the same week, wednesday
9 am
"Watch it, Golden Girl," Theo exclaimed in levity, laughing with his deep accords, "You are going to smudge my masterpiece!"
Hermione shook her head in response and chuckled in undisguised joy, "Oh, I would not call this anything but complete dragon puke."
Both of the amused students have been throwing at each other various shades of acrylic paint staining not only their clean white shirts but also dirtying up their new blank canvas Mr Carling had equipped them with. It was an innocent and playful fight they had succumbed to when Theo's stiff new brush had, solely by accident, projected a smirch of deep-green on Hermione's maroon emblem that she wore on her robes. With a shriek of playful incredulity, the Gryffindor had dipped her own wooden brush and speckled some red on Theo's flawlessly fitted robes.
They were making a mess of their workspaces, but neither Hermione nor Theo cared one bit about it. With him, the Gryffindor sweetheart felt somewhat free and not tied to what everyone around her expected to be. The intelligent and judicious one. Of course, she wanted to be and was just that, but everyone desired to take a break from their austere nature and loosen the screws of what has been set in stone if just for a moment. And this was it. Her and Theo frolicking with sticky colorful substances, making the most out of the Form of Mind lesson that day.
The sharp pieces of the shattered lightbulb had been slowly but surely gliding over the marble surface, making their way back from where they had been pushed away with the flow of the scorching bubbly bathwater.
With one small step forward to untying the knot of mystery about her and Draco's connection, a whoosh of freeness and — to some extent — recklessness had breezed through Hermione's soul and let her breathe more easily. And while she knew it would not last much longer, she would savour every bit of the delicate stance her mind had gone into.
While on the topic of Draco Malfoy, he has been eyeing the friendly war of paint above his own easel with one arched eyebrow, along with a pejorative and at the same time bored veil coating his grey oceans. A few soft scoffs of total contempt escaped his mouth's delicate lines as Hermione's feminine chuckles echoed in the spacious classroom. While for the untrained eye it would have looked like Draco Malfoy was jealous of his childhood friend waltzing with his "destined soulmate", it was so much more than that. Draco, to someone who knew his nature well, would have seemed angry and impatient at one of the two joyous students. Maybe even both. For a reason that was not so easily deduced from the blank sheet which he wore on his features. But one that would emerge from his depths of secrecy sooner or later.
To everyone's surprise professor Carling had not admonished the "sodding circus" as Ron had referred to it, in fact, he seemed to approve of how well his students had adapted to the class or rather how spectacular the class had moulded into their hands. The Slytherins had taken their remarks down a notch. Well, just a pinch. But it was progress nevertheless.
Though when Pansy Parkinson had erupted into bogus hysteric laughter herself and pointed her brush, dripping in black, in Draco Malfoy's direction, apparently trying to iterate what Hermione and Theo had been participating in for the last five minutes, the blonde Slytherin had cast a Petrificus Totalus on his hard-faced girlfriend and reverted back to his canvas, unbothered by her body slumping to the wooden flooring with a loud thud. To what had appeared to be a harmless try at having a somehow flirtatious exchange with a bloke she clearly fancied, Pansy was met with a stone-cold response from the unfeeling serpentine. The whole classroom had then gone into complete silence and Hermione had felt a tinge of pity crawling up her spine at the sight of the Slytherin princess' unmoving body.
"What in the name of Salazar, Draco?" Blaise tried to suppress his emerging chuckles from the back of his throat but failed miserably.
With a simple Rennervate professor Carling counteracted the spell the cold Slytherin had cast upon his housemate and announced to the class that that will be quite enough painting for the day. He once again invited them to assemble into a circle at the empty spot of the classroom and seated himself, sealing the circumference, before placing the fluffy Hippogriff in Draco Malfoy's lap. Action which indicated nothing else but that Draco's heartless acts had made the young teacher question his state of mind. The professor waited for the rather perplexed and ashamed Pansy to relax into the vacant place next to her Slytherin girlfriends, muttering a few swear words in Draco's direction, and then he spoke in his calming and lush voice, "What emotions are coming up for you lately, Mr Malfoy?"
Draco scowled at the professor and folded his long legs in a criss-cross position, "Exhaustion, angriness." He then fixed his fuming gaze on the boy who was sitting beside Hermione.
"Go on," the young good-looking teacher nodded at the Slytherin's confession, seemingly content with his dry response.
He scoffed in response and combed his perfectly styled blonde wavy locks with his pale slender fingers, "Frustration and fucking irritation."
