Apricity - Chapter Two

Draco looked up from his warm porridge, his gaze falling upon on Granger at the Gryffindor table.

Flanked by her followers, all of them clamoring to talk to one another like a gaggle of squawking geese, she sat with a smile. Draco would have sneered in the past, but now he couldn't be bothered.

He understood how things worked. He understood that as far as everyone was concerned, they were going to school with Hermione Granger, champion of the war second only to Harry Potter. He knew deep down that if he had any negative feelings towards her because of that, he would just look bitter.

In any case, he was glad the Dark Lord lost the war.

Draco realized fairly quickly that he'd made the wrong decision when he'd chosen his side. He knew now that he really could have gone to Headmaster Dumbledore for help, instead of making the decisions he had. At any point, he could have defected to the side of light. It would have changed his entire future, and it could have made things so much better for him and his mother.

His father would've stayed loyal to the Dark Lord, but Draco didn't give a flying fuck what happened to his father. It was his father's fault that his mother was gone. It was his father that he wished was dead. It was Lucius who—

Draco set his spoon down and stared down at the bowl in front of him. He took slow, deep breaths. He needed to stay calm. Under no circumstances was he going to allow himself to have an angry fit in the middle of the Great Hall. Not over his poor choices.

He had made those choices himself, and he needed to live with them.

Draco resumed eating. He glanced around the Great Hall at all of the students before his eyes roved over Granger and her ilk again.

Beside her sat the Weasel, in all of his redheaded glory. The oaf was huge now, looking like he'd been eating nothing but protein all Summer and Fall. He had his hands all over Granger as though she were the type of bird to enjoy that sort of thing.

Draco took a bite and tried not to think about the past. Tried not to think about what it felt like to have her lips beneath his own, pliant and desperate.

It really was odd, now that he thought about it. Granger and the Weaselbee. Together. Draco remembered thinking that of all the wizards a witch like Granger would end up with, it would have been Potter.

Not that he thought Granger was any specific type of witch, per se, but he wasn't daft. Her intelligence was not up for debate. She was always smiling and laughing—when she wasn't conversing with Draco, that is—and she seemed quick-witted. Wizards usually liked that sort of thing.

He'd liked it enough to kiss her in the alcove after the Yule Ball, hadn't he?

And if he really sat there and looked at her, he could see that she was pretty. It would be dense of him to act like she was ugly when she simply wasn't. She had one of those faces—the heart-shaped kind that seemed to look presentable whether she wore make-up or not. Her brows were feathery, sitting proportionate to her catlike honey-brown eyes. Eyes fringed with impossibly long lashes that always curled up just so, she had a mysterious look to her. Her lips were full and he could still remember the way they looked at the Yule Ball when they were swollen from his kiss. And her hair had gone from bushy to defined curls, falling in kinky, cloudlike ringlets all the way to the small of her back.

Sometimes, Draco wanted to slide his fingers along her jaw, take her chin in his hand, and see if she kissed the same when she was expecting it.

He nearly dropped his spoon.

Thinking of Granger as being acceptable to other wizards was one thing, but for he himself to find her pretty? To be able to analyze everything from the set of her eyes to the shape of her face? Thinking about snogging her?

He worried he might be going mental.

A troubled expression crossed his face. He tore his eyes away from Granger, who had just brushed the Weasel's hand off of her arm with a sunny smile.

Around him, Draco's fellow Slytherins were conversing, students of varying ages gossiping with one another. He had no interest in joining in. Maybe when he was younger, but now, it seemed like a waste of time. Talking about people he didn't know personally, as if his opinion of them had any bearing on their existence. It was pathetic. Draco could admit that he'd been that pathetic when he was younger, if not more so, but he wasn't like that anymore.

He stood up, gathering his satchel so he could head to his first class of the day. He needed to get out of the Great Hall before he got caught staring at Granger like some dodgy chuffer.

Draco had a decently full class schedule to prepare for his N.E.W.T.S at the end of the year. His first class was Muggle Studies—a requirement for his rehabilitation to avoid Azkaban—and his second was Charms. After lunch, he had Intermediate Potions and Advanced Divination.

He hated Muggle Studies, not because of the content, but because it was an overwhelmingly difficult subject for him. Divination was a personal interest of his due to him wanting to pursue a career in the Department of Mysteries. Transfiguration and Potions were easy enough, but Charms and Divination were the classes he had with Granger.

