A/N: 8th Chapter! :) From the Inside...wonder what that could mean? :O I'll tell you this...lots and lots of Draco/Hermione interaction. :)
Anyway, read and enjoy!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling, the song "From the Inside" is by Linkin Park. All I own is the (ADDED) plot.
From the Inside
...***..
Chapter 8
"Trying not to break,
But I'm so tired of this deceit.
Every time I try to make myself,
Get back up on my feet,
All I ever think about is this,
All the tiring time between,
And how trying to put my trust in you just takes so much out of me..."
-From the Inside,Linkin Park
Hermione sat down on a couch in the Room of Requirement, opening the notebook she'd received in her bag. Running her hand over the front of the book, the phoenix had once again taken yellow as its colour, and the text "Good day to you, Guardian of the Otter" came up this time.
She opened the book to see immediately, a signature.
MFTMBDR
She blinked. MFTMBDR? What did that mean?. She brushed her fingers across the "title" and realized something as it also changed colour – someone seemed to have punched a couple of miniscule holes on the letters, one on each. Why they did that, she didn't know. Did it matter? The owner could've been extremely bored and decided to punch holes in it with their quill, or their wand.
But the holes were much too small for a quill or a wand. What did he or she poke it with?
She shook the thought away and turned the next page and saw it was a letter.
To Snake,
Hope this helps.
-M.F.T.M.B.D.R.
Guardian of the Phoenix.
After reading the first page, she finally realized what the front meant – they were initials. This person wrote both his or her name, as well as the person they were writing it to with initials.
If that were the case, the owner of the journal had oddly long names. As well, the writing on the inside seemed far more legible than the one scribbled on the outside. Two different writing styles? How strange.
This could mean one of two things.
First of all, if this wasn't Fox Black's notebook and Hermione still wanted to work on this case, she would need to know more about who MFTMBDR was. Or find Fox's real notebook.
Second, was if this was Fox Black's notebook, then it was settled; "Fox Black" was a fake name.
She turned the page to see another letter, but it seemed to be to someone else.
Snake,
Just pointing out a couple things. First of all, I am giving this journal to you. And to YOU ONLY. If you decide to give this responsibility to someone else, that's your problem. Not mine.
You'll know it's you I'm talking to. If you don't, then I'm not talking to you.
Enough of that. I'm wasting my precious time on you, and frankly, I don't fancy doing that.
-Phoenix
Snake? Who was that? And...what did they mean by "Snake" and "Phoenix"? Guardian...maybe the names were short for a Guardian? Like her...it said "Guardian of the Otter" on the front of the book. And then it said the book was signed by the "Guardian of the Phoenix". So if that was the intention, then...who was the "Guardian of the Snake"?
She turned the page and saw little smudges of writing on it, everything written in different capitalization techniques. As if the person was practising something. Confused, she read a couple.
know what happens when you jumble up the letters in my name? you get ~ eldr disen carb sed kalbnim trackmot sem wasul rohf ~ sounds like some sort of faraway elf language, but it actually means nothing at all...
hOw PrOfEsSoR bUrBaGe ExPeCtS uS tO lEaRn AbOuT mUgGlE aRtIfAcTs AnD eLeCtRiCiTy WhEn ShE wOn'T lEt Us UsE aN iPoD iN cLaSs, I wIlL nEvEr KnOw...
Can't wait to leave this school...
Then she came across something that stopped her quick look-through immediately. It seemed like a little poem. Or even...
TO ANYONE WHO READS THIS:
FANCY A GAME OF CHESS?
I'LL SET UP THE BOARD.
WHY DO I SPEAK IN RIDDLES?
I AM ONE.
...a riddle.
After looking over it for another moment, she finally decided to turn the page. Maybe there was more—
Ravenclaw styled parchment.
Blank.
Next page. Slytherin styled parchment.
Blank again.
What's going on...?
Hermione flipped a couple pages, all seeming to be blank once again. The notebook looked like it had its own pattern – Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff – Frustrated, she was about to turn the page when she felt an extremely odd presence right beside her hea-
"Whatcha reading, Granger?" Hermione jumped and gave a yelp in surprise when she saw Malfoy leaning right over the couch, his head almost touching her shoulder. He smirked and jumped over right into the seat next to her.
Hermione stared, still in shock. She had to be honest, Malfoy scared the shit out of her.
It was about a minute before Malfoy coughed. "Look, I get it. I am immensely attractive and devilishly handsome. But your staring is getting a little...well..." Hermione turned away, blushing furiously. He laughed, causing Hermione to blush even further. Then the laughing stopped. She looked over at him, noticing his expression had changed drastically.
"You never answered my question. What are you reading, Granger?" he asked, softer this time. Hermione was taken aback by how he spoke. It was so...out of character.
