March 1997
Hermione had spent all of Saturday waiting outside the hospital wing. Now that Madam Pomfrey had declared Ron stable enough for visitors, she was clinging to his hand and feeling increasingly wretched. Hermione could only be thankful that Professor Slughorn kept a bezoar in his chambers and Harry had the presence of mind to use it, otherwise Ron would be dead.
Ron still was one of her oldest and best friends, despite his execrable table manners and adolescent fascination with Lavender Brown's breasts, and the thought of how close he had come to being gone from her life forever made Hermione's throat tighten. Or maybe that uncomfortable feeling was guilt that she was almost certain who had poisoned Ron, but was keeping her silence, at least until she could speak with Malfoy.
Harry had given her a few odd looks during their vigil outside the infirmary, and she thought he had noticed that she was being unusually quiet. The ongoing and increasingly off-base speculation by Harry, Ginny and the Weasley twins as to who might have had a reason to poison Ron or Slughorn put an increasing strain on her self-control. When one of the twins surmised the would-be killer might be someone with a grudge against the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Hermione finally snapped.
"Well, I don't think it's Quidditch, but I think there's a connection between the attacks," she spoke up, in a quiet voice.
"How d'you work that out?" asked Fred, serious for once.
"Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren't, although that was pure luck," she said, thinking it was lucky for Malfoy and his victims that no one had been fatally injured. That was the sop to her conscience, the reason why she could justify to herself warning him off rather than turning him in. He would have to leave Hogwarts, of course, but maybe he could stay out of Azkaban.
Harry was watching her again, his emerald eyes disconcertingly intent. She chose her next words carefully, because he was capable of dangerous flashes of intuition and already predisposed to suspect Malfoy even in the rare cases where the blond Slytherin was entirely innocent.
"And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course," Hermione added broodingly, "that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don't seem to care how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim."
And wasn't that a terrible thought to have about someone who had become - despite the long odds against it - a sort of friend. A snarky, sarcastic, prickly and devilishly attractive sort of friend, but certainly no longer her enemy. Hermione could only be thankful that she had resisted temptation and kept her hands and lips off Malfoy during their study sessions this term. That would have made confronting him an even harder task, and Merlin knew it would already take every bit of her Gryffindor courage.
On his hospital bed, Ron tossed restlessly, his ginger hair in stark contrast to the white pillow. Madam Pomfrey had warned them a fever was to be expected as the remaining poison leached from Ron's body, so Hermione wasn't too concerned when she took his hand and found it hot and dry.
"Is that you, 'Mione?" he muttered thickly.
"It's me, Ron," she replied, so happy to hear his voice that she didn't even mind the stupid nickname he'd given her.
"Don't go, okay?" he asked. "Wanna have you here."
"I'll stay until Madam Pomfrey kicks me out," she promised.
"We all will," Harry vowed, his face set in determined lines following the attack on his best mate. The twins and Ginny echoed their agreement. Looking at their grim faces, Hermione swallowed down her guilt once more, trying to remember how she had come to have so many secrets from her closest friends.
(x) (x) (x)
Draco was staring out the window of their fourth-floor classroom, watching the pallid sunlight illuminate the distant ridges and peaks. It was nice to see the sun and feel anticipation instead of dread for a change, even for something so minor as breakfast and studying with Granger.
At the sound of her quick footsteps in the corridor, he schooled the undignified grin on his face into a cool neutrality. "Granger," he said by way of welcome, turning from the window to greet her.
He was caught off guard when she shoved him back into the stone wall, hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs, and dug her wand into the soft underside of his neck.
"Why did you try to kill Ron?" she snarled, her hair practically crackling with her magic and her eyes golden in rage.
Draco's eyes widened in genuine surprise. Rumors were all over the castle that the Weasel King was in the infirmary after taking a badly-brewed love potion, but he had nothing to do with that and told her as much.
"Granger, are you mental? Why in Salazar's name would I want to poison Weaselbee?"
The patent sincerity of his response calmed her down, just a bit. Now he would classify her as merely furious rather than in the sort of rage where she might actually harm him.
"You would do it if Voldemort ordered you to," she hissed.
"Well, of course I would," Draco admitted with candid selfishness, repressing a twitch at the casual use of his master's name. "I value my skin over the Weasel King's any day of the week. But the Dark Lord is too focused on Potter to concern himself with sidekicks." He drew a deep breath, bracing himself for a hex. "Besides, if I wanted to hamstring Potter, I would go after you, not the gormless blood traitor."
