Huge thanks to my beta reader Scholz03 who is a dictionary, grammar textbook, critic and a lovable creature all combined in one, who should be cloned and sent electronically with every Microsoft word, there is.
CHAPTER 12:
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
The steady rhythm of the train had set in long ago and outside the train it was pitch black. Draco sat staring out of the window into the nothingness. The compartment was empty, as Hermione had gone to scourge for their food.
Taking advantage of her absence he had already cleaned the compartment using her robes to rid the place of "muggle germs" as he figured that any given day, mudblood was better than muggle. However, even as this thought ran through his head, he looked down at the galleon in his hand uneasily, and then making a fist around it, he scowled and looked back into the darkness.
The compartment door was pulled open at that moment by Hermione, who was feeling this was one of the... wait, the only high point of the "joyride." They hadn't done anything illegal, they were going to be well fed pretty soon, and they were also on their way to Dublin, where if Malfoy proved right, lay their... her ticket home.
She hadn't heard what Draco had said to Eoin, because she had been too eager to find a window seat so as to wave to Eoin, but she did know that Draco Malfoy had found something contrary to his belief, which from the sour expression on his face he did not, in the least, like.
She sat down opposite him and following suit, looked out of the window. Her thoughts drifted to Hogwarts, to Harry, Ron and.....
"Oh my god" the exclamation came out loud before she could stop herself. Draco jumped slightly at her outburst.
He looked at her with curiosity. Her face was twisted in an expression of complete misery.
"What?" he asked, savouring the distress of the mudblood that had put him in such a predicament.
"Crookshanks all alone, poor dear, I shut him up in his cage, so that he wouldn't cause trouble. He must be starving." she said not really caring whom she was saying this to.
"You keep boys with weird names, locked up in cages? Wicked Granger," he said mockingly. He knew that she was talking about a pet owl or something, but to rile her in her present distress seemed heaven.
"Crookshanks, my cat, you idiot," she stated wringing her hands in worry.
His eyes shot up in surprise at how easily she had…well, insulted him. Her words, insults or otherwise had always been laced with caution but this had come out unguarded and normally, and Draco was vaguely pleased and then displeased at being pleased.
"The house elves will look after it," he said soothingly, and then continued with a wild gleam in his eyes as Hermione looked up at him in temporary hope. "Wait, wouldn't that be wrong now? Not like you've paid them or anything." He said and broke out laughing.
Her anxiety was replaced with anger and she started to tell him the finer points of S.P.E.W when Draco suddenly interrupted asking,
"Granger, do muggles keep horses?"
"Huh?"
"Horses…you know, big; lots of hair; large brilliant teeth; a long face; a beast of burden…." He stopped short then suddenly looking at her, he continued hardly able to keep his delight in check, "wait…that sounds like you. Let me improvise."
"Four legged animal, a tail…."
Looking at her mutinous expression and given the fact that he was, at the moment, very much trapped in a muggle world with only the mudblood for aid, he decided not to continue in that vein and instead asked her, "Well, do or do not muggles keep horses?"
"Yes," she offered finally. Though very much miffed at him, it was the first time Malfoy had voluntarily ever started a conversation with her and she was curious to know what he would say.
"Well, do muggles pay horses?" he asked.
She at once understood where his talk was leading to and she instantly flew into defensive mode. "Oh don't you even go there; there are a lot of differences between horses and house elves."
"Really, but don't they both work?" he argued, shrugging. The concept of doing work, especially manual work, was something Draco Malfoy had not even dreamt of, that is, until now, when that stupid mudblood ruined my plans, he thought. He tried to get worked up enough to take Granger, at wand point, to his father and confess that his thought process had been screwed up by her incessant brain-numbing ranting.
"House elves have feelings, all right, and besides, horses are …mostly well taken care of and…" she stopped at a loss for words.
"And enslaved?" Draco prompted. "Elves aren't, you know? Enslaved—they come begging on their knees to be taken in."
"But Malfoy house elves, they…they can talk, they feel." She said pleading to an emotion which she didn't believe the boy before her possessed.
"And who says horses can't feel? Besides," he said, glad to have worked her up so much, which he hoped would add to her misery. "House elves are too weak; your freeing them will never be taken seriously. If you really want to free something, you have to free something big, something that people would take notice of like dragons or something," he said with perfect composure.
For a moment she was too astonished to speak, but then she said incredulously, "Why would anyone in their right mind want to free dragons? We would have to contend with creatures the size of ten story buildings, flying in the sky, making roasts of all of us."
Draco opened his mouth to argue but thought better of it as the compartment door was again pulled open, this time by a man who brought in their food. Draco stared at the muggle suspiciously and then looked at the food even more suspiciously.
