Draco sat impatiently in his room, once again waiting for Goyle, Crabbe, Zabini, and Nott to go to sleep so that he could proceed in his quest to fix that cabinet, still broken in the Room of Requirement. He'd given up on trying to unblock it; he was now desperately searching for books that would tell him how these magical passages were formed, so he could possibly make a brand new one to connect the two cabinets again. He was so stressed he thought that his appetite had halved, and he looked more like a wilted plant than ever. The Christmas holidays were only a week away, and if he didn't have some proof of progress by then, he might find himself on the receiving end of a Cruciatus Curse. The Death Eaters were no doubt on full alert after the imbeciles Fletcher Goyle and Walden Macnair were stopped, and there seemed to be a fifty percent chance of them being arrested.
Goyle had spent the entire day in the common room, ranting and raving, breaking things, and scaring first years, but none of it had made anyone feel any better. After he had refused to go down for dinner and made some of the house elves bring him huge plates of food instead, Draco was surprised when he had come back to find the common room empty. Except for the giant plates and food debris he had left, Goyle seemed to have just vanished. Draco hoped he would come back soon; it was almost curfew and he desperately wanted to get back to the Room.
As the minutes ticked by, he grew more and more frustrated. Where was everyone? Crabbe, desolate without his companion, had retreated to bed early, and was currently lying behind his curtains snoring loudly. Zabini was also already in bed, not snoring, but his breathing, Draco had checked, indicated deep sleep. But the remaining two beds in their dormitory were left obstinately empty. Almost half an hour after curfew, Nott stumbled in, his footsteps and walking pattern telling Draco he had been sneaking into the kitchen to steal cooking wine with some of the Seventh Years again. He fell forwards onto his bed, and with his curtains open and his feet still hanging shoe-clad off of the side, began wheezing in sleep within minutes.
Only Goyle was left unaccounted for. Draco wondered casually whether other houses would be worried about their roommates being missing at this point, but he knew that Slytherins were never particularly sticklers for rules, and he was probably out in the kitchen stuffing his face with elf-made goods. When it had reached an hour after the curfew had come and gone, Draco decided he'd need to go without him being in the room and sound asleep. Too much time had been wasted already. However, as Draco picked up his wand to cast the Disillusionment Charm, he heard the wall to the common room open and close, and Goyle's heavy footsteps. His curiosity got the better of him, and he wandered downstairs to find Goyle, strangely, happy.
"What are you smiling about?" Draco's derisive tone displayed his confusion; Goyle's father had been held by the Ministry since yesterday morning and he was smiling? Something felt odd.
"Nothing." He replied, still grinning like an idiot. Well, he thought, he is an idiot.
"Then why are you smiling like someone just pulled the greatest Christmas present ever out of their arse for you?" To Draco's surprise, Goyle just began chortling.
"Nott told me I should." Goyle's chuckling became full-on laughter at this point.
"Nott told you that you should smile?" Draco looked at him as if he was mental.
"No! Nott told me I should… I should put her in the forest!" He got out between bursts of laughter. Draco experienced a sinking feeling in his chest, as if his ribs were being deflated.
"Put who in the forest?"
"Mudblood Granger!" Saying her name seemed to make him lose it completely. Draco worried he would wake up the rest of the dormitories.
"You put Granger in the forest?"
"Yeah! Left her there, all tied up like a Christmas present!" Goyle choked, doubled-up.
"Are you a complete and total moron?" This confused Goyle enough to stop his amusement for a moment.
"What d'you mean?"
"The whole Ministry's out to prosecute your father and you're leaving the prick-who-lived's precious mudblood out in the forest tied up?"
"I don't get it. The mudbloods locked up my father, they need to be taught a lesson."
Draco made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat. No doubt he would get the blame for this enormous screw-up as well as his own.
"Of course you don't understand. I won't bother, I'm going to go and find the mudblood and let her go, and you will find yourself becoming something very unpleasant should you follow me."
"Wait, no, don't!"
"Stay here!" Draco lost his temper. "Can't you comprehend even a tiny bit how Perfect Mudblood Granger turning up dead in the forest will make all of us look? Slytherins and Death Eaters are under enough suspicion as it is, that's why your father's been taken. If a muggle dies under Dumbledore's roof now it will expose everyone who follows the Dark Lord. It could be enough to start a war, and only our Master can decide when that happens. He needs us to stay hidden, and to do that… you can't kidnap the mudblood!"
He trudged out of the room, looking thunderous, before realising he should have asked where in the forest Goyle had put her. Too late, he marched out of the Entrance Hall and onto the grounds. He was lucky he hadn't encountered anybody; in his fury at Goyle's idiocy, he'd forgotten to place the Disillusionment Charm on himself and he would have been in a lot of trouble. Fortunately, he didn't see another soul before reaching the edge of the forest. What do I do now? He thought. Do I call out for her? Don't be stupid. He supposed he'd have to find her the good, old-fashioned way: look.
