Apricity – Chapter Fifteen
Waiting for Divination to end was a nightmare.
Draco was on fire underneath his skin. Hermione was smiling at him quite a bit, with the same sorts of face-lighting smiles that he'd always seen her give her friends when he was staring at her across the Great Hall. Laughing, too. She seemed to find him funny, or charming, or someone enjoyable.
She hadn't the slightest clue that he was burning with rage.
Pansy wouldn't look at him. He knew she knew that he was livid. There was fear in her eyes, dancing there like flickering candlelight. Blaise seemed to have caught on, too, given that he kept giving Draco sympathetic looks.
He couldn't be angry with Blaise—he'd tried to tell him as much as his Slytherin loyalty would allow.
At the front of the class, Trelawney was reviewing content for the exam. This was the final week before the three week holiday started, and their exam was on Friday. She didn't seem to be aware that while most of the class was paying attention, Draco, Blaise, and Pansy were otherwise distracted.
A few minutes before class ended, Draco felt eyes on him. He glanced over to the left, seeing Hermione looking back at him. But the moment their eyes met, her attention snapped back to the front.
Was she . . . Staring at him?
He watched her for a moment longer, crossing his arms over his chest as he relaxed back in his seat, and he wondered how much things were going to change between them. Even though it had been in the safety of a dream, they'd still kissed. If the Paris memory hadn't changed things between them, the kiss had to have.
He wondered if her lips were as soft in real life as they were in his mind.
After class, Draco's heated glare zeroed in on Pansy. She gave him a look that hovered somewhere between guilt and fear, hopped up, and gathered her things up as fast as lightning. He got to his feet, ready to corner her before she left, but Blaise stood up just as quick.
"Now, just chill out for a second, mate," Blaise murmured, sending surreptitious glances around at the other students. He placed a hand to the center of Draco's chest. "There's no need to cause a scene."
Draco clenched his jaw as he watched Pansy rush out of the room without looking over her shoulder. Hermione was close behind her. She gave Draco a small wave and then disappeared down the steps.
His glare snapped to meet Blaise's eyes.
"What did she put in her tea?" he hissed.
"She didn't put anything into her tea," Blaise replied, turning and curving his hand around the top of Draco's shoulder. He led him towards the stairwell. "But let's talk about it when we get out of here."
They set off down the stairs and when they got to the bottom of the tower, into the corridor, the other students were already a good distance away on their way to supper. Draco could see Hermione was trying to weave her way through the crowd the way she always did—like it was annoying to have to be polite.
"All right, I'll tell you," Blaise said, hand on his hip. He jabbed Draco in the chest with his pointer finger. "But you have to stop being so bloody angry."
Draco's blood boiled. "I'm not angry."
"You are," Blaise said, "and I'm not saying anything until you're not brassed off any longer."
"I'm not angry."
"I'm not saying a damn thing."
"I'm not fucking angry, Blaise!" Draco roared, his voice echoing in the now-empty corridor. He scrubbed his face with his hands and took a deep breath. "All right. I'm angry. But I'm not going to go mental and start slinging hexes. If Pansy poisoned her, then I want to know it."
"What are you gonna do if she did?" Blaise's brows arched up. "Because I can't see you walking up to McGonagall and ratting out your best friend."
"You're right," Draco said. "I wouldn't turn my back on a Housemate. However—if she poisoned Granger's tea, then I need to have words with her."
"Non-violent words."
"Yes, Blaise," Draco drawled. "Obviously."
"All right, well . . . Remember how I was talking about Borgin and Burke's, the fey tea, all that . . . ?" When Draco gave him a curt nod, he continued, "When we went to Borgin's, Pansy was right worked up and ready for a row. She saw the tea and it was a matter of wrong place, wrong time. As soon as she found out what it could do, she bought it."
"And what was it that it could do?" Draco struggled to keep his anger levels low.
"It was a tea that on humans, induces a hallucinatory effect. A severe one. Pansy wanted to humiliate her."