"Err..."
"If it's one of those damn Muggle romance novels that all you women seem to be interested in, forget it, I don't want to know—"
"Um...yeah. Yeah, that's it. It's a romance novel, Malfoy, you don't want to know."
He stared at her, nodding slowly. Hermione was almost relieved because she thought she had him (she didn't want to show him the notebook, especially after his little round in DADA the day before) but she couldn't have been more wrong. He gave her a wicked grin and chuckled mockingly.
"You liar. You're reading that notebook again, aren't you?"
"How did you-"
"Well, first off, you're a terrible liar. Second, it's obvious. Third, that "romance novel" thing was a test. And fourth – you aren't making much of an effort to hide it." Hermione's eyes drifted down to the notebook, then back at Malfoy.
"There's nothing in it," she said. "It's blank except for the first few pages."
He raised his eyebrows, stood up and began walking around the giant piles of miscellaneous things, and he spoke as if he hadn't heard her. "The Room of Hidden Things...wasn't it destroyed?" he asked, amusement in his voice.
Hermione looked at him incredulously, debating on whether or not she should go with his subject change, or hex him into tomorrow for completely ignoring her. "No. It's here now, that would explain why it's in one piece. The Fiendfyre didn't destroy it," she said. Malfoy smirked.
"I suppose..." he chuckled. But it all left when he spoke next. "In a certain light, I guess you'd be correct."
Hermione's jaw dropped. What? Was he actually implying that she was wrong? No...he merely meant there was another answer to his question. "What do you suppose then? That this is some fantasy dream world and this room is a figment of our imagination?"
"Yeah, it could be," he said, taking off a small black box with green ribbon sitting in one of the piles in the open. "Or, it could have been destroyed, and decided to rebuild itself." He paused, a troubled expression on his face. He opened the box, taking the green ribbon off, and then he closed it again. Hermione wasn't quite able to register anything about it. He slipped the small box in his pocket. Hermione was very curious as to why he was taking it, but decided not to push it.
"Everything else was real, though," he continued. "I doubt the room would've been able to put together...everything..." He threw the box and began carefully climbing one of the piles. "So these piles could be figments of our imagination."
"And yet, you're climbing it," muttered Hermione. Malfoy turned his head in her direction and smirked.
"Probably." He turned and kept climbing. "So that would mean that, technically speaking, the room was destroyed, but rebuilt. Making you...for a lack of a better word, wrong." Hermione decided to ignore the comment. But he continued, changing the subject.
"Though, despite that, don't you find it a little...peculiar, that you didn't get Head Girl this year?" he asked, turning his entire body around and half sitting, half holding onto a large chair that had two of its legs stuck in the pile. One of his legs was on the chair, the other was dangling off the edge, but he didn't seem the least bit bothered by how insecure his position was, nor how high he'd climbed. Malfoy regarded her with curiosity.
Hermione was taken aback. "What?"
"I mean, isn't it rather odd you didn't get that position? A Head prefect?"
She furrowed her brows. "I...suppose so. Why do you care?"
Malfoy averted his eyes and shook his head. "I don't trust either of our Head prefects this year. Err...I obviously don't trust the Weasel...and Foster...that's hard to explain."
Hermione rolled her eyes and was about to retort about his comment on Ron when she noticed something else he said. "Wait a minute – you don't trust Foster?"
"Last name basis, hmm? I suppose you don't trust her either?"
"No I don't...it's like...there's something about her..." she trailed off. There was a pause.
"Yeah," said Malfoy. "My thoughts exactly." They shared another moment of silence before Malfoy turned and began to climb again.
"What in Godric's name are you doing, Malfoy?" He didn't stop. Just continued climbing. Didn't even answer.
At least not exactly.
"Stop thinking logically, for once, Granger. You're welcome to join me." Hermione stood and walked over to the pile, her hands on her hips, notebook thrown back onto the sofa. Malfoy was at least twenty feet above her now. His head turned to the side and his eyes rested on something. She watched as he reached over and plucked a box – exactly the same size as the other one he took, but with yellow ribbon – off the pile and threw it down to her. It landed at her feet. "Mind opening that for me?"
"Why should I trust you?" she asked, frowning. Malfoy smirked at her.
"That, my dear...is a good question." He climbed higher, until he reached the top where there sat a black cushion chair. He sat on it like a king, while resting his elbow on arm, head in his hand, contemplating something and not quite looking at her either. "I guess you shouldn't trust me. Then again, as your precious Muggles would say..." His frown turned to a smirk. "...'twas curiosity that killed the cat."
Hermione blinked. True, she shouldn't trust Malfoy, of all people, especially if whatever was in the box was some sort of joke and there was Zabini hiding behind one of the many piles of lost, hidden and completely forgotten items. That was probably the case.
