The Houses Competition - Round 6 Standard - Spring Awakens
Slytherin, Charms
Prompt: [Emotion] Weariness
Word Count: 2,339
Betas: VanillaAshes, Aya Diefair, Butterflies765
Another Thing to Hide
"Why would he love you?"
Hermione quickly sat up in her bed, her eyes not fully open. Her heart was racing, her throat dry, and her breathing ragged. She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms. The words echoed in her brain.
"Again?" Mandy asked from the only other bed in the small room.
She looked over to her Ravenclaw roommate, the dark room making her a shadowy figure. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."
"Why don't you ask Madam Pomfrey for a Dreamless Sleep Potion?" Mandy suggested, yawning loudly.
"Maybe," Hermione murmured. She didn't want to go back to sleep, but she didn't want Mandy to have poor sleep either. Instead, she grabbed her book and went down to the common room they shared with the few returning students from Hermione's year. Mandy was already breathing evenly as sleep claimed her once more.
She managed an hour of reading her book before nodding off in the chair by the fireplace. The room was lit brightly from the sun already streaming through the large window when she was startled awake from another nightmare by Draco tapping at her hand. She looked wildly around at the common room; an automatic response when he was unexpectedly near and being affectionate towards her. She sank back when she realised they were alone.
Draco, kneeling in front of her, pulled at her hand to make Hermione look at him. He looked bemused by her reaction. "You okay?" he asked. He kissed the back of her hand.
"Just nightmares," she said simply. "Exams."
"Just?"
"It's nothing." She pulled her hand from his, blindly trying to find the book digging into her side. "Don't look at me like that, Draco," she said when she looked back to him. He was watching her with a frown of concern, a look that still took her breath away in these unexpected moments. She'd never expected to ever find Draco Malfoy concerned for her.
Draco stood up, taking a step back to give Hermione room as she got up. "You can talk—"
He was cut off by someone's door opening in the corridor leading to the dormitories. Without another word, Draco left the common room and Hermione went back to her room to get ready for the day.
As she got her shower, right in the middle of scrubbing at her scalp, the foam of the shampoo lathering up quickly, Hermione slowly stopped moving and sat down in the little cubicle. The hot water splashed down on her, rinsing the shampoo off her hair, and down her face and back. She took a deep breath. And another. Her bones felt too heavy to move anymore. She took one more deep breath as the tears came, instantly washed away with the water and shampoo.
"Hermione, are you nearly done?" Mandy called into the bathroom.
"Almost," she replied instantly, her voice a little high.
"Give me a shout when you're out," Mandy said, already leaving the bathroom.
Hermione scrambled back to her feet and kept her focus on one thing at a time. By the time she'd let Mandy know she was done, her eyes were no longer red, and the crushing weight on her chest had left.
For the moment.
It came back with one whispered sentence from Draco in Potions.
"They all leave for the Easter holidays tomorrow."
Hermione breathed out like someone had suddenly squeezed her abdomen.
She gave a small nod to him, focusing on the next step in her potion. Nothing was different in her outward behaviour. While around Draco in their shared classes, they always acted like they could barely look at the other, only talking when they had to, and all conversations were strictly about the subject matter at hand.
Draco knew something was different, though. She could see it in the way he looked at her. Four months of secretly dating and he knew her enough to tell the difference. Well, sixteen weeks, four days, twenty hours and thirty-two minutes, but who was counting.
Pulling Hermione's textbook closer to the edge of the table, he pointed at a space on the page. Hermione looked to it with great interest while Draco checked where everyone else's attention was. "What's going on?" he muttered.
"I've told you, you have to chop them in precisely one-inch pieces," she said loudly. She took a deep breath, feeling her body judder a little as it fought to let her take the air in, like it was becoming too hard to do that one thing. "Not now. Later," she whispered. She jumped when a gentle hand pushed on her lower back for a brief moment. It was gone as quickly as he'd put it there, along with his aftershave he always wore since she'd made a throwaway comment about it being a nice smell on their first non-date in Hogsmeade.
