AN: Hi there, thanks for reading. If you like this and wouldn't mind if I stayed motivated to add more to it, please let me know. Many of the reviews so far are from frustrated anti-Draco readers. A major reason I'm writing this is to see if a story that serves both the Ron and Draco characters as co-protagonists is possible. I'm still committed to that but it's tough with so much bad feedback from the Ron fans. It's my intention to make both characters heroes, but the nature of story arcs means their prominence and success will ebb and flow as the story moves ahead. Thanks again for being here. I know you don't owe me anything.
"Thinking about kissing me, are you Granger?"
That was what Draco Malfoy, that vain, egotistical, impossible boy said to Hermione Granger just before the clock struck and he stood up to leave with some excuse about curfew.
"I certainly was not," Hermione said, scrambling to her feet. "Clearly, I was saying how unpleasant the thought of - "
"Ah, but you admit to having the thought. What's that my brother says? Can't do it until you can dream it." He was laughing at her as he re-shrunk his transfiguration textbook back to pocket size.
"That isn't truth, it's a stupid sports slogan," she said, trotting down the corridor as fast as she could without giving him the satisfaction of seeing her actually running away from him.
Draco kept pace with her easily, moving ahead, smirking over his shoulder. "Sports, kissing - it's all the same to some people."
"Well it's not to me, you - you - " She had never wanted to call someone an F-boy so desperately in all her life. And not F as in ferret. And not by spelling the right F word out, or making it a guessing game as she had done with Ronald on the train. She wanted to grab the front of Draco Malfoy's robes, pull his pointy nose level with hers, and scream the word fully formed and perfectly articulated into his face.
But this was something else she couldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing. She was in control of herself, always. She may not know much about the Malfoy family's ridiculous pure blood manners, but she was not some foul-mouthed, gobby cow either.
They each turned sharply as they reached the staircase, parting ways without a farewell as they went to their dormitories. Draco knew to pause, watching her stomp away as he waited for Ronald and Pansy, hoping they'd had success of their own, though different than the success he'd had with Granger.
Yes, their exchange was a success. He'd really gotten to Granger tonight. By the time they'd got to the end of the corridor, she looked almost ready to hit him, and all for mentioning the most outlandish of possibilities, that of the pair of them ever kissing. It was unthinkable, even though, at the moment, in his mind, the very act of dismissing the idea meant he first had to think of it.
She had good teeth now, thank you very much, and her skin...
"Why're you way over here?" It was Ronald, jogging down the corridor, Pansy well behind him. "Was that Hermione just now?"
Draco told him quickly about the near miss they'd had with Hermione and the hidden door before asking Ronald how the experiment with Pansy had unfolded.
"It's early days, early days," Ronald whispered. "She wouldn't let me do anything more than look at her tonight."
Draco was nodding. "Yes, and, how was that?"
Ronald grinned rather foolishly. "Not at all unpleasant."
"Oi, you two had better not be talking about me," Pansy called out.
"Quiet down, Parkinson, or we'll be caught out here past curfew," Ronald said.
"What did you call me?" she demanded.
"Pansy," Ronald corrected himself. "I'll SEE you later, Pansy."
"Yes, I'll LOOK forward to it," she answered.
Draco gagged. "Oh, for stars' sake, you two. Goodnight."
He tugged on Pansy's sleeve, leading her away, to their dungeon. "So what do you think?" Draco asked when they couldn't hear Ronald's footsteps anymore. "Do you think he seems damaged by a backfiring love potion from before he was born?"
Pansy hummed. "Well, he seems fully capable of feeling attraction. Made some truly riveting eyes at me in there."
Draco snorted. "Yeah? Congratulations."
She tossed her hair. "Thank you. But as for the rest of it - the connection he's after," she smiled archly at Draco, "Getting to the bottom of that will take much more intensive research."
Molly Weasley usually came back to the old Prewett estate at the height of springtime. First, she'd meet her Aunt Muriel at the house, and together they'd walk the path through the little birch wood lit with sunshine suffusing through new green leaves, the air fragrant with blossoms and pollens as the plants called to each other. And then, at the end of their walk, they'd be in the ancient family cemetery where Molly's parents were buried, along with her brothers, Fabian and Gideon Prewett. They were laid to rest here, young and without heirs, killed during the war, not quite a year before her sixth child, her lost Ronald, was born.