"But that was more than a hallucination," Draco snarled, brow furrowing and fists clenching. "She relived her worst memory, Blaise!"
Blaise grimaced. "That could be because of the Divination spell—the one for the tea leaves, for vision induction. I think . . . I think the spell's effects changed because of the fey tea. So, instead of inducing a dream—"
"—it induced a nightmare." Draco ran his hands up his cheeks in distress, and then tangled his fingers in his hair. He groaned, the sound ending on a scowl. "Fuck, Blaise! You don't . . . I can't explain, so this won't make sense to you, but what Pansy did wasn't harmless. Like, at all."
"So . . . Then how come you passed out, too?"
"I don't know," Draco said, frowning at the stone ground beneath their feet. "We're still trying to figure it out. But what I do know is that that tea is the reason why the spell went array. Pansy did this, and she needs to make it right."
Before Blaise could say another word, Draco turned in a swirl of his robes and marched towards the Great Hall.
Pansy sat at the Slytherin table, in a rather animated conversation with Theo.
Draco glanced to the right, searching for Hermione. She was at the Gryffindor table and it was a high volume food day. Her plate was piled up with a variety of food, she was eating without taking breaks between bites, and she wasn't saying a word to her friends around her.
Not that they ever noticed when she ate like this—they just kept talking and laughing as though she weren't even there.
His gaze slid to the end of the table.
Weaselbee was there, surrounded by other members of the House. He was laughing uproariously at something Dean Thomas was saying, the two of them clapping one another on the back as they howled.
Draco fought the urge to sneer. How was it that he got to treat Hermione like arse, cheat on her multiple times, and then end up as happy as could be? And meanwhile, she came to Draco's bed because a nightmare wouldn't let her sleep.
Fist curling at his side, he narrowed his eyes at Weasley's red hair and freckled face. If Hermione hadn't made it clear she was trying to keep the friendship, Draco would be dealing with him. But the situation with Pansy was different. Pansy wasn't Hermione's friend and never had been. It wasn't as complicated with her.
The Weaselbee would have to wait.
He went to sit on the other side of Pansy, straddling the bench and placing his hand over the hand of hers that held her fork. The ravenette gave him a wide-eyed, fearful look. Beside her, Theo's bewildered gaze bounced between the two of them.
"I know what you did," Draco said, "and I know you feel guilty about it. So, you might as well save us both the hassle of discussing it. Apologize to Granger."
Pansy's upper lip curled and she dropped her fork with a clatter, into her pasta. She tried to snatch her hand back, but Draco held tighter. She snapped at him.
"I don't feel guilty. At least, not anymore. Now that I know for certain you're boffing her."
"You're what?" Theo's eyes nearly fell out of his head and he set his own utensil down. He gave Draco a strange look—one that made Draco feel a bit defensive. "You and Granger are together?"
"I told you I wasn't boffing her," Draco growled, and then he looked at Theo. "No, we're not together. But we're friends, and Pansy thought it would be funny to poison Granger's tea a few weeks back."
Theo's eyebrows shot up. "Pansy—why would you do that?"
"Because," Pansy said, tone cutting as she turned her glare to Theo, "I hate her. I'm sick of her. I've been sick of her for years. This year, seeing her marching around with her nose in the air was one year too many."
Draco studied her, sifting through his memories of the past few weeks. There were multiple times that Pansy had either apologized or showed through her actions that she felt contrite over something. But the question remained as to why she'd done it in the first place.
And only one answer made sense.
"Jealousy isn't an attractive trait, Pansy," Draco said, gripping her hand tight. "Especially when you and I were never meant to be more than a glorified series of hook-ups. And I don't care how little guilt you feel—you're apologizing."
"No, I'm not!" Pansy said, nearly screeching. "I'm not jealous! I'm seeing Blaise, and you know that!"
"Then why'd you do it?"
