Apricity - Chapter Four

"Oi! What's he doin' here, then?"

Draco narrowed his eyes at the Weaselbee. His reaction wasn't anything less or more than exactly what he expected, though with less sparks flying out of the end of his wand.

"I'm off to Hogsmeade," he said. "Although, Granger here has explained to me that I'm not allowed to go if you're going. Imagine my surprise, as I've always thought it was a town that was open to everyone."

Granger scowled and pushed past the both of them. "Oh, for Merlin's sake. That's not what I said. Let's just go."

The Weasel stood rooted to his spot. Draco gave him a lingering stare before he followed her, a slight spring to his step. When the redhead failed to come, Granger whirled around, her face shadowed with anger.

"Ron! Come now, or I'll have this bloody date by myself!"

Weasley pressed his lips into a flat line, gathering the two sides of his coat together. It was a lot finer than any of the clothing their family had possessed in the years before the war. Draco couldn't resist saying something.

"Was that coat a donation, or have you been frittering away the spoils of war?"

The Weaselbee reached for his wand.

Granger quick-stepped forward, positioning herself in front of him with one hand on her hip. She used the other one to point up at him.

"Knock it off, Ronald. He's only walking down the hill."

He sneered. "What, he can't walk down the hill before we do? Or after?"

Granger made a little noise of exasperation and then threw her hands up into the air. "I give up. I'm walking down the hill now. Whoever wants to follow can do so. Otherwise, I'm starved and would like to get down to the Three Broomsticks to get my damn hamburger."

Draco held in a spurt of incredulous laughter. It was rather nice having the front row seat to someone else's dismantling at the words of Hermione Granger, rather than his own. He'd known Granger was snarky, but he supposed he'd never noticed due to always being on the brunt end of it.

He followed after her, sending the Weaselbee one final smirk, which he returned with a ferocious glare. They walked down the corridor, quite the motley crew as they passed the crowded Great Hall. Before they made it to the open doorway that led to the courtyard, Draco heard someone calling his name.

Theo dashed up, waving one arm with enthusiasm.

"Where are you lot off to?" he asked with a bright grin, pushing his wavy brown hair back. His pale white skin was flushed from running.

Draco shot him a pointed look. "Hogsmeade, remember?"

"To Hogsmeade?" Theo's brows twitched together. "On roast beef night?"

Draco, whose back was to Granger and the Weasel, lifted his chin and raised his eyebrows. "Yes, Hogsmeade, remember?"

Theo stared at him for a second that felt like an hour, and then his face lit up with a big grin. "We are so still on for that dinner, yeah? You said something about buying me whatever I wanted on the menu? Okay, cool. Let me go get my coat."

Theo dashed off towards the Eighth Year common room. Draco looked to Granger, who was looking down at the floor, lost in thought. The Weaselbee appeared irritated.

"D'you mind if we wait for him?" Draco asked, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. For the sake of his lie, he added, "He's who I was meant to go to Hogsmeade with."

Granger shrugged. "I don't mind if—"

"We shouldn't have to wait for your mate, Malfoy!" the Weasel snarled, interrupting her with an enraged expression. "We're supposed to be going on a date, and you weren't invited. There's no need for us to walk together."

"Don't be rude, Ronald," Granger said, frowning at him. "It wouldn't be polite to just leave Theo when we were already walking together."

"You're always so polite, Hermione," Weasley said with a sarcastic tone, sneering at the open air in front of him. "Merlin's beard."

Draco frowned, his eyes lingering on the Weasel's. "Are you always this angry? That can't be good for your complexion, especially since it's already quite ruddy."

The redhead's hand snapped to his wand, but Granger elbowed him hard enough in the side to push the breath out of him with a quiet oof noise. He turned his glare to her and then let out a growl of frustration.

"Fine!" he snarled. "We can wait."

"Stop bickering, both of you," Granger said. She looked at Draco. "You're Head Boy. Act like it."

"I'm back!" Theo returned, and he wore trousers, a blue-and-black plaid jacket with a black hood, and a black knit hat. "Come on, come on! Let's go."

Draco rolled his eyes and turned to sling his arm around Theo's neck for a moment, pulling him along with the group.

"Hello, Theo," Granger said. "How are you?"

"I'm well," he said with a polite smile. "So you're coming with us?"

