Chapter 17 - Delirium
Hermione collapsed onto Malfoy's bed and stared at his ceiling as he took his turn writing to her at the desk. They had been at this for hours now, save for when she went upstairs to the Great Hall to bring down dinner for them both while Malfoy wrote. Their letters had become long and intricate. They now included challenges to long-held beliefs, teasing about both positive and negative traits they each had, especially the ones they shared, and the exploration of many ideas. It was a better correspondence than Hermione had ever had with anyone, including Viktor Krum.
"I'm done, and I think we've got enough," Malfoy said, breaking the silence. He stretched his arms up, rolled his neck, and rubbed his right shoulder. "Honestly, I don't think I could write more without resorting to magical aides." He glanced up to where Hermione was still stretched out on his bed. "Get up. I'm exhausted."
"Do I have to?" Hermione complained through a deep yawn. Malfoy stood up and poked her side, so she rolled over with the intention of getting up, but she was sleepy enough that she just settled back down instead. She felt the bed shift as Malfoy crawled on beside her, and she wondered if she had gone mad to not get up. The correspondence didn't mean they were suddenly friends, let alone the sort of friends who might fall asleep beside each other, and Hermione was well on her way to falling asleep. "What time is it?" she asked, trying to keep herself awake so she could right her circumstances.
"Quarter past eleven," Malfoy answered, his own voice sounding less sleepy, but equally tired. He rolled onto his side, leaned on his elbow to prop up his head, and faced her. "We still need to transfigure our old notes to match the letters… not to mention pick which letters we're sharing."
Hermione moaned and covered her eyes with her arm, wishing she could just sleep. "Let's do it in the morning," she muttered.
Hermione pouted as she felt Malfoy lift her arm away from her face and saw him look down at her. "Are you suggesting we skip class, Granger?" Malfoy asked her with a knowing smirk and a raised brow.
Hermione's eyes narrowed as fury coursed through her. She scowled, rolled away from him, and sat up on the opposite edge of the bed. "I need coffee," she stated.
"I think I have a potion for that," Malfoy said, getting up himself and rummaging through his wardrobe. He cast a quick incantation, and a drawer popped up from the bottom of it. A moment later, he carried over a large jug full of an iridescent caramel liquid and two shot glasses to his desk and set them down.
"Slughorn was looking for potions and the like," Hermione said. "He didn't find your drawer."
Malfoy raised an eyebrow at her before he filled the two glasses and handed one to her before downing his own. "Suppose I should tell him about it. Would make a good impression, and there's nothing too damning in there."
"What is this?" Hermione asked, sniffing the liquid. She didn't recognize it, which surprised her. Though Potions wasn't her favorite subject, she still had made an Outstanding in it on her OWLS. She knew her potions.
"Original concoction," Malfoy said. "Haven't named it yet, but it uses coffee alongside several more traditional potions ingredients to help a person stay awake and energized past hours. Perhaps another night I can show you my notes on it for discussion, but tonight I'm asking you to trust that it won't kill you and will help you stay awake to complete our task. Now drink."
Hermione stared at Malfoy for a long moment, weighing years of bullying and knowledge of his dark mark against the apparently reformed person in front of her who could hurt her easily if he wanted and hadn't. "You know, in the Order, Mad-Eye Moody would repeat 'constant vigilance' at us like a mantra. We had all these protection measures, and now I'm cursed because I put on a piece of jewelry without checking it first, and I'm considering drinking an unknown potion made by a former enemy whom I'm discovering I barely know."
Malfoy shifted his weight, watching her with the empty shot-glass in hand. He studied her rather than trying to talk her into it or teasing her for having gotten cursed.
Hermione frowned. "What do you see when you look at me?" she asked him. His silence was as frustrating as it was comforting. She didn't know how to react to someone who wasn't stumbling over himself to get all his words out.
"I see a very capable and competent witch who is far too tired to think clearly, and if I didn't absolutely need the transfigured letters by tomorrow morning, I would be sending you off to bed." Malfoy sighed and put his empty shot glass down. "As it stands, I feel compelled to remind you that I need your help in this matter, therefore I would not give you something that would jeopardize that. Now drink, please."
Hermione looked at him again, trying to reconcile this patient, respectful man in front of her with the cowardly, cruel prat she had known for years, shrugged, and downed the glass. Within seconds, she began to feel more awake, and her fatigue felt more distant. "That was fast," she remarked.
"I designed it to be fast," Malfoy said. He cast a quick scourgify at the shot glasses and put both of them and the potion back in his wardrobe. "Now, we should have at least a handful of letters to produce from different times throughout the year." He sighed and looked at the thick stack of letters they had written that day. "Any thoughts on which ones?" he said.
Hermione walked over to stand beside him. "Are your notes dated? We could date the letters to correspond in order, so that the order matches. Then we can pick several over time to show." She frowned and bit her lip. "Harry's going to demand all of them though, you know."
Malfoy rolled his eyes. "You're probably right. Nosy git. Tell me, Granger, did Potter ever NOT stick his nose in something?"
Hermione thought back and sighed. "Maybe we should just focus on getting them all transfigured."
Malfoy groaned. "Well, better get to it then. Are your dated notes in order? We could cross-reference ours to see what will work for the letters to make sense."
"We will also need to make sure the source notes have at least as much ink as the corresponding letter would require. Removing ink is easy enough, but the aurors might notice if additional ink is added or the original ink is stretched thin," Hermione added.
