&
Hermione and Pansy sat talking in the sideroom off the hospital wing the next morning, Hermione sipping liquid pink mush through a straw and Pansy chowing down on a fruit salad, toast and a cinnamon roll, a glass of grapefruit juice sitting within easy reach.
"So you told him?" Pansy asked, popping a grape into her mouth.
"Not exactly." Hermione hedged, looking uncomfortable. At Pansy's sharp look, Hermione grew defensive. "I couldn't exactly tell him straight out, could I?" She demanded.
"Why not?"
"Because he's Malfoy!"
"And I'm Pansy née Parkinson. You told me."
"You told me about your dad though." Hermione pointed out.
"You're missing my point honey. He's not the same Malfoy that's been hounding you for years, love. He grew up."
"That doesn't mean I should tell him."
"Do you trust him?"
"Were you not listening when I told you about what he did with the snake and my door?" Hermione demanded, annoyed.
"I was listening. Do you trust him?"
Hermione was silent for a moment, the only sound in the room was the sound of Pansy slurping her grapefruit juice.
"I don't know." Hermione said finally. "I mean, before last night, I'd say, grudgingly, yes. He's not given me any reason not to trust him, past grievances aside. But after last night – he knew I was scared of magic, Pans. And he still did that."
"He thought it would scare you, not hurt you."
"Still. Can I trust someone who scares me?"
"How about Snape? Do you trust him?" Pansy asked.
"What's he got to do with this?" Hermione asked, confused.
"He scares you, right?"
"No. He kinda confuses me though. I mean, he's all 'I hate Gryffindors and you're in deep shit so do this essay' but then the essay is specifically designed to make you learn for yourself a way of…I don't know. Making your life better. Like the beginning of term; he gave me an essay on carnelian. And carnelian is the key ingredient in lots of medipotions regarding kidneys. So he made me feel miserable, made the others hate me, and yet steered me in a possible direction for a cure."
"So you worked it out, huh?" Pansy asked smugly.
"You knew?" Hermione asked incredulously.
"Of course I knew! All the smart Slytherins knew. It's his way of singling out the best, you see. The essays he gives help us learn things we need to know – it's one of the reasons there were surprisingly few clever Slytherins dead on the field that morning."
Hermione remembered her surprise, the way Voldemort had seemed to dissolve into black sludge and deatheaters all around fell down dead just as the sun edged it's way over the field. It was such a cliché, the rising sun just as the good side won. But she remembered how she had turned around to evaluate the numbers of the light army and had seen more Slytherins than she had imagined, glamours wearing off left right and center to reveal the familiar faces of those who had victimised the other houses for years.
The school population was still down, though the remaining students all seemed committed to their work in a way the old set hadnt been. There was less interhouse hatred, though it still flourished – Ron and Harry were clear examples of that.
"So can you?"
"Can I what?" Hermione asked, shaking herself from her reverie.
"Can you trust someone who scares you." Pansy pressed, finishing the fruit salad and starting in on the cinnamon roll. Hermione rolled her eyes at Pansy's rapturous face as the blonde chewed the sugary cinnamon pastry.
"I don't know." She answered with a shrug, "That's the short answer, anyway."
"He doesn't want to hurt you, you know."
"If he did he would have done it by now, instead of supporting me and everything else weird and out of character he's been doing recently."
"It's not so out of character, really." Pansy argued around a mouthful of roll.
"That's gross."
"Sorry." She swallowed. "Maybe you should just get to know the guy before you start passing judgements."
"You sound like your dad."
"That's cause I'm right, and so's he. Incidentally, what did you tell him?"
"Who? Your dad or Malfoy?"
"Draco, you idiot. You didn't tell him the truth, so what did you tell him?"
"That I had a magic phobia and that my dear little pal here," she nodded at the dialysis machine, "Is here to stop me accidentally killing myself. It's true." Pansy rolled her eyes.
"And as glorious a set of half-truths as I've ever seen." She proclaimed, flinging her arms wide. "Honestly, Hermione." She said, calming down. "Why can't you just tell him the truth?"