For a long hour he searched for the mudblood. Whilst he searched he flicked between two different types of angry thoughts; one set around Goyle and his ultimate stupidity, no matter how much he may have been emotionally inclined at the time. He was angry about the fact that somebody else's actions, somebody who was in fact supposed to be on his side of the battle, had caused him to lose a valuable night of work on the cabinet, the one task the Dark Lord had given him, or else.
The other set of angry thoughts revolved around the girl for whom he was searching. She seemed to keep dragging him into ridiculous situations whether she intended to or not. Situations that, if uncovered, could get him and the people he cared about killed. He was risking his own and his mother's, and possibly his father's, lives to rescue for the second time a girl who he had despised before even meeting her. The loathing had only increased since then, but never to this level of hatred. He hated her for making him save her, because really he had no choice this time. He utterly refused to think about the choice he'd made the last time.
Finally noticing the quiet increasing as he drew towards a particular area of the woods, he realised that the animals in this particular patch of land were all quiet. He figured that this was as good a place as any to start; the Forbidden Forest wouldn't have been this noiseless without reason. Thankfully, only a few metres in, he heard what he assumed were the sounds of a frustrated girl desperately trying to free her hands from binds, and followed them until he was greeted with the sight of her sat on the forest floor, blindfolded, and with her hands tied behind her back. 'Great witch' indeed.
He watched her silently for a while, relishing in her anger and her clear theory that no one was watching. In much the same way as on the tower, Draco seemed captivated by the raw humanness of a person who believes they are truly on their own. This time, however, Draco knew he must keep his wits about him. He couldn't be lost to curiosity and forget himself again. She'd clearly been doing this for a while, and the fury emanating from her was almost tangible. Good, she deserves it after everything that's happened to him because of her. And everything that could still happen. He thought. And also because she'd a mudblood anyway, he amended.
"Ouch!" She shouted out loud when she'd ended up flinging her wrists around uselessly behind her, and accidentally hitting a tree trunk knuckles first. Draco sighed inwardly. He supposed if he was going to have to do this, he may as well get it over with.
"Granger." Draco said, enjoying seeing her physically jump at the unexpected sound of his voice.
"Who- who is that?" Hermione asked tentatively.
"Who does it sound like, brainless?"
"Well, it sounds like Malfoy, but unless you're here to laugh at me and leave me here, I don't know why. And if you were here to laugh at me and leave, you made a long journey for something so petty." She had the audacity to provoke someone who was here to free her? Draco felt his anger rise already.
"Well, as it happens, I'm not here to laugh and leave. I'm here to let you go." He waved his wand carelessly at her blindfold, taking it off of her in order to see the look of disbelief and suspicion mixed with shock on her face.
"Why on Earth would you want to do that?"
"Not for selfless reasons should you by any possibility be thinking that."
She snorted derisively. "As if. What's in it for you?" Her eyes narrowed.
"Who is going to get the blame for this debacle if you turn up dead tomorrow morning, do you think?" He said, making his voice deliberately patronising. He knew exactly how to rile this mudblood up in return.
"Well, I'd hoped you and whoever you'd got to help you with this. But as you're letting me out, I guess I can eliminate you as the culprit?" He flicked his wand sloppily at the ropes on her wrist and severed them, purposely leaving her with a sharp scratch in the process. She made a small sound of pain and then simply looked at him with her temper ever more apparent in her eyes.
"Don't be so slow. It was Goyle. And they call you the brightest witch of her age?" Her face reddened as he incited her. "You got outmatched by Goyle." He laughed loudly.
"I was wandless and ambushed!" She stood and brushed pine needles off of her clothes, glaring at him.
"Whatever makes you feel better about yourself. Although you might want to consider that fact that you are a Mudblood. Can't help." The smirk on his face grew as he turned back towards the castle.
"I didn't ask for your help, Malfoy! I can do anything that you can to defend myself and more, and you know it. I'd like to see you fight your way out of a situation without your wand or your daddy's money." As Draco's face became scarlet with anger and he opened his mouth to say something cutting, Hermione interrupted him. "And I could have handled myself pretty well if I had been wandless but prepared anyway, in case you've forgotten that I'm not afraid to physically hit out without my wand, too. Not only that, but I've been beating you at everything since we first arrived, despite my dirty blood! Weird, isn't it? If blood purity doesn't affect skill in any way, then how exactly does it make you better, Malfoy?"
Draco couldn't find words quickly enough. "How dare-"
"It also obviously doesn't affect your charm. Or your popularity. So tell me, O Enlightened One, precisely what is it that makes you so much better than me?"
Draco very badly wanted to tell her that he wasn't suicidal. So desperately he wanted to remind her that she had been the one stood on the edge of a window in a tower, and he hadn't been, that the words stuck to the end of his tongue and left a bitter taste in his mouth. But he couldn't. She had no idea it was him who had saved her life and it had to remain that way. His anger abating slightly at the reminder of the war he was fighting rather than this argument made him turn around and briskly walk back to the castle without another word. He was not giving up, and he was certainly stubborn and livid enough to have carried on, but he was brought up to understand tactics; he would concede this battle of wits in order to pursue winning the war.
And every single day he was regretting saving the life of that wretched girl even more.