But she was also curious. What the Hell was in this box? Must be important. Or not. She had no way of knowing unless she looked inside. Strange...when did Malfoy start thinking this way? This wasn't the normal Malfoy she knew and well...knew. Sure, he was smart, just as smart as her in fact – but he seemed to have upped his conversation/bickering skills a bit. It was as if...he was cornering her in a really difficult spot...and especially difficult to get out of.
Oh what the Hell – what was the harm?
She heaved a defeated sigh and picked up the box. She could just hear him smirking up at the top of the pile of items. Deciding to ignore him, she opened the box and in there sat—
"What...?" She looked back up at Malfoy. He was still smirking.
"What is it, Granger?"
"A...it looks like a...an otter...? Pendant maybe? Yeah, there's the little ring at the top..." She cautiously picked up the gold (probably real gold...it seemed to weigh a ton!) otter and placed it in her palm. It glowed bright yellow and there in the otter's open hands appeared a lone pearl. She looked back up at Malfoy. His smirk turned to a frown...but there was curiosity in his eyes.
"What are you playing at, Malfoy?"
"Nothing. This isn't a game, Granger." He slid off the chair and began climbing down, much quicker – keeping his gracefulness – than he did while climbing up. He walked over and looked at the pendant. "Hmm. Well, I guess it likes you then." He began to walk away toward another pile of items.
"Wait!" cried Hermione, walking over. He didn't wait. But his head inclined somewhat in her direction, as if to show he was listening. "What did you mean by 'I guess it likes you'?"
"Huh? I don't know what more to say. It likes you. That's all there is to it."
"How do you know that?"
"That is for me to know and for you to not dwell on." She groaned in frustration. She went back to the sofa, slipped the pendant back in her pocket and began going through the notebook again. Still nothing. What was this "Guardian of the Phoenix" playing at? Did they die before they wrote anything for their dear "Guardian of the Snake"? What did "Guardian" mean anyway...
Suddenly, the door to the Room of Requirement opened and in stepped Harry, Foster, Ron and Ginny, faces mixed with surprise and relief that Hermione was in there.
"Hermione!" called Ginny, jogging over. "We looked all over for you! Bloody Hell, we thought you were in the library!"
"I'm alright, Gin, why do you look all worried? I'm fine." Hermione decided to ignore the fact that Foster didn't have at all the same expression as her friends. In fact, she wasn't even looking at Hermione. Her gaze was up higher, pointed up at Malfoy.
"Malfoy! What a pleasant surprise!" she called, a little too cheerfully. Malfoy raised his eyebrows. He'd found another seat on the top of the pile, though, this time it was on top of a table that was angled inwards, so he couldn't fall off.
Harry, Ron and Ginny seemed to have just realized the Slytherin was there. Malfoy sat nonchalantly, relaxed.
"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" demanded Ron. Malfoy's gaze turned to regard the redhead.
"Sitting. Nice view up here," he replied, smirking. Rather uncharacteristic for him, he didn't continue with a sneer and an insult toward Ron. "Although, I'm rather interested in why your girlfriend is talking to me." Ron's face turned beet-red.
"I don't see how that's any of your business," replied Foster.
Malfoy snorted. "Really? Is this what you do now, Weasley? Switch from Muggleborn to Muggleborn?"
"Come on guys," said Hermione, pulling Ginny's elbow. She wanted to leave before anyone should start a fight. "We should go."
"Oi! Granger!" called Malfoy. Hermione turned and looked at him as if to say, "What?"
"Don't forget that," he pointed to the discarded notebook on the couch. Hermione went over and picked it up. She looked up at him for a second, catching his eye and his quick hand movement as he began patting his robe pockets. Malfoy raised his eyebrows, stood, and began climbing down the other side of the miscellaneous pile.
"Well, that was odd," said Harry, still looking over at where Malfoy had been. He turned to the others. "C'mon."
They began walking out of the Room of Requirement, and Hermione's hand subconsciously went to her robe pocket and began patting it, just as Malfoy had. She had just remembered at that moment, that the otter pendant was still in her pocket.
A/N: And...we start to learn how this story got its name. So...who's the Guardian of the Snake? Hah, I'm not saying. :P
So happy I decided to look over this chapter before posting. I found so many errors! A lot of them made the story seem inconsistent.
The 9th Chapter is called "Crash and Burn" (by Simple Plan) and the song quote is :
"I never wanted to believe that you could lie,
That friends deceive,
And here I stand I'm still the same,
I watched you change,
You won't come back.
I wonder what it's like to be like you,
To never really care how bad it hurts,
So go ahead and lie and keep moving on,
It's all about yourself and you're never wrong,
I'll watch you crash and burn..."