"About what?" Hermione asked harshly, "That I'm dying of a deadly disease and there is no cure, plus the fact that I'm allergic to magic and chances are, that's actually what's killing me by inflaming my kidneys? Oh yeah, great plan."
"What's wrong with it? The way things are now, Malfoy's gonna realise you havent told the whole truth and is going to start hounding you again, and I know you don't want that. He's not like Potter and Weasley, Hermione. You can't throw him off the trail. He's just allowing your lies for the moment because he knows he doesn't know any better, but as soon as he finds the discrepancy, you're going to be back at square one. And the more lies you tell, the more determined he'll be to find out what's wrong."
"I'm not telling lies!" Hermione protested. "I am afraid of magic. And this machine does stop me dying. So I told the truth."
"But not the truth he asked for." Pansy finished. "You realise how he's going to be when he finds out?"
"Annoyed. And houndy. Much with the hounding." Hermione filled in.
"Annoyed. Angry. Betrayed."
"Betrayed?" Hermione asked incredulously.
"You're one of the few people he can count on to tell the truth. You always have done – calling him on his behaviour, not putting up with anything he puts on. Now you're lying to him."
"I didn't lie!" Hermione exclaimed. "I just didn't tell the whole truth."
"I don't think you realise how…serious this is. It's only a month into the term and you've sparked his interest. He won't be pleased when he finds out-"
"You're starting to repeat yourself, Pansy." Hermione commented. "And I do know there's going to be a tetchy period when he works it's out. But I'll deal with it when it comes."
"You're playing with fire, my girl." Pansy warned, shaking her head and gathering her dishes.
"That's funny. I always thought of Draco as more ice than fire." Hermione replied. Pansy studied her solemnly for a moment.
"Ice can trap and drown you." She said eventually, before slipping from the room just as the dialysis machine beeped.
"Dramatic much?" Hermione muttered.
Despite her sarcasm, Hermione was well aware of that fact. She had it from personal experience, if nothing else. There was a lake near her home and the winter of her fifth birthday it froze over. She had been sliding across it when the ice cracked, and she fell in.
Her next door neighbour Alex had pulled her out, carrying her home sopping wet and shivering and she had been sick for weeks. But it was nothing compared to the harrowing memory of being trapped, looking up in the clear water and seeing the ice above her, green-brown with dirt.
But in terms of Malfoy's feelings, she knew she had never truly been on the receiving end of any of his emotions – she had realised halfway through third year that he only called her mudblod to irritate Ron. But despite how she had annoyed him, she was well aware she had never been on the receiving end of his anger – ever. And she knew he had it in him. Passing an unused classroom at the beginning of sixth year she had seen him acting on pure fury. He had been reading a letter, sealed with the Malfoy seal. That had been on the floor, and he had been pale faced and frozen-eyed as he threw a chair against a wall and watched imperviously as it shattered, spraying the room with splinters. He had thrown inkwells, chairs…anything he could find. And at the end he had fixed everything with the relevant charm, and before she had been able to leave, he had turned and seen her. They had stood, him in the classroom and her in the hall, watching each other. And then she had fled.
Other times she had seen it as a burning fury that made her want to run, a fury quickly covered by icy indifference. She had never pressed, knowing that some risks just werent meant to be taken.
Others, on the other hand, were unavoidable.
Like the bloody classes she continually went to. Hermione was no idiot – every morning when she showered she saw how her body was wasting away, in part from the food but also from the magic, wearing her down, destroying her immune system. Every week she had to shrink the waist around her skirt, tighten her shirt, shrink her jumper. Every day she saw how she was beginning to be able to count her ribs, how her hip bones stuck out stark and white against her taut skin.
She didn't understand people who wanted to be thin. She'd give anything to be Millicent's size right now.
But the classes, Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Care of Magical Creatures – every time she walked into the room the air was thick with a smog of magic that she breathed in. The only classes she could attend without feeling continually sick or faint was Potions, History of Magic, Herbology, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.