This year, with all the tumult at the Triwizard Tournament and the relaunching of the Order of the Phoenix, Molly was making her visit late in the autumn, when the leaves of the birch trees swirled brown around her feet and the air was musty with decay. It made for a much more dismal walk, especially since old Muriel was poorly this afternoon and hadn't come along.
On her lonely walk, Molly carried two bouquets of asters clutched in one hand. She glanced over her shoulders as she went. Constant vigilance - that's what they told each other now, though she knew this private cemetery to be a deserted place - even desolate. All the vegetation save the trees had been razed to the ground when Old Uncle Ignatius had burned the estate's fields during the last year he managed the property, the year Fabian and Gideon died. Some of the old tombstones still bore scorch marks from the fire. It was a rash act which most everyone took as a sign that he was succumbing to dementia after the loss of his nephews.
Molly knew better.
She let herself through the low, iron cemetery gate and walked past her ancestors, nodding, speaking some of their names aloud. At her brothers' grave, she laid the flowers on the long, yellowed grass and closed her eyes to pay her respects.
A twig snapped in the trees beyond the fence. Her eyes flew open, her wand drawn.
"Who's there!"
She had meant to use her mother-voice, strong, commanding, and completely sure of herself. Instead, she sounded like herself as a little girl, on the verge of tears of fright.
Besides Muriel, Molly had only ever met one person here in the cemetery. If he had known, somehow, to come again, to come today - oh, and after the way he'd been carrying on at the Hogwarts alumni banquet last month, under the influence of only a little alcohol - stars help her, what would happen if he appeared here now?
There was more snapping and rustling from the undergrowth, and whispering. "She's terrified, mate. We have to let her know it's only us."
"What? She'll give us a proper walloping if she finds us here, skiving off."
"Look at the size of you now. How can you still be afraid of her wallopings?"
"It's childhood trauma. No one ever recovers from that."
She dropped her wand. "George and Fredericton Weasley, show yourselves at once."
Molly's twins came slumping out of the trees, stepping easily over the cemetery fence, each of them carrying a bulging burlap sac. Those blasted Apparation licenses. They hand them out far too young. She took a wide stance and commenced questioning. "What on earth do you think you're doing, out of school skulking around in Aunt Muriel's wood?"
"Potions homework," Fred beamed.
George took it up immediately. "Too right. We're harvesting a few rare ingredients known to grow hardly anywhere in Britain besides our old family lands."
"Yes, we'd gladly sell our birthrights for a mess of extra potions credits during our NEWT year," Fred finished.
Molly scowled. "Severus Snape is now so lax in quality control he sends students into the wilds for ingredients instead of using the stores produced in the Hogwarts greenhouses? This is what the pair of you expect me to believe, is it?"
George forced a laugh. "No, no. Snape didn't send us. It was Sprout."
"Yeah, Sprout," Fred insisted.
But she was waving their stories away like a bad smell. "What is in the bags, boys? Empty them out. Right here."
The twins gawked at each other, motionless.
Molly was using her wand to point now. "I said, right here."
Crestfallen, the twins dumped the contents of the sacs onto their great Aunt Lucretia's grave.
"You see, Mum. Just some pulpy old rootstock no one else would want," Fred said.
"Yeah, but we might be able to make it into something fun to sell in our shop," George added, even as Fred elbowed him hard in the ribs.
Molly crept closer to the pile of foraged roots, lying tangled and muddy at her feet. She was still pointing with her wand, gripping it in a hand that was now shaking. She pushed a root with just the tip of her wand. "Milletus," she said. "You're foraging for Milletus."
George and Fred cringed in unison. "You know it?"
Molly straightened up. "Of course I do. And I know what it's good for as well." She flourished her wand in a full circle around her head, red light and flame exploding from her wand, incinerating the twins' afternoon of hard labour digging deep into the mud, where the land was well-recovered from Uncle Ignatius's fires.
The boys howled.
Fred recovered first. "Mum, you've just torched hundreds of galleons worth of rare, premium love potion substrate!"
"I know what I've done," she called over their voices. "And don't you ever set foot in these woods again."
Harry Potter was pacing, florid with rage in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room. "This whole year of school - it's pointless. Tedious tasks and power struggles. If it was a book I'd skip whole chapters of it and not even be sorry."
Ronald yawned. "I know, mate. But tone it down. You're going off like Draco."
The comparison wrenched a growl out of him. "I've got detention so much I haven't played a lick of quidditch. I constantly reek of murtlap. Hagrid still hasn't turned up. Dumbledore is never around either. It's like we're a bunch of naughty brats locked up at home with the worst babysitter ever, doing nothing."
