There are dark, dangerous, evil things in the covers of these books. I have been studying them because I want to know what the Death Eaters know. I want to take them down and I want to make Voldemort pay for hurting my mother."
Hermione say up on the couch and stared at the books in awe.
"Would you like to join me?" Draco asked her. "Despite what everyone hears all the time about saving the world and making the wizarding world safe from the evils of Voldemort, nobody cares until it touches them personally. Everybody who is fighting the Dark Lord is driven by revenge. Potter, the Weasleys, me, and now you, Hermione. Being driven by revenge is a hard way to live, but at least it's living."
Hermione simply plowed through Lucius Malfoy's Dark Arts books. Despite her anger at loosing her parents and the hardness that was now in her eyes, she was still innocent enough to be shocked by some of the torture curses.
"Draco, did you read about these burn curses?" she asked, her voice lined with horror. "And just imagine where they would use them!"
"Yes," Draco agreed, looking up from a Dark Arts book on how to maximize physical pain. "I'm surprised the Daily Prophet hasn't gotten wind of some of these yet and spread yet more terror throughout the wizarding world."
"Maybe they chose not to print it," Hermione said absently, looking at a spell description in shock.
"No, I think they don't know of it yet," Draco said. "You obviously haven't been reading the Prophet lately or you'd have seen that horrid Rita Skeeter's exposé on my father, including a horribly inaccurate description of how he had betrayed the Dark Lord and is really very noble and pure."
"She didn't!" Hermione exclaimed, her book forgotten as she stared at Draco. "That….argh! I told her to keep her pen to herself!" Draco stared at her in bewilderment.
"She's an unregistered animagus," Hermione explained. "I caught her red-handed after the Tri-Wizard tournament and told her that if she kept her pen to herself, I wouldn't tell anybody her little secret." When he still looked slightly confused, she added, "We might have hexed you right after that."
"Oh," Draco said, turning red. "Yes, I remember that. Actually, I remember almost every run-in with you three."
"Well, this certainly doesn't constitute keeping her pen to herself," Hermione fumed. "I don't subscribe to the Daily Prophet any more. Could I see your copy with that story in it?"
"I erm…" Draco said, slightly embarrassed. "I kind of got pretty mad and threw it in the fire."
"He does have emotions!" Hermione exclaimed. "I was beginning to wonder. No matter. If she writes anything like that again, let me know and I'll send her a little reminder."
Harry and Ron were so relieved that Hermione had somewhat pulled out of her depression that they didn't bother to ask Draco what he'd done. Somehow, he didn't think they would be too pleased about his little speech about being driven by revenge.
At dinner one night, Ginny broke long-standing tradition by sitting next to Draco at the Slytherin table.
"What do you think you're doing?" Draco hissed at her as she slid into the seat beside him.
"I'm eating dinner with the Head Boy, of course," she replied sweetly. She picked up the goblet in front of her, inspected it, and then took a sip. A broad smile spread across her face. "I told them you weren't drinking blood."
A few of the Slytherins started to make outraged comments, but she cut them off smoothly.
"It was a joke, okay?" she said, smiling easily. "Can't you people take a joke?"
The table was silent for a minute, and for a while the only sound was the friendly chatter from the other tables. Finally, Blaise Zabini spoke up.
"You're not welcome here,'" he snapped.
"Why?" she inquired pleasantly.
"Mudblood," a first-year said, somewhere down at the other end of the table.
"Nope!" Ginny called back at him. "Probably purer than you."
"Muggle-lover," somebody else muttered.
"Says who?" she demanded.
"Spawn of a muggle-lover," another said. Ginny shrugged.
"Can't deny that," she said, "but he's dead. Ask your parents—they were probably there."
After a long and rather uncomfortable silence, she flapped a hand at them impatiently.
"Don't tell me you people only talk about stuff a Gryffindor shouldn't hear. There's no way I believe you sit here each meal and plan the next Death Eater attack. The Dark Lord wouldn't trust the likes of you with that."
A few people laughed and the chatter gradually started up again.
"So," Draco said, cutting up a steak, "What brings you over here to disrupt the normal day of the Slytherin House? Trying to shake things up?"
"Yes, but I also wanted to ask you if you would tutor me in Potions."
"Why don't you ask Hermione?"
"Because she dropped potions, duh."
"Then ask Potter. Or ask Longbottom. He's not as bad as his reputation makes him out to be."
"Well, my first choice would obviously be the best—Blaise Zabini," she said, glancing down the length of the table to where the Slytherin Prince, surrounded by his cronies, was staring at her darkly. "Neville tells me he's been screwing up their potions to make Neville look bad, but Zabini's had top marks in Potions for the past few years. Unfortunately, I would have to worry about him poisoning me or generally being a Death Eater-in-training and a Slytherin prat and I would never manage to actually improve if I'm always watching my back."
"I heard that, Weasley," Zabini called.
"I don't hear you denying it," she retorted before turning her attention back to Draco. "So it boils down to you, the second-best."
"I am not second-best to Zabini!" Draco snapped. "Fine, I'll do it, but only because I definitely do not want you, Zabini, and a potion in the same room at the same time."
"Thank you, Draco," she said sweetly. "Hermione said you'd agree."
"Hermione," Draco said that night, as the two studied Dark Arts books in Hermione's rooms, "why do I feel as though I've been manipulated by two girls?"
"Women," she corrected him, only half paying attention to what he was saying.
"What?"
Hermione sighed and put down her book.
"Look, Draco. I want you to do this for Ginny. When Mr. Weasley was killed, all his children reacted to it in different ways.
Charlie threw himself into his dragon-training like a madman. Bill buried himself in the Gringott's vaults, counting money obsessively."
Fred and George have barely been sleeping, cranking out products for their joke shop like mad. Ron's been depressed and angry, mostly at you.
Ginny, the only daughter, has felt her security shaken and doesn't think she can depend on anybody. She needs some sense of security.
She can't get it from her brothers and Harry's disappointed her romantically for years. Neville's sweet, but clueless.
Her choices have narrowed down to you and Blaise Zabini. I think it would be a very good thing is she didn't end up going to Blaise Zabini for security, don't you?"
"When you put it like that…" Draco said. "I should have known. She said something along those lines at the Halloween Masked Ball."
"Let me just say that it's good that she came to me to ask who should tutor her in potions. I tried to steer her interest towards you. In other words, away from Zabini. Besides," she said, smiling, "she really does need help in potions and it probably would not be good for her marks if Zabini tutored her."
"That's the grade-monger Hogwarts knows and loves."