"Because I wanted to. She's annoying, she's loud, she thinks she's better than everyone else, she—"
"You're jealous."
"I'm not jealous!" she shrieked.
"Apologize."
"No."
"You should apologize," Theo said, his lips twisting downward. Draco wanted to feel grateful for his support, but a wall inside his chest wouldn't let him. He didn't want or need Theo's help when it came to Hermione. "We're not kids anymore, and poisoning someone's tea—er, giving them the wrong tea—could have gotten you arrested if it went wrong."
"Theo!" Pansy hissed, and then she looked at both boys, one after the other. "Since when do either of you care about the law, or what happens to Hermione Granger?!"
Draco's mind flashed with images of Paris and the dark alleyway. Hermione's desperate cries. Her nails against the brick wall. The pain.
Since then.
"You were happy to apologize to me when I woke up on the classroom floor the day you did it," Draco quipped. "Why not now?"
"Apologizing to you is one thing. I feel guilty that it somehow affected you," Pansy said, brows pulling together. "But that wasn't my intention. I don't know if you drank her tea by accident, or what, but it wasn't meant for you."
"And if it had killed her?"
"What?"
"And if it had killed her?"
Pansy's eyes narrowed. "It didn't. It didn't kill her, so don't try to make it into something it's not."
Just then, Blaise walked up. He sat down across from them, resting his elbows on the table. Pansy immediately set in on him.
"This is your fault, innit? You told him about Borgin's. You told him about the tea! So much for loyalty amongst the House, yeah?"
"It wasn't because I care about Granger, or anything!" Blaise said, throwing his hands into the air. "I just know how precarious our position is here at Hogwarts. We're all on some form of parole, Pansy—we can't be giving the members of the Golden Trio Seelie Court tea! And that is what I tried to tell you when we were in Knockturn."
"Well, you certainly didn't try very hard to stop me." Pansy sneered and glared at the food on the table. "I don't feel bad that I did it, but I'm not a complete monster. I feel bad that it went wrong."
"Apologize, Pansy," Draco growled through his teeth, eyes blazing. "Apologize to her, or we're gonna have a serious problem."
Pansy pursed her lips. "Fine. I'll do it, but I'm not going to pretend to be happy about it, and I don't mean it. In fact, I wish that the tea had actually . . ."
She trailed off as the flames in Draco's eyes intensified, and the anger in hers ebbed. It gave her fear away. Blaise and Theo exchanged glances.
"I'd think carefully about finishing your fucking sentence, Pansy," Draco said in a low voice. "Because I've got nothing to lose."
"Draco, mate—you need to calm down," Blaise said, laughing somewhat nervously. He pinched his forefinger and thumb together and held them to his lips, feigning smoking. "Do you need some . . . ? I can get you some when Pansy and I go to London this weekend."
Draco shot him a look of approval as he stood up. He gestured to Pansy. "Pansy, come on. Let's go. Up."
"Whatever," she said, and then she got to her feet.
As she set off across the Great Hall, Draco followed. There was no way he was letting her talk to Hermione without him being at her side. With how angry Pansy was, he knew there was a high probability that she wouldn't apologize at all. She'd say something awful, and then it would make everything worse.
Draco wasn't going to let Pansy hurt her again.
They came to a stop behind a couple of younger Gryffindors who were facing Hermione. Across the table, she looked up from her plate, cheeks stuffed full and eyes blinking rapidly as they darted back and forth between Draco and Pansy both. Almost the entire table was looking at them now—including the Weaselbee—but Draco couldn't be bothered with that at the moment.
Pansy crossed her arms over her chest.
"I'm sorry," she said in a voice that was rank with begrudging sarcasm. "I shouldn't have done what I did and if I had known the spell was going to affect it, then I wouldn't have touched your tea. So . . . Yeah. That's it."
"Wait—what?" Hermione finished chewing her food and set her fork down. "What are you talking about?"
Pansy scowled.
Draco elbowed her. "Pansy."