She was sick of it.
Every class, sitting noting what the class did and practicing it in her own time. Copying paragraphs from the board and the textbook. Sitting and watching while the class laughed or messed around or hexed each other good-naturedly.
Apparently it wasn't enough for her illnesses to suck her life away, to cut it short. But now they were taking the fun out of it, making her spend each waking moment more bored than the next. It almost made her want to curse herself.
The library was empty – all the others were at lessons. She should have double Transfiguration right now, but McGonagall had sent her a note the night previous telling her she didn't need to come. Hermione was just about ready to just ask all the teachers for their lesson plans and skip all her classes and teach herself, though she loathed that prospect. It would only work for the magical ones anyway.
"Why aren't you in class?"
"Because it reduces me to a shivering wreck." Hermione answered dully without looking up. "You should be in class too, you know."
"Herbology was cancelled. Some stupid Hufflepuff got attacked by the spiny whatever-it's-called…line of teeth-marks in her neck. Sprout took her to the hospital wing." Malfoy slid into the chair across from her, a bag of raisins in his hand. "Reduces you to a shivering wreck, huh?" He smirked as he looked over at where she sat copying notes from her Transfiguration textbook.
"Yep. Makes me hysterical and everything." Hermione agreed, still copying. She wanted him to go away, go away and let her study without having to worry about letting on.
"I talked to Pansy."
Hermione ignored him, though a stab of panic passed through her. Pansy wouldn't have told, would she?
"She backed up your story."
Hermione looked up, laying her quill down and marking her page in the textbook.
"It's not a story." She contradicted evenly.
"It's kind of story like." Malfoy drawled, tipping back on his chair so the back leaned on the bookcase. He crossed his arms defiantly.
"Most things told in the past tense are." She commented calmly, refusing to lose her cool but wishing he'd get to the point.
"I think you're telling stories."
"Okay."
"Why won't you tell me the truth?"
"Wizard Merlin on a fucking bike, Malfoy!" Hermione exclaimed in a loud failed whisper. "I am telling you the goddamn truth! Why would I bother lying to you, when all you do is hound me?"
"See, that's what I don't know."
"How would you like it if I asked about your father constantly?" She demanded. His eyes iced over, the grey as hard as granite.
"It's not a subject you'd enjoy exploring." He said shortly.
"I wouldn't think it was." She replied, her voice quiet. She sighed. "Malfoy, I have told you the truth, no matter what you believe. Magic scares the bejeezus out of me, and the machine in the hospital wing is keeping me from killing myself."
"Why would you kill yourself?"
"I have to be careful." She began, her mind racing as she searched for an explanation that would satisfy him but not give it away. "What I do. What I eat. The machine regulates my blood. Makes sure it doesn't end up being my own poison."
"So you could die?" He asked, his voice deceptively casual.
"I could die. But…so could you. So could Pansy. Thousands of people can die from colds, so it's really not that big a deal."
"You dying is a big deal."
"Easy Malfoy. People will start thinking you care." She smirked.
"Anyone dying is a big deal, Granger. It doesn't really matter who they are." He retorted.
"See, that's better." Hermione smiled brightly, but it faded against his stony face. "You know, it wouldn't hurt you to smile." She commented, suddenly irritated.
"Not had a lot to be smiling about." Malfoy shrugged.
"Okay. Spill." Hermione marked her page with a scrap of parchment and shut the book decisively. She folded her arms on the table and rested her chin on her hands.
"Spill what?" At her steady gaze, he rolled his eyes. "You want my sob stories." He said flatly.
"You keep wanting mine, despite the fact you already have them." Hermione grouched. "Turnabout's fair play."
"Hello? Slytherin. We don't do fair play."
"Hello? Don't care." Hermione retorted. "What's wrong."