"Mhm," Mr Carling added as he pondered his next question, "And does the combination of these emotions, make you lash out on your peers?"
Draco's low grumble made something flutter ferociously in Hermione's lower abdomen, "No, but they will most definitely make me weigh into you." Blaise howled like a werewolf on a full moon night at his blonde friend's comment, leaving every other student in the class wide-eyed at the audacious act.
The wild of Cole Carling's curls shook in displeased manner, though he continued to delicately interrogate Draco Malfoy in as soft accords as he could manage, "Then a different approach I suppose. Do these feelings make you feel some type of way? Miserable? Maybe destructive? Or even isolated?"
Then a cackle like sound, Hermione had never heard escape Draco's soft lips, much alike to something she had been forced to familiarize herself with during the doomed night at Malfoy manor, made its way towards the Gryffindor's inner ear, igniting her auditory nerve, "How the fuck would I know? Are you not the therapist?"
Professor Carling stared at the too relaxed boy, who was rather comfortable with his given response, with a blank gaze, resembling his opponent's one flawlessly, "No, I am not. And you know that."
After a few uncomfortable minutes of silence that neither the young professor nor Draco Malfoy really hankered to break, as Mr Carling patiently waited for the blonde serpentine to acknowledge his state of emotions and express them to him and the class. While the mentioned Slytherin thought of doing no such thing. "Would you please an additional month to your four weeks of detention you have already earned from today's behaviour?" Mr Carling tipped his chin upwards and eyed the stubborn blonde boy.
Three heartbeats later, Draco clipped in the deep accord that made Hermione want to surrender herself to him, "Pressured."
"Why is that?" Sighed the professor, accepting that one-word sentences is the most he is going to ever dig out of the Slytherin.
Their conversation had quickly formed into something more private than the Gryffindor sweetheart thought was appropriate for a public display of discussion. She knew that it was ultimately difficult for Draco Malfoy of all people to reveal what his heart bore. And even if this was a class directed towards healing the War-pained-and-affronted students, crawling into someone's emotions so relentlessly made Hermione's mind subconsciously turn off and give the prisoner being interrogated some privacy.
"Some just piss me off," he licked his teeth under his upper lip, a ghost of his tongue emerging upon his china skin, and shrugged. Hermione felt sweat prickle on her palms.
"No, why are you feeling down?" the professor corrected the given question and looked intently at Draco, impatiently waiting upon his answer.
Draco Malfoy swallowed hard and composed himself, running his fingers once again through his silky hair and straightening his black suit trousers, emerald and silver of his rings glinting in the sunlight. He seemed vulnerable and uncomfortable, something you could witness maybe once in a decade from the rather always collected serpentine, "I feel like I am still living the nightmare."
Hermione could not help but watch the blonde Wizard across from her with a tinge of sadness accompanying her empathetic gaze. Whatever it was he was doing on the previous weekend had taken a lot from him. And while he seemed to have multiple secure friendships surround him, so many people to lean on to and to confide in, Draco Malfoy as always believed it would be best to keep everything bothering him capsuled in a smile vial and hidden at the farthest end of his puzzle of a mind. And even though it was none of Hermione Granger's business to intervene with his lack of socialization, she could at least try to lift some of the weight he carried off of his shoulders by silently adding herself to the equation. An action Draco undoubtedly would later scold her for.
When Hermione had exited the From of Mind classroom, she had gone up to the castle's owlery to scribble a quick note for Narcissa Malfoy, that she enclosed in a beige envelope and tied to Hannah's brown and majestic owl, whispering Malfoy Manor in its ear before the bird opened its broad wings and flew in the bright September sky.
10.08 am
later that day
6.07 pm
It was the first day of Hermione's detention that Pansy Parkinson had assigned for her after the Gryffindor's visit to the Prefect's bathroom followed by wandering through the castle at night. She knew it would probably be some awful and dirty work on the grounds of Hogwarts, catching gnomes or roaming through the Forbidden Forest for whatever reason Mr Filch found reasonable. No, the two hours spent doing something so revolting was not on Hermione's to-do list either. It was time she could never get back. Time that should be spent working on her Defends Against the Dark Arts research paper on Antonin Dolohov's curse. Hermione envied Theodore Nott who was believably working on it right now in the library, encircled by the mesmerizing scent of parchment, ink and books.
