Left Behind


Chapter Nine

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
Martin Luther


Room of Requirement

For all the hours of danger and adventure that the war novels years later would erroneously record, hours and days more were truthfully spent in silent introspection, tense anticipation and private labour. For Hermione, it was a precarious balancing act between the requirements of still staying in school and researching information for all the little projects she found herself involved in. The week was divided into almost daily brewing with the Headmaster, horcrux-hunting in dusty tomes, spell research for the DA and whenever she could squeeze time in for herself, seeking information for the Transfiguration project.

She was feeling distinctly overwhelmed, but tamped that emotion down for future contemplation. It could not possibly be healthy she knew, but Occlumency taught her the threat of free-wheeling emotions in wartime. Occlumency had also taught her the danger of stockpiling emotion because of a possible breakdown but she had long decided to deal with everything after.

'Whenever after was.'

The letters in her notes began to dance about each other. Tired, she pushed aside the pile of parchment in front of her, replacing it with a fat, chintz floral pot. She personally thought it rather kitschy, but it came free of charge from the house elves and was serviceable enough that she didn't have the heart to replace it. In the past, she never understood what had her fellow Britons drinking tea by the tankard, but now she took it like water to calm her. Even the mere process of brewing tea was calming.

Yes, brewing. Now that was something she didn't mind doing.

Ron or Harry would call her barmy, she was sure, so she never thought to even tell them about her now nearly nightly brewing periods with Snape. Honestly, how could she admit the greatest of ironies that only in the Headmaster's office did she feel wholly at peace? Entering the dungeons, she would drop her worries at the door, knowing she could not reach Headmaster's standards if otherwise preoccupied, and for two blessed hours, every other day, would brew ointments and elixirs for her silent taskmaster. The challenging task of preparing potions she knew ill students would be drinking certainly upped the pressure, more than the extra credit being offered. The Headmaster had even dropped a book in front of her earlier today. Spiky handwriting on the title page declared it Property of the Half-Blood Prince and if anything, that answered one of the many questions she had had.

It was one question only, however, that had answers because for every little bit she had observed from the Headmaster during their almost daily interaction, she had more questions to ask than had been answered.

She noticed that he really did spend his time in the potions classroom and while that answered his usual whereabouts, that did not tell her where his private quarters were and where he was most likely to hide information – if he even kept any, which she highly doubted – regarding the horcruxes or Death Eater affairs. Personally, she thought the chances of her discovering those without his express invitation pretty slim, which would mean this spying plan was utter bollocks. She also knew now that he didn't take standard Hogwarts tea because she could smell chamomile from across the room, but she didn't know how she managed to see him eating during breakfast when she would leave the Great Hall and yet, she could hear him shuffling about in his office when she would arrive early for first-period Potions though he seemingly never left the hall. He apparently had a vast collection of useful texts, one of which she was lucky enough to borrow, but she had no idea where he kept the rest. His manners were impeccable though his tone was brusque; she could readily believe that he drank the red ink he so avidly used due to the speed that she noticed bottles were used up, but he also sat by her side, repairing cauldrons, which the student owners had not even noticed needed mending. For that matter, other than for the damning evidence of killing Headmaster Dumbledore, she could not even tell which side he was really on.

The turning of the door knob cut short her musings.

Grabbing a book, Hermione would have been more surprised had she not been expecting someone to come around eventually. How uncommon could it be to walk three times past the Room of Requirement and look for a place to study in peace? She quickly flipped to a random page and began reading so as not to frighten her visitor by appearing as if she'd been waiting for him. With a brief glance through the curtain of her hair, she wasn't particularly surprised to see Malfoy either, figuring he would be one of the few outside the DA who knew about the room's existence.

Draco, however, was surprised and while pureblood decorum prevented him from gaping, if he could have, he would have. His eyes widened noticeably upon observing someone else was in the room, the gray centres of his irises darkening with a mixture of confusion and adrenalin. He looked to the side and saw, most unexpectedly, Granger and, quite expectedly, a rather thick compendium in her lap.

He realised several minutes of non-movement later the Granger girl was staring at him staring at her.

"Oh, um.." despite Draco not bearing the element of surprise, Hermione was rather uncertain of what exactly to do. The opportunity presented to her by this meeting did not escape her notice either, "Would you like to sit down?"

It irked Draco that she was offering him a spot, much like as if she was hostess and he an unexpected guest. He was plenty sure he'd had this place before she did.

The crackling fire in the hearth, though, told him she'd been there for hours, at the least, and it would be bad form to shoo her out. He dared not exit, however, and risk another discussion where his father would extol the virtues – and the irony was wholly unintended – of their alliance with the Dark Lord, having heard little else during this entire day that his father had been visiting Uncle Severus and invited him too for tea.

Realising he had stood long enough, he moved to an armchair near the fire. The silence due to a lack of conversation was filled instead with the tinkling of a teaspoon against china. Fresh supplies of tea leaves and boiling water came from the kitchen house elves, thus he observed the girl's movements and since she did not speak, he did not venture to do so. Her pouring and handling of the tea, though, was so methodological, so precise. So very familiar.

Draco looked around again and was suitably impressed. He noted the changes since he'd last come, starting with the teak bookshelves and not ending with the idyllic, but very muggle, landscape paintings. The room, being sentient notwithstanding, had been presumptuous enough to assume he'd prefer green pillows and mordantly imperialistic tapestries with silver trimmings when he used to stay here. Granger had apparently managed to overcome the room's prejudices since the present room was mostly varnished yew with the most calming shade of blue upholstery whenever placed instead of the expected lion gold and gaudy red.