Hermione looked up from her ancient runes. "Ronald, your father is on the board of governors. Can't he do anything about Umbridge?"
He shrugged. "It's not the governors' doing. It's the minister who sent her here. And as for advice from Dad," he paused, swallowing hard, "I'm probably not supposed to tell you."
Harry and Hermione said nothing, waiting. It wouldn't be long.
"Alright, but don't tell anyone else," he said. "Dad said to stay out of her way. He told Draco she's very powerfully connected at the ministry - more powerfully connected than the minister himself."
Harry blinked. "What does that mean?"
"It means," said Hermione, "that the minister isn't truly in charge of the ministry anymore. There's someone higher up."
Harry stopped pacing, falling into a seat and staring into the fire. "It's him. It's Voldemort. This confirms it. He's already taken over the ministry right under everyone else's noses."
Ronald groaned. "I was afraid that was what it meant." He dropped his head into his hands. "Come on, Dad…"
Hermione closed her textbook. "This is why all the students need to stop fighting among ourselves. Umbridge has been sent here to suppress us and to divide us so we can't fight back. And, of course, to neutralize Harry..."
"Well, she sure hasn't done that. We need to alert the Order, tonight," Harry said. "We need to talk to Sirius."
Ronald and Hermione both flinched. "Harry, you've been reading the paper," Hermione said. "You heard what Draco said about 'dogging' your steps. They're closing in on Sirius. He needs to stay safely hidden for now. We'll try someone else instead."
"Who, like Snape?" Harry spat.
"He's the closest, but if you really can't trust him, we can try - oh, I don't know - maybe Ronald's birth parents," she suggested.
Ronald squirmed in his seat. "They won't do anything that would blow Arthur's cover in the ministry. They're useless for anything else right now."
Harry got to his knees on the hearth. "I'm calling Sirius."
"Harry, no. Umbridge will be watching the fires in all the common rooms," Hermione said, standing up. "But there might be one she's missed."
Harry sat back. "How? Where?"
She sighed. "Five years on and still neither of you have read "Hogwarts: A History." Nevermind. On the fifth floor, there was a room where some unauthorized rites went on, hundreds of years ago, raising a cry among the public which the school's thirtieth headmaster put down by vanishing the room completely."
Ronald elbowed Harry. "Public outcry - the rites must have been something sexy."
"As I was saying," Hermione went on. "As part of an enchanted castle like this, the room re-asserted itself eventually, and it exists now but in a hidden form. And it should be exactly as it was when it was vanished which would mean it has a fireplace - a hidden fireplace."
Ronald was blinking now. Obviously she meant the room he was using to experiment with Pansy Parkinson. He couldn't remember seeing a fireplace there, but that wasn't the kind of thing that had been catching his eye in the room. Not at all.
Harry sighed, turning back to the fire before them. "Sounds like a long shot."
"Harry Potter, don't you touch the fire in this room. If you're that impatient, I'll go to the fifth floor and see about that hidden fireplace right now." She was pulling on her robes. "You sit," she said, pushing Harry into an armchair. "Umbridge is just gagging for an excuse to catch you breaking a rule. Don't step into it."
"Right, I'm coming then," Ronald said.
"No, you have a charms essay to finish," she said. "I didn't spend half the night proofreading your rough draft just so you could leave it undone. Both of you sit. I won't be long."
"You want my cloak?" Harry offered.
She tossed her head. "No, I have nothing to hide."
Ronald pulled his essay into his lap. "Watch yourself, Hermione. It's the Slytherin sixth year prefects on duty tonight. You won't find soft little Draco out there willing to cut you a break. It'll be that great hairy Montague instead."
As she ducked into the portrait hole, she heard Harry say to Ronald, "Honestly, it's like you have no idea how your brother behaves toward other people."
"What? He's not that hard to manage. One good punch to the stomach and he always calms right down for me…"
Draco Malfoy was annoyed. He had been called into service as a prefect on what was supposed to be his night to stay in finishing a charms essay. He had argued but they said it was an emergency. Umbridge had secretly set an alarm on the Gryffindor portrait hole to alert her when anyone had sneaked out after curfew. It had sounded just minutes before, and Umbridge had ordered Montague to get all Slytherin prefect hands on deck, hoping the sneaky Gryffindor would be Harry Potter himself. No matter who it was, Montague had told his prefects in a loud voice on the fifth floor landing, there would be no mercy tonight.