"I'm annoyed." He said. At her raised eyebrow, he sighed. "And pissed off. And impatient, and fuck it, I just don't bloody care anymore!" he consciously made an effort to lower his voice, which had gradually gotten louder over the last exclamation. "It's like…after everything it's so bloody tiring. Dad trying to convince everyone he's innocent, and succeeding, dammit! Mum drunk or drugged off her head nearly twenty-four-seven. I'm left to run everything, plus I'm still expected to pull through. The one true and legimate success of Lucius Malfoy, his golden son. Rich, smart, good-looking." Hermione said nothing, her gaze never wavering at she focused on Malfoy.
"No comment? You missed your chance to tell me how big headed I am." He said mockingly, his eyes locking with hers.
"I don't think I need to." Hermione shrugged. "I think you understand already. Carry on."
"Why should I? Why should I tell you the morbid secrets of the Malfoy family?" He demanded.
"Because I asked, because you need to tell someone, and because you and I are alone in this library and no-one's going to interrupt us for another hour and a half."
"That's hardly a good reason to tell you the story of my life." Malfoy said flatly. Hermione didn't reply. He waited, until finally the silence beat him into talking. "What do you want to know?"
"Anything. Everything. Whatever you feel like sharing. Is you dad the paragon of rich nobility that people seem to think he is or is your dad really as awful to you as I always thought he was? Has he always been like that? Why is your mum off her head all the time?" She paused. "What went wrong?"
"Voldemort went wrong. My dad…I have to say, Potter was the best thing that had ever happened to my family. The years when I was young…he was strict, didn't take crap from anyone. But, he did have a heart. I think he loved my mother, though it was hard to tell, and I think he might have loved me, though it seemed the only way he could show it was by buying me things."
Malfoy studied the attentive girl before him. She regarded him with a steady brown gaze that didn't waver; her face set in serious, concentrated lines as she listened to him. Her hair was half drawn up in a ponytail, the frizzy brown strands falling over her tiny shoulders. Her arms were folded on the desk and her pointed chin rested on top of them. There was something…wrong about her. It was nothing to do with the way she looked, but there was something about her that just wasn't right. It reinforced Malfoy's conviction that she was keeping the truth from him.
"Then when rumours of Voldemort started coming back, he…changed. Got harder. All of a sudden he was living up to this position of his, right-hand of the Dark Lord. At the time I was like, 'Wow, cool. My dad's the Big Bad's right hand.' And then after a while, I was always wondering where this great Dark Lord was. Every so often other deatheaters would visit, and I'd be paraded in front of them, and as I got to know them I started to understand more about Slytherin House. Most of the people in there are everything Slytherin is meant to be; cunning, ambitious, clever, looking for power. There's a few of us though…have you ever thought about the Sorting Hat and how stupid it is? It judges us by how we are when we're eleven. How we could be at eleven. But now…we're so different. Me, Pansy, you. We're not the people we were." He paused. "Do you know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean." Her voice was soft. She smiled slightly, and Malfoy found himself fighting the urge to flinch at the way the expression twisted her face mockingly. Something was very wrong. "Harry and Ron aren't exactly exemplary Gryffindors. You and Pansy aren't exactly stereotypical Slytherins." She shrugged. "I don't see how I've changed though."
"Something about you has. You don't seem to be any house, now."
"Thanks." She said drily.
"It was meant to be a compliment. Sometimes…sometimes you just seem so damn high, like you're above everyone. And I look at Pansy around you, and I look at you myself and there's such…" he trailed off. "Life in Slytherin House is all about manipulation, you know? To them, Pansy and I are still the top of the hierarchy, though we've ceased to be Slytherins in everything but name and badge. Every Slytherin is a convincing actor – we have to be. And Pansy and I are the best." He paused. "How did I get onto this?"
"Talking about how Slytherin is about manipulation, the Sorting Hat is appropriate for how we were seven years ago…about your dad and Voldemort." Hermione filled in. Malfoy noticed her omission about herself but didn't comment about it, tossing a handful of raisins into his mouth.
