Happy birthday, hoshiakari7
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Draco watched her come down the stairs. It's a cliché, Hermione, he thought. The plain, bookish girl transformed into a beauty for the ball. I'd have expected you to be a little less predictable.
Still, he couldn't take his eyes off her.
"Your father would kill her," Blaise said, following his look and handing him a flask. "And I'm being quite literal."
Draco snorted and swallowed a generous mouthful of whiskey the poured some more into his punch. "No. He'd make me do it. He'd think it was a good lesson."
"I stand corrected." The two boys exchanged glances and then Draco leaned up against a pillar, out of the way of the main dance floor and in considerable shadow, and returned to staring at the cleaned up Granger. It's not fair, he thought. I don't even give a shit about the man's fucked up politics but I'm trapped by them anyway.
. . . . . . . . . .
The morning after the party he noticed she looked a great deal less obviously pretty. Her hair had returned to its usual discombobulated mess, she was back in a cheap jumper, and her face was wiped clean of the paint she'd had on last night.
He watched her read the note the owl brought. You looked beautiful last night, but I think that every day.
He watched her look at Ron, eyes narrowed as she considered and then dismissed even the possibility the git had written her. He watched her look up, across the room and see him, see him looking at her, watched her eyes widen, watched her flush.
He watched her carefully fold the note up and tuck it into a book.
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"Could I borrow your notes," she asked after class. "I think I missed something. I'll give them back before dinner."
He just shrugged and with a sneer handed them over. "Glad to see you're finally recognizing my inherent superiority."
"Uh huh." She glanced over them. "You have nice handwriting. Distinctive, even."
He felt himself reach out to snatch the papers back but she'd already slid them into her bag.
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She'd actually made corrections on his notes, the bushy haired nightmare. When he sat on his bed flipping through them, returned as promised, he saw she'd bloody well amended them, added comments, questions.
What was irritating what that her corrections were, well, correct, damn her.
What was magical was that it was like hearing her voice, having her talk to him, just him. She was funny and clever and insightful.
There was one loose sheet of paper, just mixed in with all the others.
You looked good too. But you always do.
His stomach lurched, his breath hitched, and he brushed his fingers across the words. He folded the note up and put it where none of his so-called friends could get it.
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Cheer for me today?
He felt like an idiot, like the biggest fool that ever fooled, like the dumbest bloody naïve dupe that ever lived but he dropped the note into her bag anyway. She was best friends with the seeker on the other team, she would never ever…
She caught his eye, his bit of paper in her hand, and nodded, almost imperceptibly, and if he still felt like an utter fool at least now he was a happy fool.
And she did. He watched her, of course, watched her watch him and cheer for him. He was sure none of her friends knew, was sure she didn't exactly yell out his name but, somehow, knowing she was rooting for him - even a little - made him… it made him happy. She made him happy.
And if his father knew, he'd kill her.
He stopped looking at her. Stopped watching her. Saw her, sometimes, when he didn't want to - when he wasn't looking at her, damn it - saw her looking at him with a look of confused hurt on her face but he didn't know what else to do.
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He took the fucking Mark. Fixed the misbegotten cabinet. Fled the school he'd loved and violated in the company of people who terrified him. He didn't even believe in this fucked up bullshite, but it ruled his life anyway. He was trapped anyway.
I'm sorry for everything. I wish so many things but wishes don't come true, not for me. I know you can't ever forgive me but I had to say it anyway. He'd left the note in a book he knew she'd read. Knew she'd recognize the handwriting. Hoped that, maybe, at least she wouldn't hate him.
. . . . . . . . .
"You made it."
He'd slipped out of the Great Hall, away from his parents, away from the father whose awful decisions had ruined every life he'd touched. No one was exactly flocking to his side to offer sympathy or patch up any of his assorted injuries, not that he expected them to, and so he didn't even look up when he heard her voice. She wasn't talking to him. Whatever little he was sure of, he knew that Hermione Granger, heroine, had not just come out of the Hall to find him, to talk to him.
And then she sat down next to him.
"I finally figured it out," she said, apropos of nothing, "when I found the note in the book. You were protecting me. I was so hurt for a while, you know. You'd reached out to me, then just cut me off."
"He would have killed you," Draco said, his voice flat and numb, still not turning his head, waiting for her to go, to abandon him the way he deserved
She took his hand, though, instead of leaving, and he felt that familiar lurch he'd felt whenever he'd watched her, when she'd written him the note he still had, when she'd cheered for him. He turned to look at her, fear and despair and loss and the tiniest bit of hope all there in the eyes that watched her from under his lashes.
She pushed his hair out of his face and smiled at him, the smallest of smiles but still, he thought, not the hate I deserve. He started to cry when she kissed him, the smallest of kisses, just lips brushed across his, just a question.
"Really?" he whispered and when she nodded he broke down and began to really weep, shaking, bent forward with his face buried against her knees, her hands running through his hair and stroking his back. That was how people found them, together. It was how they stayed, too. Not crying all the time, of course, but he found that getting her hands out of his hair was almost impossible; he'd no sooner sit than she'd be twining strands around her fingers. He found he was happier when he could lean on her, something he usually managed by wrapping an arm around her so it looked, to anyone watching them, like he had her pulled against him. She knew, though, that he was really cowering against her side. She'd hold his hand a little more tightly when he shook, press up against him a little more firmly. He found that she was fierce in her defense of him and began to wonder if, maybe, she would have killed his father rather than the other way around.
The papers played it up, naturally, writing endlessly about the romance across class lines, about the mending of war torn fences. He just couldn't take his eyes off her and, he thought, because sometimes we get things we don't deserve, she seemed to feel the same way about him.
It was enough.
It was more than enough.