"No!" the Weasel shouted, his voice ringing up to the vaulted castle ceilings. Students who were still filing into the Great Hall behind them looked at him in puzzlement, but he ignored them to clench his teeth like a wild animal. "I'd rather be dead than share a table at the Broomsticks with a Death Eater."

Theo grimaced, but Draco's reply came lightning-fast.

"It's probably for the best," he said. "I don't fancy paying for all of the meals."

He walked ahead of them, stifling laughter against his knuckles as he heard the consternation behind him. Poking fun at the Weaselbee was too easy. He didn't care if it was juvenile—the oaf was so reactionary.

The four teens headed out into the renovated courtyard. Draco admired the newer Grecian pillars to himself, trying not to feel the chill that went through his body every time he walked past the spot where Potter killed the Dark Lord. He sidestepped the cobblestones, keeping his eyes trained forward in resolution.

"So, I gotta tell you this really barmy thing that happened today." Theo jogged forward, turning to walk backwards in the snow and waving his hands about as he spoke. His face appeared animated, with his eyebrows wiggling and his eyes widening with every inflection of his tone.

Granger fell in-step beside Draco, her eyes fixed ahead of her as she stomped and crunched her way along. Draco didn't care where the Weaselbee was, but he assumed he was plodding along behind them with his tree trunk legs and boulder feet.

Draco glanced at Theo, who was hop-skipping backward, looking behind him to make sure he wasn't going to trip over anything. He arched an eyebrow.

"D'you need my permission to speak, or . . . ?"

Theo grinned. "Oh, right, yeah. No. Okay, so first like, it was Professor Werrin and he was . . ." He blinked and shook his head out. "Wait, no. Let me start over. Okay, okay, okay. So, you know how I have Defense Against the Dark Arts first period?"

Following Theo's stories was like trying to hold onto an eel with oily hands.

"Yes," Draco said.

"Right, so, Professor Werrin was showing us how to trick a fey into letting you go if you get like, trapped by one." Theo looked excited. "And so I was like, but what if you don't want the fey to let you go? Like, what if it's like, a really lush faerie with like," he gestured to the top of his head, "really nice hair, you know? And—"

Granger snorted. "A fey would never capture a human. That's why they have an entire section of the Auror Department at the Ministry dedicated to keeping the peace between Unseelie and Seelie fey and the wizarding world. After the first wizarding war, the Dark Lord's forces wiped so many species out that the fey royalty were all too happy to agree to a treaty."

"Well, like," Theo said in an awkward tone, still walking backward, "he was just teaching us for the sake of the curriculum. Just so we could . . . So we could have the information. He wasn't saying that we would be captured by a fey. He just wanted to show us what to do in the instance that it happened."

"You must be joking," she said to Theo, a bit breathless as she traipsed along in the snow.

"Wha—how?"

"It would never happen. See, that's why Headmistress McGonagall should have hired Bill Weasley and not Riley Werrin. Bill has an acute understanding of the way things are now, compared to the way they were centuries ago. Fey do not capture humans, witches, or wizards. Fey are harmless when left to their own devices, and they are an endangered species. For someone—a Professor, for that matter—to teach a classroom full of students a spell to use to help them escape being captured by one is not only irresponsible, but it's problematic. Just think of what that . . ."

Draco tuned her out, looking back over his shoulder. Weasley blundered along, a few yards back, muttering expletives under his angry breath. The Slytherin turned back to look at Granger, cutting her off.

"Look, Granger, we know you've got a hard-on for the disenfranchised, but can't you just let it go? And here I just thought we'd all have a pleasant walk together to town."

"I don't have a hard-on for anything!" Granger hissed, her fists clenching. "Just because I care about magical creatures doesn't mean I have some sort of . . . Strange obsession. Unlike the two of you, I read extensively, and—"

"What?" Draco gave a loud gasp, his head snapping down to look at her in horror. "You read?!"

Theo burst out laughing, and Granger raised her hand as if she were going to smack Draco's arm. She stopped herself, but still shared biting words with him.

"You're an arsehole, Malfoy!"

Draco clutched a hand to his chest as though he'd been stunned in the heart by an errant spell. "I'm an arsehole?! Me?! Neither possible nor probable."

