Disclaimer: I feel lazy to think up of something witty, so all I can say that is J. is brilliant, and she gets the luxury to write in a hotel room and sign off on a statue bust. I'm just - you know, writing, here...
Hermione got out of bed extremely early, making it down to the common room where there was nobody. She flicked her wand absent-mindedly, not noticing that there was still wisps of smoke curling out of the fireplace when the flames came licking upwards again, warming up the freezing room. She had not slept much, and when she eventually did, she woke up not too long after, and couldn't get herself to stay in bed any longer. In her mind, what Professor McGonagall had said was whirling around, making her feel uneasy and puzzled.
She was uneasy about having to see Draco Malfoy again during patrol, and wondered how to even be friends with him, given the way he was mocking her and glaring at her and throwing her dead looks. She felt an embarrassed flush creep up her neck as she remembered how the tears were flowing fast and furiously down her face when she heard him insult her that night Corrinne Whitemayer tried to attack her. He was so infuriating! She was trying her best to diffuse the situation and in a way, saved him from being hexed into oblivion by Corrinne.
And then suddenly he was all heroic and saved her in return from Corrinne's wild attack! Hermione raised her eyebrows as she recalled the scene. The way he gripped her arm as he pulled Corrinne off her had been so ferocious she had to wrangle her arm out of his grasp – but, it felt...
Then he had called her a Mudblood. After she was starting to wonder if his father's death had actually instilled some basic morals in him. It totally tore her apart for some reason; she just felt like – everything was lost. That subtle build-up to finding a bit of decency in Draco Malfoy had just disappeared into thin air with that one word. That hope to trying to make her task easier, perhaps. Or maybe it was just a hope that Draco Malfoy would stop being such a freak. Oh I don't know! She breathed hard. And the way he looked – rather – horrified, when she had started to tear...
Sighing, Hermione leant back in an armchair. Wrenching her thoughts away from the look on Draco Malfoy's face, she tried to think back to what happened last night again. What made her puzzled was why Professor Dumbledore was willing to let Draco Malfoy remain in the school grounds, and why he was not around in the dead of the night, asking Professor McGonagall to explain it to them at that time instead! She bit her lip. That was certainly odd.
"Hermione?"
She got up and saw Harry walking down, dragging along a half-asleep Ron, ginger hair all tousled. Hermione couldn't resist grinning. "Breakfast?"
"Yeah sure, and some water to wake him up, how about that?"
Upon seeing Hermione raise her wand with a wicked grin through his half-closed eyes, Ron immediately opened them and whipped out his wand in reaction. "Don't you dare!" he warned.
Hermione tucked her wand back into her robes. "That did the job."
Harry grinned back at her, while Ron made a growling noise.
The trio made their way to the Great Hall, making small talk to distract themselves from the night before. None of them really felt like discussing it, it seemed. However, the distraction couldn't last for long. Just before they turned the corner towards the Great Hall, a familiar tuft of silver-blond appeared, and Hermione gasped.
Draco Malfoy was walking towards them with his usual gang, Pansy Parkinson, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, minus Blaise Zabini, who had nursed a severe flu and cough on the day he arrived at the Hogwarts station, and was whisked away (rather reluctantly) into quarantine, and had remained at the Hospital Wing since then. Still, the sight of Draco Malfoy alone made Harry, Ron and Hermione's hearts thump a beat faster, and Harry tried not to shoot a glare at Draco.
As they passed by, they heard a silky voice mutter, "Didn't sleep well, Potter? Too many sweet dreams with... the Dark Lord?"
Harry spun around, only remaining at his spot because Ron and Hermione had gripped his robes and were struggling to restrain him as his green eyes sparkled angrily. His lips were trembling, as though afraid that if he opened them, the wrong words would spill out.
"What's wrong, Potter? Lost your tongue?" Draco smirked, looking over his shoulder. Then he stopped walking, turned around, his sneer dripping off the edge of his lips. The others had stopped walking as well, Crabbe and Goyle trying to imitate Draco's curled lip in futility, while Pansy merely had an impatient look on her face. "Or perhaps, you're still stuck speaking Parseltongue in your dreams?"
"Malfoy!" warned Hermione, her face pale as her nails bit into Harry's shoulder. Harry made a rather explosive-sounding noise.
"I thought you could do better, Granger, than just giving me that puppy-eyed look, are you in love with me?" said Draco, mockingly, with his arms folded. Hermione's eyes flashed, but he seemed to enjoy it even more, smirking fiercely. "Silence means consent you know? But – I don't think I go for – Mudbloods."
Harry nearly lost control and broke out of Ron's and Hermione's grip, but Hermione was quicker and nicked the tip of his collar, jerking Harry back. She had spun around to grab Ron's hand as well, because he looked like he was about to charge at Draco himself. Then, she dragged the two kicking boys down the corridor to the Great Hall. Harry choked, and Ron grew purple, but she ignored them, and tried to ignore the mocking laughter of Draco Malfoy, and his two male cronies. She could barely hear Pansy's bored voice saying, "Let's go, the breakfast smell is still getting to me, it stinks," before she couldn't bear it any more and let her grip on the two boys slip, panting heavily.
"I didn't know you were so bloody strong, Hermione!" gasped Ron, grabbing at his throat and heaving in great gasps of air. "Why didn't you let me just..."
"Kill that bloody ferret!" snarled Harry, turning upon a breathless Hermione while massaging his throat. "You just let him..."
"Harry James Potter, you're the one who asked me to make friends with that 'bloody ferret', if you still recall!" retorted Hermione, glaring back at him. Harry suddenly felt like he had lost that argument straight down, and flushed a deep red.