Muggle Studies went by as it usually did, with a lot of lecturing and not much free time. The new professor, an older man named Professor Heffin, possessed an interest in Muggles that was purely anthropological. He didn't care about who fought on which side during the war—he only cared that Draco took diligent notes, passed quizzes, and turned in his homework.

Draco had never been able to focus well during lectures without feeling sleepy, but he felt so guilty about being the only person in the whole of Hogwarts that had seen the previous professor's death that he remained one hundred percent focused when Heffin spoke. It was just unfortunate that the material was so difficult. He had parchments upon parchments of extensive notes that he couldn't even comprehend.

Today was no different: Draco had filled six inches with elaborate notes about the machines Muggles used to make coffee, and he had no idea what any of it meant.

In Charms, Draco took his usual seat beside Pansy, who barely looked up from inspecting her nail polish as he did so.

"Draco," she greeted in a haughty tone. "You're looking dour, as usual."

"Pansy. You've a vapid air about you, as usual."

She scoffed and rolled her head to glare at him. Her oval face was done-up perfectly, framed by her long jet-black waves. She gave him a once-over. "Still wearing Sixth Year's suits, I see."

"Don't be a bitch, Pansy." He smoothed out the front of his blazer. "I like what I like, but not that much. They're from this year."

Pansy's sour expression cracked open like an egg, revealing a sunny-side up disposition. She grinned and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek. "I know, darling. I'm just hoping if I pressure you enough, you'll stop wearing shirts under your jackets so I can see your tattoos."

Draco rolled his eyes.

"So, open your ears up," Pansy said. "You're not going to believe the gossip I just heard in my last class."

Pansy was sort-of Hogwarts' Queen of Gossip, even as a returning Eighth Year, and he was sure whatever information she told him would be just as useless to him as the gossip the Slytherins had been sharing at breakfast.

Draco reached into his satchel to pull out his notes from Professor Flitwick's continuing series on charms that were helpful for nerves, and a Never Ending Ink Quill.

"Well? Don't just stare at me." He raised his eyebrows at his parchment as though it looked stupid. "Lay the nonsense on me."

Pansy clucked her tongue against her teeth, but chose not to scold him as she folded her arms on the double-length desk and leaned towards him. "I have it on good authority that one Ronald Weasley was seen canoodling in the corridor outside of the Hufflepuff common room with one Gregoria Thistlewait. And they may or may not have had trousers on."

Not useless information. Not useless information at all.

"What?"

Pansy's rouged cheeks reddened further with excitement and her eyebrows shot up. "Oh, yes. And not only—listen—not only is Gregoria a Sixth Year, but she's got—" She mouthed her next word, "tits the size of Bludgers. I mean, listen, Draco. Look."

Draco's eyes darted downward. Pansy was holding her hands spread-eagle over her chest. His eyes lifted back to hers and she had an almost comically-surprised expression on her face. Draco arched one brow.

Pansy nodded. "Uh, yeah."

Draco swiveled his head back to the right, where he could see Granger sitting in her seat beside one of the Seventh Years in their class. She was in the process of writing furiously with her quill. He couldn't help but remember the way she'd pushed the Weaselbee's hand off of her arm.

Was it because she knew?

Pansy's voice came into Draco's ear, malicious and questioning. "D'you think Miss Perfect knows her boyfriend is necking in the corridors with sixteen-year-old busty broads?" She giggled and then said in a high-pitched, exaggerated voice, "I don't thiiiink so."

Draco eyed Granger a second longer. "I'm concerned."

"Why? About her?"

"About my common room. D'you understand the sort of messes she's going to leave when she finds out her wizard is everyone else's wizard, too?"

When he looked at his friend, he saw the ravenette looked dour. "She's unclean and her blood is dirty?"

Draco tried not to flinch. He hoped no one had heard that. He wasn't fond of Granger's personality or her cleanliness, but he couldn't act like he hadn't lied to his aunt at the Manor to keep himself from finding out how grey the world could be when Granger wasn't in it. He wasn't her friend, but he knew her worth.

"She likes her things to be left exactly in their place," Draco said in a light tone as he set his quill down. "And typically, that place is wherever she leaves them."

"I can't believe you've got to share the Head common room with her. I mean, honestly, she's smart, but she doesn't have the personality to be Head Girl. You've got to have a sort of . . . Properness about you. And look at her, she's got bags under her eyes the size of galleons, and her hair looks like a thirty-inch long rat's nest."