After Potions, her final lesson of the day, Hermione hauled herself to the library, every movement, every step, felt like it was sapping her of energy. She just wanted to sleep, but with the exams looming, and the end of the school year being so close…
No. She couldn't think about it. She needed to get through her exams; they were the key to her future, not Draco.
She dropped onto a seat at a table towards the far end of the library, sitting for a moment, listening to the hushed whispers of nearby students on the other side of the bookcase. She took that deep breath again. Then she started pulling books out of her bag.
Hermione let out an odd squeak when a heavy book was dropped on the table by her elbow as she set some parchment down. With her heart racing, which seemed to be something it was doing a lot lately, Hermione looked up to find Draco already starting to sit in the chair next to her.
"What are you doing?" she hissed. Her head practically spun around to see if anyone was looking.
"Hermione, we've done enough studying together over the last few months for people to accept this as normal now," Draco whispered to her. He leant in slightly. "Calm down." His hand found its way to hers, both their bodies blocking it from being seen. "It'll be fine."
"Will it?" she asked. She pulled her hand back, hearing the desperation in her voice.
Draco tilted his head, concern in his eyes. "Hermione," he murmured when she'd given him a hard stare.
She shook her head, sinking back into the chair. "I'm tired. I'm sorry."
"Is that all?" he asked cautiously.
She fiddled with a corner of her parchment before sitting up straight. "It's the exams – that's all. This is our last chance to—"
"I thought we promised never to lie to one another again – you made me promise that, Hermione," he whispered.
He'd turned in his chair to face her, one hand resting on the back of her chair, the other on her hand to stop it from ripping the parchment. His knee was pushed firmly into hers and there was nothing to hide them. Anyone who happened to look this way would see the intimate scene.
"People will talk," she whispered, staring at his hand on hers. His palm was rough from the extra time he spent working on potions with Professor Slughorn, a hobby, and Hermione found it was one of the favourite things she liked about him; such roughness from one who was capable of such gentleness.
"I don't care right now. I just need you to talk to me." She kept her gaze firmly on their hands. "I've seen the dark circles getting worse, the lack of eating, losing focus when we're revising … you manage to keep it together for lessons, but I see it, Hermione. I've been waiting for you to tell me what it is."
Her vision blurred as the tears came. Hermione snatched her hand back, shoving her things back into her bag, ignoring Draco's silent stare, and left him there. At least this would look more normal – Draco Malfoy making Hermione Granger cry once again. If only they knew the truth.
Hermione desperately wished they knew the truth.
There were only six other students from Hermione and Draco's year that had returned to Hogwarts to complete their final year. All six were returning home for the Easter holidays. Hermione stayed because her parents were still in Australia. Draco stayed because Hermione was staying.
Lying in her bed after another night of broken sleep, Hermione listened to Mandy packing the last of her stuff she was taking home as she chatted about seeing some Muggle friends. Before she went, she left a small chocolate egg on the end of Hermione's bed.
"Remember to actually have a bit of a break over Easter, yeah?" Mandy didn't wait for a reply. She gave her a small wave and started pulling her trunk out of the room.
It was another hour before Hermione made herself get out of bed, not bothering to have her morning shower, and got dressed. When she entered the common room, Draco was sitting on the cushioned windowsill of the large window, a closed book in his hand, looking out at the view they had of the lake.
"I was beginning to think you were going to avoid me all Easter," he said quietly, not taking his eyes away from the view.
Sighing, Hermione went to him, taking a seat at the other end of the windowsill. "I'm sorry about how I reacted yesterday. I'm tired."
"Stop saying you're tired!" he snapped. The voice said he was angry, the eyes said he was worried.
Hermione shuffled close to him, holding a hand out to him, which he took and gripped painfully. She could almost feel concern and fear coming through his fingertips. "I'm tired," she reiterated, giving him a meaningful look. "I'm physically and mentally exhausted, Draco."
"Why?"