"Ugh—fine!" She groaned. "That day in Divination—the day you and Draco both passed out—I switched out your tea. When I dropped my quill," she made quotation marks in the air with her fingers to emphasize, "it was just for a distraction. Blaise talked to you right when I went to grab it specifically so I could switch out your leaves for a tea that I bought at Borgin's. It was supposed to be a harmless hallucinatory experience, but I guess the spell Trelawney taught us interfered."
Draco bristled, his gaze snapping back to the Slytherin table. Blaise met it and grimaced. Either he could hear all the way over there, or he knew what he'd done wrong. No wonder he'd been trying to tell Draco for so long.
He'd had something to feel guilty about, too.
"You . . . You poisoned my tea?" Hermione looked horrified, and the Gryffindors around her appeared shocked into speechlessness.
"Yes," Pansy said, tossing her long black hair over her shoulder. "I did. And Draco wanted me to apologize. So, I'm sorry." Then, she turned to glare at Draco. "Happy?"
Draco said nothing.
He expected Hermione to say something overtly polite. Perhaps something that alluded to empty forgiveness. She'd never been much of a fighter, from what he could tell, but she was excellent at defending herself with a good tongue lashing.
He did not expect her to leap up, launch herself over the table, and grab Pansy by the hair.
Draco barely managed to step out of the way as the two witches crashed to the ground, Hermione's robes dragging plates, bowls, cups, and food to the stone with them. They rolled about, yanking and pulling and scratching.
Pansy was screeching like a banshee. Hermione was yelling something about being "sick of it." Half of the student body was standing up, watching in amused awe as the kneazle-fight ensued. The other half sat rooted to the benches in astonishment. Theo and Blaise were on their feet, dashing over, as were several professors and the Headmistress.
It was chaos.
When Pansy somehow managed to get Hermione under her and slam her head against the stone floor, Draco snapped out of his reverie. Without thinking, he grabbed Pansy by the arm and hauled her backward with all of his strength. Right as he dragged her kicking and yowling back over to the nearest bench, Weasley came skidding to a halt at the scene.
"What the fuck is your problem, Malfoy?!" he roared, spittle flying and skin flushed red with rage. "Why are you bringing your snake venom over here to bother Hermione?!"
"Shut up, Ron!" Hermione screeched, sitting up with her curly hair a mess and wiping blood from her nose with the back of her hand. Her honey-brown eyes looked aflame with ire. "Just shut the bloody Hell up!"
"Don't tell me to shut up! I'm only trying to help you!" Ron yelled.
"I don't need or want your help, and the fact that you think that I'd want it is laughable! You've slept with half of Gryffindor House, so if anyone needs help it's you in the Infirmary!"
A rush of hushed murmurs swept through the room. Theo, Blaise, and the professors came jogging up, everyone talking at once. Pansy wrenched herself out of Draco's grasp, tears of anger streaming down her face as she plopped down on the bench facing outward, wringing pumpkin juice out of her hair.
Chaos was beginning to rise once again.
Hermione staggered to her feet, stumbling forward with some sort of pasta sauce all over her hands. She pitched to the side, into the Weaselbee's chest. He let out a sound of shock and disgust at the sight of the sauce and shoved her to the left. Whether it was because it caught her off guard or because she was one-third his size, she tripped and almost fell over again.
"Augh—Ronald!" Hermione shrieked, sounding not only like she'd completely lost her mind, but like she was on the verge of hyperventilation. "Don't push me!"
The Weaselbee was rubbish.
Someone who was supposed to be Hermione's best friend had turned into a complete tosser the moment he laid claim to her as his witch and he had treated her like dirt. He'd taken her wand and purposely left it in the hotel room in Paris, inadvertently causing her to be assaulted. He'd cheated on her with multiple witches and had the nerve to try and pressure her in the hallway of their dorm. He'd told her she looked like a slag just for wearing a short dress.
He was rubbish.