"I haven't met you here since I started using this room." Her voice wafted to him softly, gently like the scent of the tea leaves brewing. He could smell chamomile and other pleasant scents suffusing the room and his mind seemed very much clearer, lighter.

"I used to go here last year when I needed some place to think. Also the vanishing cabin –," He cut himself off, startled, just as she spoke again. He wouldn't – shouldn't! – have volunteered such information.

"You kept it here?" She looked up and he could not resist nodding. Looking back at the dainty cups, Hermione continued. "I always wondered. No matter, do you take milk?

This time he shook his head. His gaze continued to roam the room, noting how Granger's preferences for certain topics were made clear by the shelves upon shelves on history and potions tomes outnumbering all the other subjects. Perhaps the rumours that Granger had read Hogwarts, A History more than a hundred times were true.

"Sugar? Lemon?" Her fingers grazed over the options as if she was picking potions ingredients.

"Granger, stop the niceties." His fingers were curling and uncurling repeatedly. It was a sign of anxiety that he had yet to control.

"Something the matter, Mal – "

"You're being too friendly."

Hermione's lips pursed. "Malfoy, it's tea. You'd think I'd prepared an entire banquet, the way you put it, instead of just asking Hogwarts' standard brew from the house elves. I'd serve this to anyone." She muttered under breath, "...except perhaps Vol – "

Flatly, in a complete turnabout from his chillingly polite demeanour, he cut her off. "Don't say that."

"Well, that answers the second of my questions. You are marked, aren't you?" She didn't bother to watch his response, but had she done so, she would have noticed Draco paling considerably.

"Anyway, it's just tea." She passed him the cup before taking a sip from her own.

He looked at the cup then at her. Taking a vial from his pocket, he trickled a few drops to test for poison into the cup. He was not sure how he felt as he saw it was safe. "I'd think you were subtly inching your way into my good graces for something but that kind of subtlety is beyond Gryffindors." Noticing no changes in the colour, he took a sip himself.

"Well, that's what you think. The sorting hat divided us by what characteristics we valued, not what we necessarily possessed." Her book placed aside, she curled in her chair and watched the twisting of the burning wood in the fireplace. "I should have been in Ravenclaw then, wouldn't you say? Fortunately for you, there's nothing you can offer me at present so this all from the goodness of my heart." Her words tasted of sugar-coated sarcasm.

"I could drag you out and kidnap you." Draco noted with nonchalance.

He would have to do more than that to scare Hermione, however. "Most of the teachers except for Headmaster are not for your side. Neither is the castle. I'd wager it would take you a bit of luck to do that."

"Indeed. So why are you here, Granger?"

She weighed her answer, wondering what could be inclusive without too presumptuous and thought to mimic an earlier statement of his, "Perhaps, I just need some peace."

Taking another sip of her tea, Draco didn't wonder. It was either the house elves lovingly added other things into the tea they provided her or she added her on, but either way, Draco found the blend most calming, as if it simultaneously filled up the gaps left by his anxieties and drew out the tension, answers to questions. Or maybe he was just messing around with his mind, the stress of the weeks, months, years previously even, making him maudlin. He was, regarding matters of the present, extremely thankful for the detector potion Uncle Severus had provided him, helping him ensure in unexpected situations such as this, that he was not about to be poisoned.

The bell clock on the chimneypiece heralded the tenth hour of the evening. It being close to curfew, Hermione started picking up the loose pieces of parchment around her workplace. She rolled the sheaves in twine-bound scrolls, tucked these into her bottomless bag and offered Draco the pot with a wave of her hand, "You can have the rest of the tea."

Perhaps there was something in the drink the Granger girl had given him or perhaps it was simply his need to speak out tonight, but Draco suddenly blurted out a question he had long pondered, "Doesn't it bother you that I helped kill the old man?"

Hermione was silent for a beat. Still with her back to him, she spoke seemingly to the wall.

"I miss Headmaster Dumbledore and maybe it did bother me once that you had to do the dirty work, yet if not you, then who? Someone or the other would have been assigned and I can only empathise - "

"Empathy, Granger?"

"You cannot use my pity, Malfoy. Anger will not take me anywhere either, but I understand what you had to do and so all I have is empathy. It is war and we must do what we must do." Her voice had started out loudly, tinged with indignation, yet now it trailed off until he could barely hear her, "but it will never be easy to kill, will it?"

He did not have to dignify that question with a response. They were coevals in facing its implications, expectations.

Hermione walked to the door and turned to face him briefly before she walked out. "Goodnight, Malfoy." A slim hand upon the door and she passed through its shimmering translucence of semi-existence.

He didn't suppose she could hear him, but he called out nonetheless, " Goodnight, Granger."

Outside, though, Hermione did, in fact, hear him and smiled as she hurried back to her room. It would not do to be caught another time by Headmaster Snape but if anything, she was thankful for the Bluff! the twins had sent her. Granted that they all made it through the war, she was sure those two could sell that and the rest of their not-quite-gag products and they would be filthy rich in no time.


AN: If you don't remember where Bluff! is from, you can skip a few chapters back :) This one is a rather long chapter to make up for the length of time between posting this one and possibly the next. Thanks for stopping by. :D