Granger seemed partially disarmed and perversely flattered by his honesty, but she hadn't removed her wand from his throat. "Ron wasn't the target, Malfoy. The poison was in a cask of mead in Professor Slughorn's chambers."
"Come off it, Granger. I'm not that fussed about being blackballed from the Slug Club," Draco said with a casualness he was far from feeling. Madam Rosmerta had doctored a cask of mead meant for Dumbledore on his orders. It seemed like the gossip about Weasel's illness was not entirely accurate. Still, Draco didn't betray himself, not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash.
"I think Professor Dumbledore was the target," Granger said, brown eyes boring into his own.
"That would make more sense," he agreed, maintaining eye contact. "But giving something to Sluggy in hopes that he'd pass it along to Dumbledore strikes me as a daft plan."
Granger narrowed her eyes in thought, unable to deny the truth of that observation.
"If I wanted to kill the headmaster," Draco continued, "I would poison those nasty lemon candies he's always sucking on. Or I would slip something into the bottle of FireWhiskey McGonagall keeps in her office, because everyone knows she always gives him a dram when they play chess on Friday nights."
But as Merlin only knew, Draco didn't really want to kill Dumbledore, and therefore had rejected both of those plans. He hadn't been too worried about accidentally poisoning Slughorn, either. The potions master was a noted epicurean, who would have noticed something was off with his first delicate sip of the mead. Trust a barbarian like Weasley to nearly kill himself by swigging premium alcohol like it was cheap Butterbeer.
Now, Granger looked more than halfway convinced. Draco was on the verge of congratulating himself for pulling wool over her pretty doe eyes - no mean feat, that - when she gave him another of those piercing looks.
"I want you to swear it," she said. "Swear to me you had nothing to do with Ron being poisoned."
Draco took a deep breath, weighing his options. A sad, twisted smile crossed his face at the easy solution.
"Alright, I'll swear it. May I have my wand?"
"Where is it?" Granger asked, suspicious of any trick.
"My front left trouser pocket," he answered. Keeping her wand trained on him, she reached into his pocket and extracted his wand. Draco could feel his muscles clench in anticipation at her delicate touch and quickly thought of icy cold showers and disgusting potions ingredients to repress his natural reaction.
Granger gripped the bottom third of his wand in her left hand, pointing the tip towards his groin. Draco mentally saluted her cleverness. Even if he tried to yank the wand away and jinx her, he was all too likely to hit himself where it hurt. Not to mention that Granger still was holding her own wand steady at his throat. He loosely wrapped his hand around the hawthorne wand's grip, relaxing a fraction at the comfortable familiarity of the conduit for his magic.
"I swear on my father's soul that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the poisoning of Ronald Bilius Weasley," Draco enunciated crisply, speaking the words with no hesitation.
Granger, no doubt recalling the little blond brat who never stopped invoking the father he had idolized, immediately accepted his oath. "I had to know," she murmured, looking abashed and releasing his wand with a clear if silent apology in her eyes.
"It's fine," he said gruffly, as they both glanced at his left forearm. Granger had every reason to suspect him.
"I'm sorry - " she began.
"It's fine," he repeated. "Please don't mention it again," Draco cut her off with icy politeness. "Would you prefer to begin with Potions or Arithmancy?"
He had no desire to hear Granger apologize for an accusation had been entirely accurate. After all, she had no way of knowing that he considered swearing on his father's soul to be entirely meaningless. So far as Draco could tell, between his fanatical devotion to the Dark Lord and the damage done by the Dementors in Azkaban, Lucius had no soul left to be foresworn and forfeited by his son's bold-faced lie.
(x) (x) (x)
Later in the morning, after they had gone over this week's Arithmancy problems and commented on each other's essays in Potions and Charms, Hermione hesitantly broached the subject of Occlumency.
"Um, Malfoy?" she asked.
He looked up from his Transfiguration textbook, cocking one blond eyebrow to indicate he was paying attention.
"I was hoping we could work on my Occlumency for a bit," she requested.
"Certainly, if you don't mind me prowling around your mind," he agreed. "What shall I search for today?"