Draco snapped. What was left of his sanity completely shattered. He saw red and practically leapt towards the Weaselbee. He grabbed him by the front of his robes, one fist rearing back.
"Draco!"
Hermione's enraged voice pulled him out of the crimson haze. He looked up at her. She was still shaking sauce off of her hands. Her teeth were bared.
"Get away from him."
Draco hesitated. He saw that Theo was at her side now, his hand on her back. Blaise was at Pansy's, sitting beside her on the bench.
McGonagall cleared her throat. "Mr. Malfoy. You'd do well to listen to Miss Granger."
He looked down at Weaselbee, who was glowering right back at him as though to dare him to swing. And he wanted to swing—badly. But if Hermione didn't want him to, then he wouldn't.
Yet.
The other professors set about getting the rest of the students in the Great Hall to turn back to their dinners, marching up and down the walkways to tell them there was nothing to see. Blaise assisted Pansy with getting cleaned up. Draco stood there, brushing his robes free of dust. Hermione stood still as Theo used his wand to scourgify the food mess from her clothes and skin. She gave him a quick, small smile of gratitude that didn't reach her eyes.
Draco didn't like the way Theo smiled back.
"I should take all of you straight up to my office to handle this," McGonagall said, her tone as cold as ice. She looked more than angry. "I'm disappointed in all of you, given that you're all Eighth Year students! Here you are—acting like children."
Draco didn't care. Weaselbee deserved it, and more.
"But I won't, given that tensions are high." She gave Hermione a meaningful look, one that showed Draco that Hermione must have discussed the break-up with her. "However, Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Parkinson, and Mr. Weasley—you each owe me thirty-six inches on House pride and proper decorum at Hogwarts."
Everyone grumbled their agreements, and then McGonagall ordered them all back to their seats. Blaise and Pansy walked away first, neither of them giving a second glance in Hermione's direction. The Weaselbee gave Hermione one last conflicted look before he went back to his own spot near Dean Thomas. Theo remained at Hermione's side, his arm now fully around her shoulders as he talked to her in a low murmur with his head ducked down close.
The way she was looking up at him, into his eyes as she answered, was not something Draco liked, either.
He approached them, withdrawing his wand and vanishing the mess of food and dishes from the floor that Theo had ignored. "Are you all right, Hermione?"
Theo straightened. "First name basis now?"
"We're friends, Theo," Draco said, holding his gaze in spite of the way his irritation was rising. "Friends call each other by their first names."
"I need to go," Hermione suddenly said.
She spun out of Theo's grasp, reached for her satchel, and then left.
Theo and Draco let out a simultaneous sigh and then looked at one another. Draco was fairly certain now that Theo fancied her, he just wasn't sure if he had the right or the means to do anything about it. Yeah, Draco had kissed her in a dream.
What if Theo had already kissed her in real life?
Well, that just wouldn't do.
"I'll see you later," Theo said.
Draco watched him go for a drawn-out moment, then felt eyes on him. He looked down into the faces of several Gryffindors who watched him with curiosity. The moment his withering stare landed on them, they looked away.
He went back to the Slytherin table.
That night, Hermione came to his door again.
He crossed his arms and shouldered the door frame. A smirk graced his features.
"Well, well. Look what the kneazle dragged in."
"Put a bloody shirt on," she said with a scowl, shoving past him into his dorm room. She wore pink pyjamas—a pair of silk trousers and a long-sleeved button up that dwarfed her.
Draco looked down at himself. He wore black trackies and no shirt again. Dragging his hand backward through his hair, he turned to face her while kicking the door shut behind him. He wandered over to his dresser, where he rummaged for a clean shirt.
She sat down on the edge of his bed, dropping her head into her hands. Draco paused on his way back to the bed, feeling a tiny nagging in the back of his mind.
"That was something today," he said in a nonchalant tone, sinking down onto the side of the bed he always slept on. He felt like the right half of his body was prickling, the hairs standing at attention and reaching toward hers.