Granger turned to say something to the person beside her with another one of her bright smiles—the kind that lit up her whole face—and he wondered if Pansy had some sort of special ability to see the unseeable, or if witches were just mean for the sake of being mean. He couldn't see anything amiss on her face, and her hair looked like it was made of cloud spires.

He mentally slapped himself. He needed to stop assessing Granger's looks, or he was going to send himself into a spiral that would take him right back to 1994.

"Well," he said in a quiet tone so no one around heard them, "I've heard Thistlewait's not exactly the most difficult witch to land, and the Weaselbee's a complete tosser. So, I'm not surprised."

The gossiping reeled Pansy back in.

"Oh, I'm not surprised, either," she purred. "Especially since I was the last one he was snogging."

Draco nearly dropped his quill. He gave her an incredulous look. He couldn't speak, not without risking the octave of his voice lifting too high.

Pansy's smirk was wicked. "I hold no reservations against Pureblood wizards of all sorts, Draco. And have you seen his arms? I mean, delicious. I had to see what changed over the Summer. It was my duty to assess him and ensure that it was all right to let Granger keep him."

"To let Granger keep him?" Draco's lips curled with revulsion. It had been weird enough to think of the Weasel going with Granger, but to now imagine Pansy with him? Draco himself had hooked up with Pansy more than a few times—he knew how salacious she was.

He was surprised that the buffoon had survived.

"She's already got everything else," Pansy said in a whining, disgruntled tone. "An Order of Merlin, an all-but-ensured place in the Ministry, my Head Girl spot, and everyone's completely obsessed with her. So, I took her boyfriend."

Just then, before Draco could marvel at the vindictiveness of Pansy Parkinson, Professor Flitwick bustled into the classroom and launched into the lecture before he'd even made it to his step stool in front of the chalkboard.

"Today, class, I want to continue our study of charms that help with nerves," Flitwick said, taking out his wand and conjuring up a podium for him to lean on. "With your end of Winter term exams coming up, I thought it would be helpful if I taught you as many useful things as possible so you can start putting them into practice now. That way, when N.E.W.T.s roll around, you'll be ready."

Finally, Draco thought to himself. He was tired of all the lecturing. Flitwick had been talking at them for the past week about the importance of controlling your emotions using charms when faced with nervousness, and how they could cause your marks to drop, and how silly it was to enter an exam with nausea, and so on and so forth.

But his luck was not totally fortunate.

"Before we get into the charm I want to teach you today . . ." Flitwick waved his wand and the chalk lifted into the air. It began to scrawl on the board. Draco gritted his teeth and prepared to take some notes. "I just want to talk to you a little bit about how charms have the ability to control emotions when used in the correct context."

As Flitwick spoke, Draco inevitably found his mind wandering back to Pansy's information. While he was not Granger's friend by any stretch of the imagination, he had a feeling it would suck to find out your wizard was duplicitous.

To be even more frank, the bloke was a complete idjit. If Draco had landed the wizarding world's Golden Heroine, no matter who she was, he wouldn't be so daft as to step out on her at school with an underaged witch. He remembered seeing the Weaselbee snogging Lavender Brown all over the castle in Sixth Year, but there had to be something wrong with him to be sleeping with witches in corridors. Especially if that witch was not Granger.

Come to think of it, there was no possible way that Granger was sleeping with her wizard. She never brought anyone back to the common room, she had a full class schedule—which he'd seen pinned to the wall near the kitchenette—and she never went off campus. He didn't think he'd seen her on a single Hogsmeade trip that year. The few times he had returned from one, she was sitting on the floor of the common room in her typical jumper and leggings, eating something while reading. She either had no time to fuck her oaf of a boyfriend or no desire to, and that could be the reason why he was sleeping around.

But that reason seemed so thin. Thin, and juvenile.

They were all eighteen now. Was sex so important to the Weasel that he'd actually cheat on Hermione Granger? The witch who had been his best friend for seven years, and who he'd gallivanted all over the English countryside with looking for what the Prophet had labeled, "the Dark Lord's soul canisters?" He couldn't possibly be that immature.

Draco snuck a glance in Granger's direction. She was hunched over her parchment taking notes that would likely make Professor Flitwick ask her to teach the class. There had to be another reason why the Weaselbee would step out on her.