"Salazar, Draco." Theo continued to guffaw, holding his stomach and slowing down his pace in the thick blanket of snow. "Stop. I'm dying."

She stomped her foot in the snow. "Stop laughing at his antics! Stop laughing at me! If he's the arsehole, then you're the prat! You're both a couple of absolute gits!"

Theo then fell into peals of wild laughter again, tears streaming down from his eyes to track down his cold-reddened cheeks. "You look like a marshmallow with two sticks in the bottom of it, Granger. I can't. I just can't with you."

"A marshmallow?!" She stopped in her tracks. "I do not!"

The coat was ridiculously large on her, causing her already-slim legs to look like twigs by comparison. Draco looked down and noticed that her feet turned in quite a bit towards the center, and she was fidgeting with the fingernail of her left thumb. There were some darker brownish marks on the knuckles of her forefingers that looked somewhat singular and out of place. Like they didn't belong there—like someone had painted them onto her.

With that coat, she really did look like a marshmallow. A marshmallow with a cherry on top of it, since her face was so red with ire.

"You really do, though."

Theo held up a hand in offering. "A cute marshmallow? Like, with a cute face and . . . Yeah."

"A pigeon-toed one," Draco added, crossing his arms over his chest and cocking his head to the side as if to appraise her.

Granger's voice was meek. "A marshmallow?"

Draco frowned. Why was she so hung up on such a harmless word?

Weasley stopped beside her. He glared at them.

"Sorry to interrupt your friendship circle," he spat, his shaggy crimson hair falling into his eyes. "But we've better get going."

"We've got as much right to walk down the hill as you," Draco drawled.

"So walk."

Weasley wrapped his hand around Granger's wrist, dragging her forward so that she stumbled and pitched forward. She yelped, dragging a line through the deep snow, and then fell onto her knees. Her wrist wrenched out of his grasp as gravity tugged her downward, but he just gave her a wry look.

"Get up off the ground," he said. "You should be more careful."

Really? Weasley was going to make a witch fall in the snow, wearing a nice outfit for their date, and then blame her for it?

Theo and Draco both moved forward toward her at the same time, but Draco got there first. He leaned down and took her by the elbows, surprised at how little resistance there was when he hauled her to her feet.

"Thank you," she said. "Er—well, you said not to thank you. But I don't really care, so thank you."

Across his mind's field of vision, he saw her the way he saw her in his dreams: smiling bright and merry through a haze of grey. Then, the image shifted and he saw darkness, hearing her screams echoing in his skull.

He wished he knew what the nightmare meant.

Draco let go of her arms as though she'd burned him, and he turned a dark look on her wizard.

"Do you make it a point to treat your witch like rubbish, or is that just your personality, Weaselbee?"

"What's it to you, Death Eater?" Weasley shot back.

"It was an accident," Granger said, dusting snow off of her coat and the small bit of her dress that peeked out below it.

"An accident." Theo said the word as if he were tasting it.

Draco turned and resumed walking down the hill. He didn't know what the Hell he was doing. He wasn't Granger's friend, and he wasn't about to get sent to Azkaban for defending her against her pet rodent. She won a damn war, for Salazar's sake. She could take care of herself. It was just a bit of snow.

And what if the only reason why he felt a sense of obligation towards her was because of something else?

What if she really had cursed him?

He heard their footsteps coming behind him as they reached the halfway mark and stepped onto the path. It had been charmed to remain clear even when the snow piled up on either side of the dirt. It was frozen, of course, so it crunched underfoot as they all walked towards the town.

"How often do you think those accidents happen?" Theo asked in a mutter as he walked up to Draco's side.

"Who knows?"

Draco rubbed his nose with the back of his right hand, his eyes scanning the Hogwarts grounds. He could see Hagrid's old hut off in the distance, empty ever since the big brute went off to tame dragons for the year. With the Forbidden Forest's trees topped with snow, it looked like the inside of a snow globe.

He shot a quick glance backward, seeing that the Weaselbee was behind them, gaze on the ground as he walked. Granger had strayed to the back, her arms wrapped around herself with an expression of distaste on her face. He let his eyes linger for a moment.

"It's so bizarre," Theo went on to say. "They're not like, as in love as everyone thinks they are. He's a right git, yeah?"

"Yeah." Draco turned back around to face the front. "He's always been, though."