"Just—" Her voice sounded thick. Beleaguered. Exhausted. "Just drop it. I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay," he said. "Then at least tell me what's going on with you. Because you're not the type of witch to get into fights, and to be frank, you're a lot bitchier this year than you have been in previous years."
"And you're the expert on all things Hermione?" she cried, lifting her head from her hands. Draco glanced at them, the opalescent moonlight casting him enough light to see that they were trembling. "Godric, Draco! Just leave me alone!"
His hackles rose. "You're in my fucking room, and you want me to leave you alone?"
"Leave me alone!" she screamed, her voice echoing. "Please, okay? I just want you to leave . . . Me alone."
In the thick, tense silence, Draco felt guilt settling over him and pulling him forward to rest his elbows on his thighs. He laced his fingers and stared at the floor, contemplating what to do.
"I'm just so sick of this," Hermione said.
"Sick of what?" he replied, sitting up straight. "Sick of me?"
"I'm sick of the pressure. It feels like everyone wants me to be a certain way, or act a certain way. And then when I do, I'm insufferable and nobody likes me. No one likes me, and then I get my tea poisoned for no reason other than—than her not liking me!" Hermione let out an incredulous, mirthless laugh. "It's unreal. My life is unreal. I just hate my . . ." She trailed off.
"Your life?" He turned to look at her, but her back was to him.
"Myself."
Her voice was a whisper, cracking like it was choked off in her throat. His heart skipped a beat—he recognized that tone from the night after Hogsmeade.
She was going to cry.
Draco stood up and walked around the bed. He knelt down beside her, positioning himself in a crouch. He placed his right hand on the mattress beside her and his other hand on his thigh, giving her enough distance so she wouldn't feel like he was crowding her. Then, he looked up into her face.
She looked forlorn. Lips curling down into a pout, eyes downcast, shoulders slumped with dejection. Her curls looked to have been pulled up into a messy sort of updo that wasn't holding them well. In the pyjamas, she seemed frail.
"Why?" he said, because he knew what that was like.
She lowered her gaze to her lap. "I don't know how to explain it."
"Try."
"I don't want to, Draco," she whined, her voice trembling. "Please? I just want to sleep. I'm . . . I'm humiliated by the way I acted today, and I couldn't even sleep for twenty minutes without . . . Ever since having to relive it, I just can't stop dreaming about it. I'd put it somewhere inside me. I had put it somewhere else where I could forget it happened and I—I—I just—"
She was hyperventilating now, taking in more breaths than she was letting out. He could see her legs shaking, one of them bouncing in agitation like it had the times he'd seen in the Great Hall. Draco felt his heart and stomach twisting together into one mass and in the next two seconds, he was sitting beside her on the bed.
"Hey," he said in a gentle tone. "It's okay. We can sleep."
One more inhalation, and then he saw her close her eyes. She took a deep breath and let it out, and a tear escaped the confines of her lashes. Her chin and mouth quivered.
"I had a routine," she said in a high-pitched voice. "I had a routine where any time I felt those feelings come back up—those reminders—I could get rid of them quickly. But now, I can't. No matter how hard I try, I can't forget it again." She looked up at him, tears continuing to roll unchecked down her cheeks. Draco's brow had furrowed and his heart was racing, hovering between hatred for the man and anguish for her for everything he'd seen. "I want to go back to that day and never drink the tea."
"Hermione—"
"I just want to sleep. I just want to sleep. I just . . ."
She broke apart like a fallen porcelain doll, her pieces lying shattered on the floor. Sobs ripped through her body, gut-wrenching in the way they made her entire body shake with violence. It was the same sort of weeping that he'd heard in her memory, when she was on the floor at the foot of the bed, desperate for reprieve.
Draco didn't think about it. He didn't think about decorum or whether or not he was going to scare her or make things awkward. He thought about nothing.