Flitwick cleared his throat and tapped his wand against the podium. "And now it's time to get into the classwork portion of today. I'm going to be teaching you a nerve-calming charm. It's excellent for when you're particularly nervous, especially before an exam, because it allows you to reduce your nausea. As I'm sure you know, some students experience test anxiety that can cause them to become sick before an important exam. This charm eradicates that issue so you can focus on your work and not your stomach."

Granger's hand shot up. "Professor Flitwick, is this spell specifically for emotion regulation in that it cancels out the emotions that cause the nausea? Or for nausea in general?"

Flitwick tilted his head in thought. "Well, I suppose it's for both. It has been used by Healers for treating nausea directly, but since there are potions for that, this spell is typically used to calm nerves in a pinch. Class, I'm going to teach you an incantation—"

Her hand shot up again, her writing hand still jotting down notes. "Professor, does this spell work if you're not experiencing nausea?"

"How do you mean, Miss Granger?" Flitwick peered at her over his half-moon spectacles.

She lowered her hand and began to talk with it while consulting her notes. "For example, let's say that you were nervous, but not experiencing nausea, would it still work? Or does the nausea need to be present?"

"No, the nausea does not need to be present. The spell will soothe all negative feelings for a short time. I would actually like to discuss that with the class today. You see—"

"And what if you're feeling nauseous from being sick, or you've just eaten and feel nauseous because of something undercooked?" she said. She looked down at her notes and then back up at the professor. "Does having food in your stomach affect the potency of the charm?"

Circe, she was thorough. She always had been, but this was ridiculous. It was just a nerve calming charm.

Flitwick blinked and then said, "Er, no. The spell will work just as effectively with food in the stomach, or without."

Granger's hand was halfway up before Flitwick called on her, looking a bit exasperated. "Can it be reversed?"

Flitwick as well as several other students looked at her with funny expressions on their faces. Draco, however, was unfazed. She was a swot. Swots liked to know everything from back to front. By the end of the week, Granger would know that spell so well she could take it apart and remake it into a new one.

"Why would you want to do that, Miss Granger?" Flitwick sounded incredulous.

For the first time, Draco saw a modest blush appearing on her cheeks. She shot a couple of glances around at their classmates, one landing on him for a moment. He lifted his left eyebrow.

Sometimes he wondered if she really understood how bizarre she was.

"Oh, I just like to be thorough in my studies, professor," she said, then raised her voice again. "What I mean to say is, can the spell be used to induce nausea? I only ask because I worry that it could be used by students to get out of taking their exams."

She would think of that. That's likely why she was Head Girl.

Draco was Head Boy because of his parole Auror's express request to keep him in line. Draco had no desire to step out of line, however, and he barely patrolled the corridors. He just wanted to pass his exams and find his future in a Ministry department that would allow him to fade into history.

Flitwick said, "Ah, yes, therein lies the issue. That, my dear, is why this is a Seventh Year level charm. Because it absolutely can be reversed and used to induce nausea, and the Ministry believes that by your Seventh Year, you're all honorable enough to use it responsibly. I won't be teaching you the reverse incantation, of course, but I know some of you are savvy enough to figure it out. Just know that the reverse incantation for the charm will not be used in this class, understand?"

After a withering stare to the quiet students, he proceeded with teaching them the incantation.

"Salazar, she is so insufferable," Pansy whispered to Draco. "Can she stop asking questions for even two seconds?"

"Probably not," Draco whispered back, shaking his head at his parchment while he finished up his notes.

At the end of the period, he jotted the incantation down so he would never forget it—Tranquillam Nervi—and then began putting his things back into his satchel.

There was a bit of a consternation as Granger pushed her way through the crowded doorway, and then her footsteps could be heard receding down the hallway at a rapid pace. Pansy scoffed again but said nothing as she waited by the desk's edge for Draco to follow.

"I don't know about you," she said as they trudged down the corridor, "but I'll be happy when we graduate and never have to hear her voice asking questions and derailing classes again."

Draco moved aside as a group of younger students came barreling by, laughing and screaming like children. He watched them, debating actually being Head Boy for once.

The last time he scolded a student, he was told it should have been him who died, not Narcissa.

He decided to let it slide.

"Not gonna tell them to stop running in the halls?" Pansy asked.

"I care about students running in the corridors about as much as I care about your vendetta against Granger."

"You're so cruel sometimes."