Hermione was waiting impatiently in the Entrance Hall for Mr Filch to show up, as he was late to his presumably favourite way of spending his free time. Watching students do his crummy job. She was accompanied by Ginny Weasley, Hannah Abbot, Vincent Crabbe, Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy. A rather charming combination of companions. Hermione found it very comical that two of the school's Prefects had managed to get into detention during their first two weeks of the academic year.
"Ah, I simply cannot wait to see my sweetheart Filchy again. It has been too long!" Draco cooed and smirked at Blaise Zabini who was accompanying his blonde friend by leaning against the wall across from where Hermione had chosen to stand.
"I know you have been smitten by him since your first day at Hogwarts, but please dude keep your dick in your pants," Blaise pleaded in a mocking tone. Both of them laughed. They did not seem even a little bit bothered about what was about to come.
When the bald and scrawny-looking Argus Filch emerged from one of the corners of the castle, his throaty voice boomed in the silent hall, "If you ask me, hard work and pain are the best teachers." He grinned with his yellowing teeth and motioned with a trembling arm for the six of them to follow his lead as he stepped out of the castle and lead them down the hill in the direction of the thick parade of trees. Hermione looked at her Hufflepuff friend with dread written all over her features. Hannah smiled at her reassuringly, reminding her that at least they were together in whatever was about to happen.
The old man stopped when the lot had reached the clearing next to where Hagrid's hut had stood once. Now only debris and rubble filling its place. The Hogwarts caretaker was out of breath as he turned his greasy occiput away from the student's faces and continued in a pleased tone, "You will be cleaning this mess up, nasty little beasts."
"Should it not be you doing this shit, squib?" Blaise Zabini retorted. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, feeling embarrassed by the Slytherin's rudeness.
Mr Filch gave the boy one of his dirtiest looks and the Gryffindor sweetheart would have sworn that tonight would be the time his bulging eyes finally left their sockets. "You will mind your filthy language, you putrid child. It is a shame Headmistress McGonagall made me get rid of my chains. Would have worked like a charm for your nasty tongue, eh?" He had wheezed one too many times during his little speech, Hermione considered taking him to Madam Pomfrey's.
"There are the shovels, bags and tackles you might find helpful," he shot his arm in the direction of said tools, a nasty smell emerging from his ancient black suit, "While I and Ms Norris will go and find something yummy to fill up with, eh? Get to work, foul kids. And I expect you lot to be done by the end of the month."
He wobbled up to the hill which leads back to the castle, leaving the six of the punished students to clean up the mess that the old man could have already gotten rid of during the Summer. All of them chose whatever tool they found necessary for picking up scraps and chunks from the ground and began to work.
Melancholy and sentiment washed upon Hermione with a breeze of the harsh autumn wind coming from the woods. It pained her to clean up the pieces that were left of Hagrid's home. She felt as if she was literally selecting bits of her memories and throwing them into a trash bag. A silent sob escaped her parted lips and her shoulders trembled. Hermione hoped no one would notice her unexpected sorrow.
"Are you okay, Hermione?" Ginny whispered. She had not passed another word to the youngest Weasley since the night of their arrival at Hogwarts, excluding silent greetings and good nights. And this was the longest sentence Hermine had heard coming from the red-headed girl in a while. "This must be difficult for you. I do not think anyone would mind if you did not participate," Ginny gave her a heart-warming smile and a pat on the shoulder.
Hermione looked over Ginny's cloud of red and noticed Draco Malfoy listening to their conversation, his eyes saying as little as always. Their gazes met and locked in on each other, but Vincent Crabbe disrupted the shared moment with a shriek, "Um, wrong? I mind. Back to work, Mudblood."
"Really, Crabbe?" Blaise looked disgustingly at his voluptuous housemate, shaking his head at Crabbe's choice of words. Hermione was rather taken aback from Blaise Zabini's stepping in, as she never would have guessed that his opinions on blood-status had changed after the War. Although Hermione did not know him well, she assumed he must have had the same thoughts about purity as the rest of the Slytherins.
"You called Filch a squib," Crabbe whispered in a squeaky tone.
"That is different," Blaise slapped his plump Slytherin friend on the back of his head. Hermione found it ridiculous how he had not stopped his house's girls from using the derogatory term with Mr Carling, but maybe it was different with the serpentine females too.
Hermione gave Ginny one of her I-will-be-okay smiles and returned to clearing the ground. It was a few minutes later when a fresh aroma of pinewood and apples enclosed the space around her and a deep tone of tenor close to her ears murmured, "You should try Occlumency, Granger."
6.31 pm
A/N: Hi! Leave your reviews, comments and any thoughts you have! I would love to read them.