He poked his food around and then cast his eyes at Hermione as if daring her to eat it.
She rolled her eyes at his suspicion, and without a word, began to eat. She knew she would need all of her energy to tackle Malfoy into answering her questions.
Hermione suppressed her grin at seeing Draco, at last, bow down to his hunger and begin to eat. She knew that if it wasn't for his famished state, he would not have touched that food, and to see Draco Malfoy stoop to a level which he considered beneath him, was entertaining, to say the least. She didn't comment, however, and busied herself with her food.
Draco was the first to finish his food and, still being hungry, he continued to stare at her intently, with an expressionless face, as she ate. It was a strategy he had learned from Crabbe and Goyle who would stare intently at someone eating until he or she, in discomfort, abandoned their food, at which his two overweight cronies would promptly take over.
But unfortunately for Draco, there was no such luck. One of the boons and banes of Hermione Granger was her complete obliviousness to her physical surroundings. She was very capable in finding layers of meaning in a person's words but was completely clueless when it came to being observant of other's physical actions. It had been because of this that it was not until Victor Krum had asked her out that she figured out why he had hung around so much in the library.
"Malfoy, can I ask you something?" Hermione suddenly asked, looking up and still not noticing that Draco had been looking at her.
He groaned loudly at this and, annoyed, said, "Give it a rest, Granger. I said three out of ten and you ask so many at once that, really, I can't keep count."
"That's your problem and," she said hurriedly, seeing that Draco was going to say no. "And I'll ask only these, today. Plus, for answering my questions you will also receive the first prize of a juicy red apple." She finished with an imitation of a muggle game show host, which was, needless to say, completely lost on Draco.
His eyes narrowed in contempt looking at the apple she had in her hand, branding it in one part of his head as "mudblood apple," even as another part of his head, the one in charge of his basic need of gorging, told him to grab it out of her hand.
However, before he could put his thoughts into action, Hermione, upon seeing him silent, launched in at once.
"Right," she said taking a deep breath. Talking with Malfoy was, after all, a daunting task.
"Has…has your father ever… I mean, sort of…?" stuttered Hermione, finding it hard to put her thoughts into words without setting off Malfoy's quick temper and wishing desperately for a brief second (a very brief second) that she had Rita Skeeter's gift of talking.
"Danced naked round the house?" supplied Draco thoughtfully. "Nah, not that I am aware of," looking at Hermione's flabbergasted expression he smirked and said "Spit it out, Granger."
"Has he ever …beaten you?" she said bravely forcing herself to look at him.
His grey eyes held a humour, which was magnified in the smirk that he had donned.
"Yes," he said and then, looking at her shocked expression, he continued exasperatedly, "For Merlin's sake, would you stop looking like that? Of course he's hit me. He's my father, remember, and I wasn't exactly a model child. What were you expecting? That he ties me up in our dungeons and repeatedly curses me with Crucio?"
Then looking at Hermione's rather guilty expression, the humour left his face and it was with a cold voice that he continued, "That's what you thought, wasn't it? For a dumb Gryffonder, you sure have a lot of imagination, Granger," he scoffed.
She guiltily crossed off "abusive father" from her mental list of "Why Draco Malfoy Does Not Want To Be A Death Eater."
"Fine, next question"
"I am sick of your questions."
no, no don't ask that question. He'll never answer thatShe ignored her own sane mind as she asked, "Does…did your father love your mum?"
He looked at her with raised eyebrows and his sense of humour returned, as he asked her, "Really, Granger, you can't be that naïve, where the hell do you think I came from, a spell?"
"WHAT I MEANT WAS…" she said blushing angrily, raising her voice above his sniggers, "whether they were in love." She forced herself to look at him, who was pleased with himself for making her look so…uncomfortable, not pretty, but very uncomfortable, he told himself resolutely.
"Now they would know that, wouldn't they?"
"What do you think?"
He rolled his eyes at her and then, stretching like a cat, he linked his hands behind his head and sat back, as if in deep thought.
"Well, what's your answer?" she asked briskly, impatient to hear his answer and uncomfortable somehow of his ease.
He seemed inclined to make a scathing reply, but then realizing that she wouldn't let him off the hook, he answered half heartedly "Well, the first day I did magic I caught them snogging. If that counts for love, sure they were in love...badly in love," he added, scrunching his nose in distaste, as if the thought brought forward unwanted images.
"Is that connected?" she asked.
"What?"
"The first day you did magic and your parents…you know," she said. Somehow the idea of evil incarnate Lucius Malfoy snogging… was very …human. It was better if she didn't think about it.
He grinned like a Cheshire cat as he answered, "I was four or five years old and I walked into the third parlour, and there they were, well, snogging." He laughed again and then continued, "For some strange reason I came up with the notion that father was killing her."