Maybe, Draco thought to himself as Montague sent them off hunting Gryffindors, someone had forgotten that the Slytherin prefects included the brother of Harry Potter's best mate. He had already decided that if he caught Ronald, he'd let him go. But if it was anyone else - Potter, Granger, those Weasley twins, even that harmless Longbottom - he'd do as his father asked and serve Umbridge by handing them over.
He was rounding a corner, nodding at his own good sense and firm resolve when someone came running at him, their face colliding with his chest with a thud and a little cry. The impact set Draco back slightly, but the other person was positively reeling from it, clawing at his arms to keep from falling. When they gained their footing, they looked up into Draco's face in the dim light of the corridor.
It was Granger. He was looking into her face again, as he had done the day he was guarding the door during Ronald and Pansy's first lesson. She was recognizing him, her startled expression twisting into one of terror.
By the time she had overheard Montague's speech about not showing the Gryffindors any mercy, she was already exposed, and now she was caught. As she tried to jerk her arms out of Draco's grip, he held her, keeping her in front of him.
"You let me go, Draco Malfoy," she hissed at him. "This is a trap and it's not fair."
He scoffed. "Nothing's fair at this school anymore, Granger."
She wouldn't accept it, straining against him. "If they take me to Umbridge, she'll torture me with one of those cursed quills, and then you'll have to answer to your brother for it. Don't think he won't find out." She hadn't stopped twisting between his fingers, his hands encircling her wrists like shackles.
She was right. She wasn't just any student roaming out of bounds after hours. She was not just one of Harry Potter's hapless mates. She was Umbridge's particular enemy, a girl who humiliated the old toad in class, over and over again. If Montague found her, this small infraction would warrant severe punishment. She'd be hurt, possibly scarred. Ronald would be furious with him if he didn't help. And more than that, Draco would be ashamed of himself for letting Umbridge have the satisfaction of catching Granger in a rare miscalculated risk.
It wasn't fair, but maybe it could be. Here was Hermione Granger, right under his pointy nose, not mothering him, still smart and strong, but in need of rescue, like a real, feeling person.
"Right," he said, tugging at her arm, heading for the hidden door at the end of the corridor. "They won't find you here."
They stumbled over each other as they broke through the false wall, coming into the room where Ronald and Pansy's table stood askew in the centre of the floor. She yanked her hands free, and he wiped his sweating palms on his trouser legs.
"This is it. This is the vanished room," she said.
He hushed her. In the quiet, they could hear the voices that had been following her getting louder. It was Montague coming along with more of Draco's fellow prefects, their footfalls landing hard on the stone floor of the corridor, closer and closer to the hidden door.
"Someone's just run in there."
'What? Through that wall?"
"It's not a wall," Montague snapped. "Filch warned us about these kinds of things. It must be a door. And if it is Potter who's just gone through it, he'll have hell to pay once we get him cornered."
A stare of alarm passed between Draco and Hermione as they stood between the twin moonbeams the windows were streaming onto the floor. Draco scanned her from head to toe. Even with two of them working at it, there was no time to cast a full-body Disillusionment spell over her before the voices arrived. In a room like this, stripped of every bit of furniture but one of its tables, there was nowhere to hide her. And now the handle visible only from their side of the room was rattling and shaking in the wall.
"What's blocking it?" Montague shouted. "Get back, I know the opening spell. Aloho - "
It happened quickly, mutually, as if they both understood at once the only chance they had to hide her. Maybe the fact that they'd both pictured it in their minds already helped them move through it seamlessly, wordlessly. Draco turned his back to the room's entrance. She took him by the tie, towing him along with her as she walked backward until she felt the wall against her spine. As she moved he flipped the hood of her robe up and over her distinctive hair, and she plunged her fingers into his. Her face was hidden from sight by his head, her jaw tilted, assuming a position which would make it appear from across the room like she was kissing him beneath her hood.
Her pursuers would force their way into the room just to find another slick Malfoy brother snog session.
They came through the door, Montague's spell breaking through with a crash. It was abrupt, loud, shocking in spite of the moments they'd had to prepare for it. Hermione jumped. Draco had closed his arms around her by then, and it felt to him as if she might be about to break, to dart out of the safety of their cover like a skittish animal. His impulse was to hold her more tightly, more thoroughly, and he acted on it. Already in position, he tipped forward ever so slightly and pressed his mouth to hers.