"Maybe you should choose, to make it harder for me to keep you out," Hermione suggested. Malfoy was a good teacher and she now felt reasonably comfortable with the basics of blocking access to her mind. However, she sometimes worried that he was going easy on her, or giving her an unfair advantage by allowing her to choose topics that she could readily obfuscate. Like Muggle birthday parties, where she could focus on silly memories of cartoon characters on pointy cardboard hats to distract Malfoy from more painful memories, like the time she was the only girl in her primary class not invited to a schoolmate's party.
Malfoy regarded her in silence for a long moment, until a sudden grin lit up his face. "There's an interesting rumor circulating about you in the dungeons, Granger. How about I look for confirmation as to whether it's true?"
"What's the rumor, Malfoy?" Hermione demanded. She could only imagine what that vicious cow Pansy Parkinson might be saying.
"Don't give me that look, Granger," Malfoy smirked.
"What look are you referring to?" she asked.
"Like you're channeling McGonagall and thinking up an especially horrid detention for me," he explained, an amused glint in his eyes. "Besides, it's a very innocuous rumor - not spicy at all."
"What is it then?" she questioned, consumed by curiosity.
"The rumor is that you're not really a Muggleborn," Malfoy said smoothly, with no hint that he was consciously switching out the more derogatory term, "but actually a connection of Hector Dagworth-Granger, the famed potioneer."
"I know who he is," Hermione snapped. "Professor Slughorn asked me if I was related to him on the first day of class. You and Nott snickered about it behind my back."
Malfoy shrugged it off. "We weren't making fun of you, not really. Nott said it would explain why you've always managed to beat my marks in Potions. Anyways, the rest of the rumor is that Dumbledore asked you to keep the family relationship quiet so he can continue to use you as the poster child for Muggleborn rights."
Hermione bridled at the casual prejudice she'd been struggling against since age eleven, the belief that a Muggleborn witch simply couldn't be that intelligent or skilled in her magic. "Fine," she said, making a split-second decision. "Go ahead and look."
Malfoy left his seat to perch on top of the desk where she was sitting, giving him a better vantage point to make the eye contact required for Legilimency.
"Legilimens," he intoned softly, and Hermione began to lead him on a merry mental chase through the recesses of her mind. She wasn't exactly proud of how exhaustively she had researched whether Hector Dagworth-Granger, the founder of the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers, was indeed her relative.
Hermione lost track of time as Malfoy sifted through her thoughts. The only sound in the classroom was their breathing, which had fallen into sync as he looked for snippets to support or undercut the rumors about her lineage. He was too strong to repel from her mind outright, so she focused on confining his snooping to repetitive scenes of her brewing potions or reading in the Hogwarts library, hoping that Malfoy would grow tired or impatient and withdraw from her mind before he could get the information he sought.
Their mental stalemate ended when he reached out and grabbed her shoulder. Hermione squeaked at the unexpected contact, and then Malfoy seized upon her distraction. In a blink of an eye, he was rifling through her memories of reviewing the Dagworth-Granger genealogy and comparing it to what she knew of her own family tree. She had even copied Hector's portrait in miniature and brought it home over Christmas to compare it to old photos of her grandparents and great-parents, searching for any likeness. The timelines did not match and she had found no family resemblance.
Malfoy's disappointment at this was palpable. Hermione's anger at his reaction allowed her, for the first time during their Occlumency lessons, to forcibly eject him from her mind.
"You are such a prejudiced arse!" she fumed at him. "Why are you so upset that I'm still a Mudblood? Is it because you let my filthy mouth touch yours?"
"No, it's not that." He ran his hand through his fringe, looking tired. "It's just that you would be safer if you had a claim to some magical heritage, especially from a distinguished family like the Dagworth-Grangers."
"Malfoy, I'm Harry Potter's best friend. I could be Pansy Parkinson's long-lost sister and I still would be a target for Death Eaters."
"It's not just Death Eaters you have to worry about, Granger," he told her, staring down at his hands. "If the Ministry changes hands, all Muggleborns are going to be targeted."
He looked so serious that Hermione wondered what he knew and, bizarrely, felt an urge to comfort him. Instead of embracing him, she kept her arms folded, feeling awkward.
Malfoy looked up and blinked. "Merlin, Granger, you're as pale as I am. I shouldn't have - "
She waved off his apology. "Yes, you should have," she said firmly. "No other Death Eater is going to do me the courtesy of asking whether I'm too tired to defend my own mind."
"Probably not," Malfoy agreed, with a forced smile. "Would you like some chocolate? It will help with the headache I'm sure you have."