"Does she know he's . . . You know . . . ?"

Draco side-eyed him, wondering if Theo knew because of Pansy, or because Weasley was an idiot. "Nah. I doubt it."

"Maybe we should like, tell her? Or something?"

Draco was silent, contemplating the purpose and the benefits. Telling her wouldn't erase their past, nor would it resolve the problems of their living situation. Telling her would gain him nothing because he had no personal stake in the matter.

"Not our place," Draco said. "And I don't care."

"Yeah, yeah. You're right, you're . . ." He trailed off, crossing his arms. "Draco, what if he like, hits her?"

Draco felt an uncomfortable chill in his body.

"What d'you suggest?" he said. "Hex him, body-bind him, and hide him in the Come and Go room?"

"No, no, no!" Theo waved his hands and then smacked Draco's arm. "Mate, no. I'm only saying that we—you're serious? No. We can't—no."

"There's not anything we can do, Nott. In case you've forgotten, we aren't their friends. You may have fought for the Order, but you're not exactly her best mate. And then there's me. The only reason why we share a common room is so she can keep an eye on me for McGonagall, who's keeping an eye on me for the Ministry."

"Hey. Granger's a friend to me. And you don't know for sure that she's been asked to do that. What if it's just a coincidence that you both were appointed as Heads?"

"Can you honestly say that it makes any sense that I was appointed Head Boy? I barely attended class Seventh Year. And the years before that, I hardly paid attention to my marks. I was facing twenty years in Azkaban for what I . . ." He turned the conversation a bit. "Bottom line is that there's no point in interfering. I doubt Granger would stay with a bloke that's beating on her."

"What if I care?" Theo gave him a pleading look. "Come on! Just walk beside her and ask her. I'll distract Weasley."

"And you can't talk to her because . . . Why?"

"Do you want to distract him?"

Draco paused, narrowing his eyes at his friend. He would prefer not having to spend time chatting with the Red Weasel, and he rather liked not being behind bars.

"Fine."

"Fine?"

"Fine."

Theo turned around and threw his hands up. "Weasley! You up to talk Quidditch? Who's your team?"

"Always, mate," Weasley said as Theo slung an arm around his neck and tugged him further down the hill.

Draco stopped, looking behind him to see Granger still lagging behind. She plodded along like a toddler in too-big of shoes, her curls fluttering behind her. The early evening sunlight glinted off of the wavy chocolate-brown strands, and her nose was tinted pink from the Winter cold. Her lips were parted, the tip of her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth with exertion as she panted for breath. She looked up as she neared him. He saw her face take on her usual stoicism when she laid eyes on him.

"Malfoy," she greeted, like they hadn't walked three-quarters of the way down the hill together.

"Granger," he replied, falling in-step with her. "You walk slow."

"No, I don't." He could tell she was trying to control her breathing, like the walk was really taking it out of her. "You're all simply too tall."

"Or maybe you're too short."

She huffed. "Why are you walking beside me? Why are you even walking with us?"

"I told you, I was already going to—"

"Cut the bollocks, Malfoy. I'm not daft."

"Maybe I was just bored."

"Or maybe you're just being a prat," she countered. "A suspicious prat that's trying to either hide something, or cause trouble."

Draco let out a laugh, watching Theo and Weasley conversing ahead of them. "I can assure you, I'm always trying to cause trouble."

"Then what are you trying to hide?"

"Nothing." He slipped his hands into the pockets of his black peacoat. "What are you going to do? Punch me again?"

The silence was oppressive, broken by the slow crunching of their feet on frozen dirt. Neither of them looked at the other. Draco knew she knew what he was talking about.

"I didn't punch you," she said in a haughty tone. "It was more of a slap, if anything."

"My nose bled, Granger. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you cursed me."

She didn't speak and when Draco glanced down at her, he saw that her cheeks were as red as her nose. He felt his stomach jump with surprise and then turn with anger. Had his suspicions been correct? Had she cursed him with something that had been draining him for the past five years? If she had, what was the purpose?

What would he do about it?

"And if I'm to take your silence as an answer," Draco drawled, "then my next question would be why?"

"Tell me, O Prince of Slytherin. Why would I curse you in our Third Year?" Her tone was sardonic but her eyes were downcast. "Maybe I just really wanted to shut you up."