"Says the witch who said that Granger had eye bags and bad hair."

Pansy elbowed him. "Stop. I'm the way I am because I'm pretty. I can get away with it."

"And I'm not pretty?"

"Of course you are. You've got good hair—it does that swooshy thing when you push it back. And you've got a jawline that could cut diamonds. And your tattoos make you look dangerous, but in the sort of way that's intimidating and not frightening. Your eyes are unsettling, though."

"Who's the cruel one?" Draco wasn't really offended. It wasn't normal to have silver eyes, but something in the Malfoy family bloodline caused it. He'd accepted it.

"Still you," Pansy trilled. "Didn't you rain check our last hook up?"

"That I did."

". . . That was Sixth Year, Draco Malfoy. Who are you hooking up with?"

"No one. Can we just go to lunch? I'm starved."

Pansy gasped and let out a tiny scream, stopping dead in her tracks. Draco went ahead of her, but she grabbed the sleeve of his black blazer and whipped him around to face her. She looked like a wet dog, her blue eyes shining with accusation.

"No, Draco, who are you sleeping with?"

The problem wasn't that Draco wasn't hooking up with anyone because he had someone else. The problem was that he wasn't shagging anyone because there was something wrong with him. There was something inside of him that made things difficult. Something that twisted its way throughout his gut whenever he thought about sex. Something that made him hate himself and worry about what might happen.

He couldn't fuck anyone without thinking about Granger.

Granger, his dreams, and the nightmare.

The one time he'd wanted to wake up more than any other time in his life. The one time he hadn't been able to see her, only to hear her screaming. Screaming that bordered on sobs. Choked sobs—the kind that he'd only ever heard around the Dark Lord. The kind that were horrific coming from Hermione Granger. Screaming and sobbing.

And pleading.

The worst part of it all was that he didn't know if any of it was real.

"I'm not sleeping with anyone."

They stepped onto the next staircase. Draco leaned back against the railing, slipping one hand into his trousers' pocket and pushing the other through his hair. He could feel Pansy's gaze upon him, searching and accusatory.

"You're not fucking Granger, are you?"

A vivid mental image of Draco doing just that flashed across his mind. For the first time in months, he drew upon every vestige of darkness he had within himself. Cloaking his emotions and thoughts in shadows, he Occluded. He didn't want anyone suspecting anything about his strange, unexplainable connection to her, least of all Pansy. When he glanced down at Pansy again, his gaze felt cold.

"Of course not, you imbecilic bint."

Pansy pursed her lips and tossed her hair. "You're so defensive about it. I really hope you're not. How repulsive and disgusting it would be if you were."

"Don't be jealous. It's not a good look for you."

She scowled. "I'm not jealous. The last thing I'd feel for that mangy cow's life is jealousy. She—"

"Come off it," he snapped, grinding his teeth. "I'm not fucking Granger, and that's the end of it."

Pansy let out a disgruntled hmmph, the two of them walked onto the landing in silence. As they followed the other students towards the Great Hall, she spoke again as though nothing were amiss.

"Blaise and I are going off campus this weekend. D'you wanna come along?"

Draco thought about it for a moment, but shook his head.

"I'd better not. I should really study for the Charms exam."

"Aw. Well, I guess you'd better study for the Divination exam, too then. Blaise and I have the aura reading charm and the basic tea leaf reading down."

"I don't need to study," he said. "I'll just practice during class today when we get there."

"How on Earth you do so horrid in Divination when you're partnered with Granger, I'll never know."

"If you and Zabini would stop messing around and distracting me all through the period, then maybe I could focus."

Pansy said some more things and Draco responded, but his mind wasn't there. It was gone, back to that grey place of haze and shadows. The place where he felt cursed.

Divination was the only class where he was partnered with Granger all year. They sat at a small round table together, right at the edge of the classroom. They didn't talk much beyond what was necessary for learning, but he knew all of her absentminded mannerisms to the letter.

The way she itched the inner corners of her eyes with the pads of her forefinger. The way she wrinkled her nose and squinted her eyes to see the chalkboard when Trelawney was writing fanciful notions upon it. The way she alternated between straightening her back and slouching every ten minutes, without fail. He knew too much about her.

And he could feel her.

He looked at the Gryffindor table and saw Granger there, sorting her salad and laughing at something Hannah Abbott was saying. She glanced up, casual as she did so, and her eyes met his.

Did she feel him, too?