"Yes, please," Hermione said, gratefully accepting half a bar of Honeyduke's finest. They munched on the chocolate in a companionable silence, seated next to each other on the desk, until she spoke up again.
"Malfoy?" she inquired.
"Hmmm?" he hummed, an encouraging noise around a mouthful of chocolate.
"Why did you grab my shoulder?" She could still feel the warm shock of his fingers at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, under the starched fabric of her uniform blouse.
"Because I wanted to," Malfoy smirked, like the annoying boy he was. "I was trying to throw you off balance, because I wanted to find out if the rumor was true. And I also felt like touching you."
She turned her head to face him, to try and gauge the truth of his words, and found that he had turned as well, leaving their lips centimeters apart.
"You do have a filthy mouth," he said in a low, husky voice, "but that's a compliment, not an insult. And the only thing that upsets me about kissing you is that I haven't been allowed to for weeks now."
Malfoy sounded so aggrieved that Hermione found herself biting back a smile. He really was a spoilt brat, always used to getting exactly what he wanted.
"May I?" he whispered, soft and sweet.
She gave her assent wordlessly, pressing her lips against his. He tasted like chocolate and felt like home and Hermione realized she was in so deep that she might never get out.
(x) (x) (x)
A couple of weeks later, Hermione was sitting with Harry and Ron by the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. It was late enough that they were the only people still awake. Even their fellow sixth years, who had spent the late evening hours alternating between agonizing over Snape's viciously difficult DADA essay and the Apparition test to be held in less than a month's time, finally had gone to bed.
She had just returned Ron's freshly corrected essay, waving aside his embarrassing declarations of undying love and gratitude, when Kreacher appeared with a loud crack. A second crack announced Dobby's arrival, and the two elves began arguing shrilly as who got to go first on reporting on the "Malfoy boy," as Kreacher referred to him in a tone of deepest respect, bordering on adoration.
"What is this?" she asked in shock. "What's going on, Harry?"
There was a guilty pause before he answered. "Well . . . they've been following Malfoy for me."
"Night and day," Kreacher croaked, with a significant and sinister glance at Hermione.
"Dobby has not slept for a week," the other elf proudly informed Harry, swaying on his feet. Hermione dismissed that as exaggeration, since Dobby and Kreacher had evidently been taking shifts, with the older elf apparently getting an eyeful of her snogging Malfoy. Dobby, fortunately, seemed ignorant.
"How long have you been abusing Kreacher and Dobby like this?" an indignant Hermione asked Harry. What she really wanted to know was how long the house-elves had been spying on her with Malfoy.
"Only a week, like Dobby said," Harry defended himself, missing Hermione's subtle sigh of relief. "Have either of you found out anything?" he asked the elves.
"Master Malfoy moves with a nobility that befits his pure blood," Kreacher croaked, giving Hermione what could only be classified as a wink. "His features recall the fine bones of my mistress and his manners - "
Hermione blushed beet-red, realizing Kreacher must have been watching on Thursday night when she traced the lines of Malfoy's jaw with her fingers and her tongue.
"Draco Malfoy is a bad boy!" squeaked Dobby angrily. "A bad boy who - who - "
Looking at the little elf, the tassel of his tea cozy wobbling as he shook with rage, Hermione revised her earlier opinion. Dobby had seen them together and clearly did not approve, but either fondness for her or some residual loyalty to the Malfoy family kept him silent. She decided upon the latter as the little elf tried to fling himself upon the flames, forcing Harry to catch him about the waist and restrain him.
Harry gave Kreacher a stern look, cutting short any further praise of the blond Slytherin. "Yeah, we don't need to hear about you being in love with Malfoy. Let's fast forward to where he's actually been going."
Hermione sent up a silent prayer of thanks that Harry had asked about where Malfoy went, and not what he did once he got there.
"Master Malfoy eats in the Great Hall, he sleeps in a dormitory in the dungeons, he attends his classes in a variety of - " Kreacher recited in his foghorn voice. As Hermione had hoped, he readily seized upon Harry's sloppy phrasing to avoid provide any useful - or damning - information about Malfoy's activities.
"Dobby, you tell me," Harry interrupted with impatience.
Once again, Hermione held her breath as Dobby looked at her, his orb-like eyes shining with reproach in the firelight. He would not meet Harry's eyes as he carefully phrased his response. "Harry Potter, sir, the Malfoy boy is breaking no rules that Dobby can discover, but he is still keen to avoid detection."