Malfoy's brow rose, and he pursed his lips. "Good thinking. We need to count the letters first so we know how to space them over the time since term started."
Hermione frowned. "Just spring term?" she asked him.
He smiled with his brow still raised, suppressed laughter in his voice. "Do you think either of us would go the Christmas holiday without mentioning it?"
Hermione blinked with wide eyes as she realized he was right. Their letters had not addressed any of the holidays, and Hermione certainly wouldn't have passed up mentioning Christmas or at least the absence from regular correspondence. "Good point," she said sheepishly, smiling demurely back at him. He held her gaze, but his smile faded, and she felt the hairs on her arms rise. Hermione quickly turned back to the letters and picked up a stack of them to busy herself. Her heart raced, as if she had just narrowly avoided being hit with a curse, but she didn't know why.
Malfoy cleared his throat. "Okay, you count the letters, and I'll go through our notes and remove any from the stack that are too short on ink for transfiguration into our letters."
Malfoy sat down at the desk, and Hermione moved to the bed given the lack of other comfortable seating arrangements. The air was strangely tense, and Hermione feared the air might crackle in the silence, but she didn't dare speak. The letters they had exchanged had blurred over the lines of friendship, and while Hermione knew better than to assume they were friends now, she couldn't help but wonder if he wished to know her better too. Would they continue the conversations that began in their letters?
"Twenty-seven total," Hermione said when she finished counting. "Fourteen that I wrote, and thirteen from you."
"I'll need another minute. You write a lot of notes, Granger," Malfoy said. He was about three quarters through their combined pile of notes.
"Well, there's a lot I want to remember," she said, straightening her skirt over her legs. She glanced around the room for something to do, but her eyes fell back on Malfoy. The way he bent over the desk accentuated his back, and Hermione discovered she rather liked it. His hair was tousled in the back, and his neck was long and elegant. It was strange. For all that Hermione knew other girls had found Malfoy attractive, she had never noticed he was handsome before that moment.
"Done," Malfoy announced, jolting Hermione out of her revery. He stood up, took the letters she held without a word, and sat back down, placing them beside each other. "This would go a lot faster if we could both look on…" He frowned, took out his wand, and with a wave and a muttered word, he summoned a second chair identical to the one he sat in. "There you go," he said, gesturing to the chair even as he kept his eyes on the stacks of letters and notes on the desk.
With shaky hands, Hermione got down from the bed and sat down next to Malfoy. The chairs seemed too close, too intimate, somehow, as she felt his warm knee bump against her cool leg under the table. It was just chilly enough in there she half contemplated moving closer to maintain contact, but then she recalled that this was Malfoy, and he would not welcome such familiarity from her. "So what are we doing here?" she asked.
"Well, the first letter would be sometime after we came back from Christmas break, so we can use these notes, however…"
Hermione forgot to listen to his explanation as she caught sight of how the muscles in his neck moved when he spoke. This close, she could even see the blonde bristles forming on his cheeks, and she wondered what they would feel like under her hand.
"Granger?" Malfoy said, startling her.
"What?" she asked, blushing slightly.
He gave her an odd look. "Are you ready to get started?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," Hermione said, not even sure what he expected her to do. As it was, the task turned out to be simple. They aimed for approximately two letters a week, and they put each letter with the corresponding notes to be transfigured into two separate piles, one for each of them to transfigure later.
Hermione had an easier time focusing on their task once they were discussing it together, and she only found herself distracted by his appearance a few more times, but it was still rather unsettling. She supposed it was rather natural to notice when a friend was handsome. After all, she was well aware that several of her friends had grown quite attractive as they matured. However, Malfoy wasn't her friend yet, and she worried she paid too much attention to him, especially given their circumstances under the curse.
When they had gotten through the letters, Hermione picked up her transfiguration stack quickly and stood up, creating space between her and Malfoy like her life depended on it. "I can take care of this part in my room. There's no need for me to stay and keep you up."
Malfoy leaned his elbow on the desk and looked up at her with such a shrewd look that Hermione feared he saw right through her excuse to her discomfort. "I need these in the morning, Granger. I don't want to risk having them leave my sight."
Hermione blinked furiously, trying to find a logical reason for him to send her off, since it was clear he intended her to stay. "I am rather tired, Malfoy. What will you do if I fell asleep in your room?"
Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Wake you, if you're not done with transfiguring those letters. I need them done tonight, remember?"
"And if I am too tired to return to my room when I'm done?" Hermione asked.
Malfoy stared at her a moment. "Put you to bed, I suppose." He smirked at her suddenly. "Don't worry. I won't hex your hair or draw on your face while you sleep."
Hermione forced a smile, but she trembled at the realization she would not get out of this. She needed space from Malfoy to clear her head and regain perspective. The letters, the sleep loss, the plotting together, and the proximity of this task were messing with her head. "Of course," she said after a moment, reconciling herself to taking a long, healthy break from Malfoy once this step was done. "Then again, I can't promise the same," she said as she slid back into the seat beside him.
Malfoy's glance of alarm helped soothe her rattled nerves a little, at least.
And back to our regular Friday-posting schedule. :) Thanks for all the reviews! The feedback was a wonderful Christmas treat. I hope everyone had wonderful holidays and safe travels home if you're not already there!
I feel like this chapter warrants a disclaimer. I have not forgotten that the letters need to convince others of Hermione's feelings. Hermione and Draco, however, may be a different story. :P
Chapter 18 is written for next Friday. I'll be starting on Chapter 19 soon. :)