"What did you do?" she asked, knowing magic in some way was connected with it.
"My father was forced into running at least ten times around the house chased by a screaming portrait."
"He was afraid of a portrait?" She asked wonderingly.
"It was his mother's portrait. I can still hear Nana's voice screeching, "How dare you, Lucius Malfoy! Haven't I taught you better? Kissing my daughter-in-law in the living room, like that!""
As Hermione burst out laughing, Draco Malfoy, to say the least, was surprised with himself. What the hell am I thinking, talking to her like that? He remembered quite clearly that he had promised to make it a miserable time for Granger, and here he was making her laugh.
"Are there any more questions?" Draco coldly asked, trying to mend his mistake.
Hermione could sense the change in him, but she was still quite gratified by the fact that he had loosened up just seconds before.
"Was your father angry?"
"No, just glad I could do magic."
"Oh," she said. Her mental list was becoming shorter and shorter, "Malfoy, last one."
"Oh, I can hardly wait," he drawled sarcastically.
"Do you love your father?" she asked, knowing she was aiming at the unattainable.
For some time she thought that he had not heard her but then he abruptly asked, "Do you love yours, Granger? Do you love your father?"
"Yes," it was almost reflexive.
"Well then you know how I feel." His voice could have chilled the Artic ice.
She looked down at her hands, which still held the uneaten apple. It was getting harder and harder to fit the new found attributes of Malfoy Senior in between her prejudices against the man. Her rock solid assumptions were threatened by Draco's answers and it was to resolve this internal argument that she spoke out the words,
"But he is evil."
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she gasped. She hadn't meant to say it out loud.
She waited for Malfoy to say something cutting, but was even more worried when he suddenly leaned forward from his seat with his hands outstretched. She had a wild feeling that he might strangle her to death.
I should get up and run. Her mind told her calmly. But like a deer caught in headlights, she sat still.
She jumped slightly as she felt his fingers graze against her hands and then, even as her quick mind processed what he was doing; he had snatched the apple out of her hand.
As she looked at him with a mixture of relief and embarrassment, he sat back on his seat and then giving her a smile, which hardly reached his eyes, he said in a quiet mocking tone.
"Ten points to Gryffindor, for stating the obvious."
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REALLY SHOULDN'T WRITE THIS AS EVERY ONES VERY ANGRY WITH ME FOR UPDATING SO LATE AND I KNOW EVERYONES CURSING ME FOR TAKING SO LONG THAT THEY REALLY DON'T CARE FOR THE REASONS
Hmm, would you believe me if I said that I got hit on my head by an antique clock and thought I was a clock for around two weeks whereupon I was taken for intensive therapy in my homeland where I was convinced by my great brood of cousins that my name is not Tick tock and instead I am the pesky irritating female who comes up with these really lame excuses for being late with posting on fanfiction.net.
Actually the antique clock happens to be the bloody fork in the road. The whole nine yards of what I want to do for the rest of my life. Had some illusion of being rescued from living on earth by really gorgeous aliens to be made their goddess incarnate but since that's not going to happen in the near future, have decided to take biology, physics and chemistry, for the next two years and after that its either med school or physics teacher to really cantankerous fourth graders. (Why me?) Anyway now that I have enlightened you to one reason as to why I was late, the other is that we shifted houses during which my family discovered how much trash we had accumulated over the three years spent living in the same place. Plus after a whole month of no and yes my parents finally decided to go and visit theirs (also mine) huge family. All of whom are sort of concentrated in this one place. So it took us two days to get there and two days to get back in between that we had to visit every aunt, niece and cousin all of whom want to know how I did in my exams. (Did I tell you the results are coming out this week? Oh joy)
And then my beta reader had some problem with her Internet thingy and well now that's enough reasons as to why I am late.
TO MY DEAR READERS (who, I know have all skipped the before part)
Now go and hit that go button and write your heart out. And I'll try and put out the next chapter much faster. (Ducks before anyone can fling nameless heavy articles at me.)
Love
Tick tock gah I mean Kshetra
Ps: from now on if you ever want to find out when the new chapter can be expected or why the hell it's not yet put up, click on my name and read what's written in that bio data column (the first few lines will suffice, the rest is mostly crap.)
ps: almost forgot,
A big thanks to scholz03 ( obviously ), magicsparkle1, Fluff, Sweet Nightmares, Riles ("she writes". I forgot to tell you how much I love that line), love2045, glacial, flame dancer077 (it was so nice of you to review twice) NeLLy (blatant flatterer, not that I really mind), kagie- chan (it was so nice to see you again), sakura -syaoran2, charolastras, jarie1019 (three new reviewers. Be nice and review again so I can count you as old.)