"Thanks. I don't know…after Potter killed Voldemort, my dad seems kind of…I'd say lost but that isnt the right word. It's like he's finally finding himself again. I don't mean finding himself in the weird New-Agey way, but like, all those years when I was little he was just biding his time, waiting for Voldemort to come back. Now, he's realised he actually has to y'know, make his life for himself."
"But surely that would be positive? I mean, it's like a new start." Hermione said, frowning.
"Hardly. He's experienced power and now he's gone all power-mad. Not in the meglomaniac sense that Voldemort was, but dad's just gonna use what he learned from Voldemort to raise himself in the magical world. Not that there's much higher for him to go." Malfoy shrugged. "My mum has her medication, and her fancy expensive spirits. And I just muddle along as best I can."
"I'd hardly call it muddling." Hermione said. "You seem to be doing okay."
"I'm not doing too badly, no." Draco shrugged. "Unlike you." Hermione sighed.
"Can we not?" She pleaded.
"There is something fundamentally wrong about you, G! And no matter what you tell me, I know it's not the truth because I can still feel the wrongness about you!" he exclaimed, letting his chair fall onto all four legs so he could lean forward and meet her stare. "So why won't you bloody well tell me?"
"Okay." Hermione said, finally giving in. It wasn't like she had to tell him everything, was it? "Fine. I'll tell you."
"Really? Or are you going to tell me yet more half truths?" He asked. She raised her eyebrows. "You didn't honestly think I swallowed all that crap you gave me the other night? I thought I told you that Slytherins were the actors."
"You did."
"Gryffindors just aren't used to lying the way we are. It makes it easier to spot."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. So?"
"Okay. You can't tell anyone, alright?"
"Who knows now?"
"Pansy, Dumbledore, Pomfrey, all the class teachers. That's it at Hogwarts."
"Out of Hogwarts?" he pressed.
"Not that it's any of your business, but just my parents and my doctor." Hermione said. "Right." She took a deep breath, and let it out with a laugh as Malfoy made himself comfortable, leaning back in his chair and putting his huge feet on the table. "Malfoy!"
"What?" he asked. "And anyway, it's Draco. Only weirdo people call me Malfoy."
"What kind of statement is that?" Hermione demanded with a smile.
"An exaggerated one. So now that I'm comfy, you can tell me what's wrong with you."
"It's not much, actually. But don't laugh."
"G, what makes you think I'd laugh?" He asked seriously.
"Draco, I laughed when I found out. It's really ironic, actually." Hermione shrugged. "Okay, here goes. I'm allergic to magic, and I have kidney failure." Malfoy stared at her. "What?" she asked.
"You have a magic allergy?" He asked incredulously.
"See, this is the bit where I laughed but you're not allowed to." Hermione said, her lips twisting into a hint of a smile.
"No, it's just that those are really rare, and it's almost always purebloods that have them." He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. "Are you sure you're not a pureblood?"
"Not that I know of. Just little old Mudblood Granger, that's me."
"Don't say that. Little is right, though. What's with that, anyway? Half the school's saying you're anorexic or something." Draco said
"Well, I'm not." Hermione huffed, folding her arms. "I just have to have a really strict diet so I don't screw up my kidneys and make myself really sick. However, my really strict diet consists of pink mush and water, which makes me all kinds of sick anyway, so I can't eat very much without being sick which results in me getting thinner."
"But you're not going to starve to death?"
"Hardly. I eat too much for that." Hermione snorted.
"You clearly don't eat enough though."
"I eat enough to stay alive." She retorted.
"Barely." Draco drawled.
"Can we not?" He laughed at her repeated plea.
"Sure."
"You happy now?"
"Yeah, yeah I am. You finally told me the truth, I can finally stop hounding you. It's all good."
"It's all shit, actually, we were meant to be at Potions ten minutes ago." Hermione commented, scooping her school stuff up and shoving it in her bag before swinging it onto her shoulder and waiting at the door as Draco grabbed his stuff and caught up with her before they both started down to the bowels of the castle for potions.