Her lips were hot from running through the corridors, already slightly open as she tried to catch her breath. No chance of that now. She was gasping at the touch of his mouth on hers. The sound was tiny, somehow ecstatic, and without a thought he reached for it, pressing more firmly, more deeply.
He had meant to hold quite still, to move just enough for Montague to accept their ruse. But Draco Malfoy was no longer only pretending to kiss Hermione Granger. He was working at her mouth as passionately as he'd ever kissed anyone before - perhaps more. His heart had already been pounding from the danger they were in, and it was racing madly now as he took her bottom lip, his top lip fitting between hers as she opened to him with another murmured sigh, and he filled every one of her gasps with himself. Her hands were still in his hair, but her fingers were now curved, pressed hard against his scalp as she tipped her head, stretching upward, holding onto him.
"Oi, who's that? Is that you there, Draco?"
He pulled away with the click of a wet seal breaking and he turned his unmistakable profile to his house mates. "Who else would it be?" he snarled. "Now shove off and give us some privacy."
He turned back to her, her breath fast and heavy on his face as he kissed her cheekbone, gently, slowly stamping a path toward her mouth as he waited to be questioned further. He left his eyes open, noting her face, expecting to find her wide-eyed and maybe furious, but her eyes were closed, as if she'd sent her mind somewhere else, away from all of this.
Made sense.
"Right, Malfoy," Montague was saying. "At least show us who you've got there."
"No, I will not," Draco said, pulling slightly away again. "What don't you understand about the concept of privacy, Montague? Be a gentleman and get lost."
He punctuated his command by falling on Hermione's mouth again. She responded more quickly this time, her clearly feminine, clearly not Harry Potter's hands and wrists crossed at the nape of Draco's neck, dragging him down, closer. Draco staggered, bracing himself against the wall with one forearm.
Montague's companion gave a low whistle as Montague coughed. "Right then."
Their footsteps were moving away, some of them with nervous haste, others slow with curiosity. Hermione kept her hold on Draco, with her hands and her mouth, until the voices, the chortling of the Slytherin prefects, faded back into silence.
It was Draco who broke away first, his lips dark and full, his brow furrowed. "You alright?" he asked her.
Hermione nodded, dropping her heels to come down off her tiptoes, breathing out the word, "Yeah." She uncrossed her arms, letting them sink to her sides, laughing softly. "Yeah, no torture for me tonight."
She dipped her head as soon as she said it, as if she'd embarrassed herself by admitting kissing him was preferable to being turned over to Umbridge to slice her own hand open for hours on end.
He smirked, wiping his thumb along her chin, clearing away the glistening dampness barely below her bottom lip. "A compliment indeed. But I've gone and left you all soggy," he said. "Sorry about - all that. No point stopping with half measures though, after we committed so much to our little act. Isn't that right?"
She shrugged, lowering her hood but not trusting herself to say too much yet.
It worried him, his smirk now a frown. "That wasn't your first, was it?"
She raised both her hands, shaking her head. "No. No, it wasn't."
He pressed his hand to his sternum, relieved.
"Why?" she said. "Was it - a mess? Did it feel like a first one?"
He was waving his hands now. "No, not at all. It was," he stopped, choking faintly, "it was nice."
"Nice," she repeated, her voice flat.
"Not - not bad nice," he rushed. "Good nice. I mean - how was my nose? Did it injure you?"
Tremendously grateful for the joke, she let out a nervous laugh. "I survived it."
"Not funny, Granger," he said, smiling anyway. "Did my nose bother you, up that close?"
"It bothers me at any distance," she laughed again.
"Well, no one else has ever mentioned - "
"It worked, alright," she interrupted him. "Your awful Slytherin mates left me alone. I'm safe from Umbridge and that's what matters."
He stood back, out of her space. "It's not all that matters, actually." He looked pained. "I don't suppose you would but - I have to be sure. I have to ask that you not tell Ronald that I - helped you here tonight."
"No, of course I wouldn't," she said, blushing all over again at the thought of telling anyone at all about what they'd just done. "These were extenuating circumstances. There's no need to ever revisit them in any way."
"Right." He was standing in the window's moonbeam now, nodding at his shoes.
She flourished her wand and began winding a Disillusionment spell from her feet to her head. "I'll be off then."
There was no reason for him to stay until she was finished, especially not when she was signalling he should go. He heaved a sigh and strode towards the exit.
"Draco," she said, and he braced himself for a cutting blow, an insult or threat, something normal between them. But what she said was, "Thanks. This room was exactly what I was looking for."