Slowly, Hermione exhaled in relief as the discussion veered off into speculation as to what Malfoy was doing in the Room of Requirement. While she did not know what the room transformed into for Malfoy, she wasn't overly concerned. There were limits to the amount of trouble he could cause at Hogwarts, alone, without the support or prodding of more hardened Death Eaters. Perhaps he was just seeking solitude, or working on some class project.
"You've done brilliantly, Dobby," Harry praised the free elf with enthusiasm.
"Kreacher's done well, too," Hermione said kindly, wanting the older elf to know she appreciated his discretion.
He merely looked disgusted at her gratitude, or perhaps it was his knowledge that his beloved Master Malfoy was sullying himself with her. "The Mudblood is speaking to Kreacher, Kreacher will pretend he cannot hear - "
"Get out of here," Harry reprimanded the old elf. Kreacher obeyed with alacrity, disappearing with another crack.
Harry and Ron were chortling at the idea of Crabbe and Goyle lurking outside the Room of Requirement disguised as little Hufflepuff girls.
"Blimey!" Ron gloated. "No wonder Crabbe and Goyle don't look too happy these days, if Malfoy's got them wearing skirts and transforming into ickle firsties. I'm surprised they don't tell him to stuff it."
"Well, they wouldn't, would they, if he's shown them his Dark Mark?" Harry asked rhetorically, returning to his favorite "Malfoy is a Death Eater" theme.
Hermione shifted uncomfortably, cursing Dumbledore for binding her to remain silent. "Hmmm . . . the Dark Mark we don't know exists," was all she said, or could say.
"You'll see," Harry said with confidence.
"Yes, I will," Hermione agreed. Since it was Wednesday and already past curfew, she almost certainly would be seeing Malfoy's Mark, in the flesh, in less than twenty-four hours.
"Er, have you had any luck yet in finding out if Malfoy has taken the Dark Mark?" Harry asked awkwardly, looking anywhere but directly at her.
"Why, of course!" Hermione replied, deadpan. "Every time we study together, he takes his shirt off and there it is!"
Ron guffawed and Harry looked sulky. "You don't have to be so sarcastic about it, Hermione."
She merely shrugged, before turning serious. "He's not the arrogant prat he was before, Harry," Hermione said earnestly. "His father being arrested and sent to Azkaban changed him. Malfoy's just trying to keep his head down and get through the term."
"Why's he spending so much time in the Room of Requirement, then?" Harry challenged her. "Have you ever gone there to study with him?"
"No, and I don't know," she answered in reverse order. "But I'll find out," she promised. "In the meantime, you focus on getting Professor Slughhorn's memory, okay?"
(x) (x) (x)
Draco was torn between relief and alarm when Purus alighted on the Slytherin table at breakfast time a few days before the Easter hols.
He was relieved that his owl had made in safely back from a trip to the Manor, populated as it was by Death Eaters who would find it amusing to torture or kill another wizard's familiar. However, he also was alarmed that Purus was clutching a letter from Lucius as well as the expected communication from Draco's mum.
Despite what certain reckless Gryffindors claimed, Draco was not a coward. He simply had a well-honed sense of self-preservation. Accordingly, he opened his father's letter first, after only the briefest hesitation to check there were no nasty spells on it to surprise the unwary.
Lucius's usually neat handwriting sprawled untidily across the parchment, a visual sign of either repeated torture or growing mental instability. Probably both, Draco thought without pity. His father had brought his fate on himself, pledging allegiance to a madman. It was too bad Lucius had also seen fit to drag his family down with him.
The message was short and uncompromising:
Draco - You shall return to Malfoy Manor for the Easter holidays. An old family friend is desirous of hearing about the progress you have made in the current term. Do not let our family down.
- Father
Swallowing hard, Draco crumpled the parchment. Even though Granger was going to be visiting the Den, or Burrow, or whatever it was the Weasley family called their hovel, he had been mildly looking forward to the next week. With no classes to distract him and fewer spying eyes with most students gone, it would have been a chance for Draco to put in some serious hours working on the Vanishing Cabinet, trying to tweak the theorems for magical elevators to apply to the linked pair of cabinets. Now he suppressed a shiver, his shoulder muscles already hunched in anticipation of the torment that awaited him at his family's home.
A/N: Portions of the dialogue in the hospital wing and common room scenes are taken verbatim from HBP and re-purposed here.