He wrapped his arms around her, one hand sinking into the curls at the back of her head beneath the tie holding her hair up. The other curved fully from shoulder to shoulder, pressing her against his side until she turned her face into his chest and wailed into his shirt.
"Come here," he murmured. He didn't know what he was doing—he was just doing what he wanted to. "Come here, to me."
She curled her legs up and across his lap. Her hands wrapped themselves in the fabric of his shirt, pulling until he thought she might tear it if he tried to put any space between them. She clung to him as though they were in that hotel room, and she just needed someone to hold her.
"Try to breathe," he said when her weeping began to sound somewhat strangled and her body shook.
"I-I can't," she gasped between sobs, her tears slick on his skin. "I c-can't b-b-breathe. I d-d-don't w-want to."
Draco tightened his hold on her, remembering the alcove and how she'd asked him to hold her tighter. She felt so small in his arms and he didn't know if it was because she was broken and he was the only thing holding her pieces together, or if it was because she really was that fragile.
Hermione Granger wasn't supposed to be fragile, but he supposed that type of thinking was what had caused her so much stress.
Slowly, her breathing began to return to normal as she inhaled and exhaled through her continued crying.
"Good girl," he crooned, his fingers stroking down the nape of her neck to try and calm her. Anything to make her feel better. He didn't want her to faint. "That's a good girl. It's okay."
Pansy deserved worse than a thirty-six inch essay. She couldn't have known what Hermione had been through, nor what had happened, but Pansy deserved to know how much pain she'd put her through by giving her that tea. He should tell her what she'd done.
At least, that's what he wished he could do. But what would be the point? How would it help Hermione? How would it help his own memories of what he'd witnessed?
No one could get Hermione through that, and no one could get them both through this except each other.
He held her while she cried for the next few minutes, ignorant of how tired he'd been when she first came to his dorm room. Eventually, her sobs quieted to catatonia and the occasional sniffle. Even then, he continued to hold her.
"Do you wanna maybe lay down?" he asked, keeping his voice low. He dipped his head down a bit so he could look at her face, which was cast in shadows due to his body blocking the moonlight from the window. "We can get some sleep."
She nodded, her eyes closed.
Draco thought for a moment about the best way to move them both, settling upon hooking one arm beneath her knees. He lifted her, surprised when there was hardly any resistance, and turned to set her down in what was now "her" side.
"Fuck," he muttered, the words escaping his lips.
"Huh?" she said, her voice wrecked from crying so hard for such a long time.
"You're as light as feather, Granger."
She said nothing.
Draco set her down, casting one more glance at her face. Her eyes were open now, half-lidded and puffy. Tears kept falling, rolling slow and sporadic from her eyes to her jaw. She looked swollen and somehow more beautiful to him than he'd ever thought anyone could be.
That disturbed him.
Why would he think her crying made her look pretty?
He went back to his side of the bed and climbed in, pulling the coverlet up over the both of them. Lying down, he had just started to roll to face the window when she surprised him by moving until she was pressed to his side.
"Did you want me to—"
"Yes," she whispered, and then her fingers twisted in his shirt by his abdomen.
Swallowing against his sudden urge to blush, he faced her and slung his arm over her shoulder. He curved it around her back.
"More."
After a moment of hesitation, he slid his other arm between her body and the mattress and gathered her up against him. It felt nice, having her so close, and he imagined it felt nice for her to be embraced.
"Your head's not even on the pillow," he said.
"I don't care." He felt her burrowing closer, her nose brushing his neck.
"All right. Sleep."
She didn't reply, and so he let his eyelids flutter shut. Draco didn't think he'd ever felt more at peace, which was strange given that it was Hermione Granger he was full-on cuddling in his bed.
For a moment, his life flashed before his mind's eyes. A life where he went to sleep in the Manor with Hermione in his arms every night, safe from anything and everyone who could hurt her. The Manor, where he wouldn't be alone.
He'd have to think about that one when he woke up.