"I think you cursed me because you wanted to," he said, leaning down to lower his voice as they walked. "Because you're Hermione Granger, and you're used to doing whatever you want."

"I'm not . . ." Her voice faltered. He saw her fidgeting with her fingernails again. "I'm not a violent person, but you were a bully and I was sick of you. So, I hit you. I didn't curse you, but I did want to do what I did. But I was thirteen, Malfoy. It was an accident."

"An accident." He stretched out the syllables the way Snape used to.

"Yes. An accident."

"Sort of like how your wizard dragging you about was an accident."

Silence. "Can you just fuck off?"

Draco felt her words like a lashing to the ears and he looked down at her in anger. He almost thought he might not have heard her correctly.

Her gaze had slid off to the side as though she were anxious. The expression was so out of place on her face that he felt his anger drain a bit.

"Right," he said. "Well, don't expect me to help you when he inevitably shows you how much of a daft tosser he is."

"I didn't ask for your help. I didn't ask for anyone's help, and I certainly don't need it."

"Oh, clearly." A sour taste lingered in his mouth. "Your relationship is about as messy as the way you keep our living space, so I must say I'm unsurprised."

"How would you know me well enough to be surprised or unsurprised?" She sounded livid.

They were nearing the entrance to Hogsmeade, passing the Shrieking Shack. Fresh snow had begun to fall. Draco was reminded of the time during Third Year when he'd encountered her, Potter, and Weasley in this exact spot.

He never had figured out who threw the snowballs at him.

"Oh, I know you, Granger," he said, stopping with his hands still in his pockets. One strand of his hair fell forward and he didn't bother to push it back. "The person you put on display outside of our common room isn't the person you really are. The books and the studying and the swotty attitude is all just a disguise you wear to cover up that your life is as much of a mess as everyone else's."

She faced him, hands balled into fists at her sides. "You think my life's a mess just because I leave a few dishes around?"

"I think your life's a mess because you spend so much time trying to prove to everyone that you've got everything all figured out. You're Head Girl, Golden Girl, War Heroine." He sneered. "But it's all a lie. A façade. You spend hours in the bathroom doing Salazar-knows-what. You scream at me for cleaning your dishes—dishes that you'd be perfectly happy leaving about for days if it meant that you had control over what happened to them. You're Hermione fucking Granger and I watched your boyfriend pull you so hard that you fell over, and you said it was an accident. I know you, Granger, but you're a bloody good actress."

Her eyes caught fire and blazed up at him. Theo and Weasley had disappeared around the bend of the path, into town. They were alone.

"You say that as if you don't have your own share of problems," she hissed, teeth bared. "You're not as perfect as you think, Malfoy."

"Oh, really?" he snarled. "And how's that?"

"You use sarcasm to cover up the fact that you're still just as much of a coward as you always were. You pick fights with me because I'm a girl, and because it makes you feel like a bigger person. You picked on me when we were younger because you didn't want to have to stop and think about the fact that you never had a chance to pick the right side."

"Have you lost your fucking mind?" He loomed over her. "If you're talking about my family, I'd ask you to mind your tongue. You know nothing about my family, and you know nothing about who I am."

Her face twisted with rage. "Your Dark Mark isn't as faded as you think. The only reason why you think you know me is because it makes you feel better about the fact that no matter how hard you try, you'll never make amends for your stupidity. For letting the Death Eaters into the castle and nearly putting a madman on the throne."

Draco was angry.

Very angry.

"That's rich, coming from the girl who bled on my Drawing Room floor became she wasn't smart enough to not get caught."

The fire in her eyes dimmed to embers.

Okay, that was too much. He didn't even like to think about that day, so why had he thought it would be a good idea to bring it up?

"Fuck," he said. "I'm . . . I didn't—"

"I didn't curse you, Malfoy. I just smacked you in the bloody face. I'll see you."

Draco watched her go, feeling the heaviness of his guilt weighing down on his heart.

He wasn't the person he used to be—he wasn't the person he'd been before the war. Before his mother's death, even. He hadn't meant to say that to Granger, yet he knew that he'd done it on purpose. After living in the same common room since September, tip-toeing around the issues of past and present, an explosion was bound to happen. He just hadn't expected it to affect him so much. He wasn't angry because she'd said those things to him, though.

It was because she was right.