"Because I'm always hiding something about my life. Because for a year I had to run and hide and pretend I wasn't me. Because now I have to hide you and pretend this didn't happen when we leave here in three months' time." Hermione roughly brushed a tear away with her free hand. "Because I feel like I'm failing at everything."
Draco silently pulled her into a crushing hug, letting her tears soak into his shirt, making her feel safe, like he knew how to for the last few weeks. And when the tears slowed down, he moved them to the couch in front of the fireplace, pulling her close.
Before she knew it, Hermione had fallen asleep, her head resting on Draco's chest, listening to his steady, strong heartbeat. She slept without nightmares or worries, and when she finally woke up, Hermione felt like a new person. The bone-crushing tiredness that had been closing in on her didn't feel like such a problem anymore.
Except for one problem – she still remembered why she'd been feeling this way. Sitting up, Draco's hand slipping down her back as she did, she watched him, he was still asleep. There was a small smile on his lips. She didn't want to hide another aspect of her life anymore. It was soul-destroying.
"Stop watching me," Draco said thickly, his eyes still closed.
"I wasn't watching, I was thinking." His eyelids snapped open. "I don't want to hide this anymore, Draco." He sat up quickly, removing any contact they had with each other. She felt her heart squeeze painfully at the blank expression he had – the one he used to hide what he was thinking from her. "It's not what you want, is it?" she asked despondently, moving to the other end of the couch. "I don't understand. You've been taking so many risks with people seeing us recently."
Draco let out a heavy sigh. Hermione refused to leave until he said something. She watched the fireplace, the hearth empty of a fire, and listened to a bird singing somewhere outside.
Finally, he broke the silence between them. "I'm worried what it will do to you once people know," he said gently. She shifted to face him, letting go of the arm of the couch she'd been clinging onto. "If hiding it has done this to you, what will it do when they question my motives – when they question your sanity – because they will. They'll think I've done something."
"I don't care. Let them," she said forcefully, meaning every word. "It's nothing I haven't faced before."
Draco was silent again, picking at a thread on the cushion next to him. "I love you, Hermione."
He'd said the words so quietly, under his breath, that she wasn't sure she'd heard them. "But…"
He lifted his head and she saw Draco's wall come down. She could see his emotions once more. It felt like he had a grip on her heart. "I'm not going to put you through that for me. You deserve better," he said quietly.
Taking that familiar deep breath that was now a habit, Hermione gritted her teeth and nodded. She wanted to go to her room, run away from him, but she wasn't going to do that. She hadn't been pushing herself through the weariness that had lived in the depths of her core for him to put an end to their relationship like this.
"I don't accept that," she said more to herself than him.
She moved swiftly, crawling over the couch to pull him into a deep kiss, her hands firmly holding his head in place. Draco responded immediately by pulling her onto his lap, holding her tightly around the waist. Hermione pulled her head back, leaning her forehead on his, both of them breathing heavily.
"If you are there, by my side, then I don't care, Draco," she whispered. "I'm proud of you and I won't hide it anymore."
"You promise?" he asked. She heard the vulnerability in his shaky voice. "That we'll do this together?"
"Together."
Prompts used from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (challenges & assignments)
Spring Seasonal
- Days of the Year & Religious Events - April 3rd - Write an angst with a happy ending
- Aquarium Month - 2. Write about someone exhausted
Spring Funfair
- Levi-Kart - Amortentia Goblet (shipping with) 2. A character included in a very common ship
- Paint a Rainbow - Brown 4. Angst
- Bunny Races - Hermione, 2,339 words
- Egg & Spoon - Hermione Granger (main) & Draco Malfoy (teammate)
Would You Rather...
- Write a Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw pairing OR write a Gryffindor/Slytherin pairing?
Spring Quarterly
- 23. (word) Exhausted
April Writing Club
- Elizabeth's Empire - 11. (genre) Romance
- Scamander's Case - 1. (word) Fire
- The Forecast Says... 19th Kissing
Yearly
- 365 - 357. (trope) Secret Dating
- Scavenger Hunt - 17. Write a story with the genre Angst
- Fantastic Beasts - 103. (character) Draco Malfoy