"What's gotten into him today?" demanded Ron, as they entered the hall, trying not to look conspicuous with their dishevelled selves and breathless pants. "He's been so stony ever since he entered school, and then suddenly he's totally back to being that bloody..."
They fell into their seats, trying to catch their breaths. Ginny, who was one of the few early Gryffindors, shot them a raised eyebrow. Hermione shook her head, and Harry shot a quick look at her, smiled weakly, and then grabbed a piece of toast to stuff into his mouth before he could release a string of expletives to add onto Ron's sentence.
"It is really really weird," muttered Hermione, reaching for the jam and toast. "One moment he looks really angry and there's like this whole lot of agony in him. Next, he's like a gargoyle, all cold and expressionless. Now, he's completely back to himself again, and particularly snippy, don't you think?"
Harry made a noise that was somewhat a mix of a growl and an exasperated gurgle. Hermione dipped her spreading knife into the jam jar, but her mind was on something else. Silence means consent. She couldn't help feeling really enraged herself. Just because he was such a good-looking freak, it didn't mean that he could drop these lines as if the world would be enamoured with such a devil like him. She didn't really see how she could continue to patrol with him later if he had shot her such a low-down remark, with insult added to that derogatory word that couldn't seem to stop spilling out of his mouth. But when she saw Harry's flushed face as he stuffed the final bit of toast into his mouth, she didn't feel like waving the white flag yet. There were Harry's parents, Sirius, Neville's parents... thinking about parents, Hermione couldn't help wondering, doesn't Draco Malfoy...
She shook off the thought as it came to her mind. He didn't want sympathy, right? And her eyes narrowed as she thought of what a bloody, insufferable prat he was. She grumbled a bit under her breath, then suddenly her thoughts were snapped back to reality when something was pulled out of her grip.
"Hermione?"
"What?" she demanded, annoyed, trying to grab back her spreading knife.
Ron pointed to her fingers, with an amused look on his face. Hermione turned her gaze to her jam-covered fingers, and gave an exasperated sigh, before putting her toast into her mouth, her tongue swirling over her fingers to lick off the sticky jam. Right now, she thought, I really need a plan with someone as complex as Draco Malfoy.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Draco twirled his quill around his fingers as Professor Slughorn rambled on about the instructions of the Dacedyl Potion in that infuriatingly pompous way of his. Draco felt an urge to leap forward and give those bloody walrus moustache curls a big twist, but kept himself from engaging in such childish acts. Rolling his eyes, he focused them back onto the quill between his fingers. He felt a sudden ache in his left forearm, and tried to keep himself from wincing. There was a lot in his mind, but he had to keep them from surfacing, or else – there'd be consequences.
"Mr Malfoy, you are putting too much of the Wrackle Root into the cauldron," boomed Professor Slughorn, severely, as he whipped his wand over Draco's cauldron. To his surprise, the blond-haired boy gave him a smirk and whipped his own wand over, fishing out the excess Root. "I'm perfectly capable of handling my own potion, Professor," remarked Draco, his eyes glinting.
"Why, yes, of course," muttered Professor Slughorn, and he turned over, a little too quickly, to look at Crabbe's cauldron, which was smouldering and releasing a rather acrid smell that made Crabbe's fat face turn green. Draco's eyes narrowed. What did he mean by that? Then he scowled rather furiously, turning back to his cauldron.
He couldn't help feeling that someone was watching him across the room. He lifted his head up a little, and cast a quick glance over – to the Gryffindor tables. The movement was swift – a flick of brown hair, and Hermione Granger was studiously chopping up her Wrackle Roots.
She was watching me?
Draco felt his insides burn. He was starting to get really infuriated with Granger. She should just go back to being Potter's sidekick and punching the hell out of me, than trying to be this nice little girl trying to save this sick little boy... He frowned in disgust. Sick little boy. He felt a twisted smile creeping up at the edge of his lips. Sick all right. I must be sick to think Granger would really give a bat's eye about me.
He felt her eyes on him again, as he bent over his cauldron.
Really sick.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
That night, he really couldn't sleep.
Not that he could sleep well on any night, but this night, the dreams were unfurling on him, fast and furious –
"Please..." It was Lucius Malfoy's sad, defeated voice once again, floating in the mist. Draco reached out, trying to clear the mist, but there was no face, only the whispers of his father's voice echoing around him. "Please..."
"Please take care of your mother..."
The last words Lucius Malfoy uttered as he left the house that night. Draco didn't take that much to heart. It was usual; his father going away on a mission for the Dark Lord. It was acceptable, normal, routine. But the way he had uttered it had escaped Draco's thoughts till now, as he heard the wind blow that heart-rending word around again. "Please..."
"Please!" It was higher-pitched now, more desperate, more devastated. His mother. "Please, I beg of you, not my son! You took away my husband, not my son!" It ended with a screech, and a shuddering cry. Draco's arms were more flailing now than trying to push aside the mist. There was a force pushing him backwards, hard and strong.
"Help me..." he whispered, feeling like all the energy in him had been sucked out. All the happiness. The mist was slowly turning dark. The Dementors, he thought, his heart thumping faster and faster by the minute. They're going to kiss me.
"I am Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy..."
"Son, I entrust you this... open it when you should..."
"But how do I know when I should?"
"You will. Not now."
"But..."
"Please take care of your mother."
Draco could feel the mist choking him. Gimlet-like eyes appeared above him, causing him to gasp. The black mist was swirling around him, enveloping him, it was cold, painful, breathless, gone...
"Expecto Patronum!"
Dissipation!
He could barely make it out, a figure in front of him, bounding towards him as the black mist was chased away by a white spirit – a bouncy creature, lolling its tongue out – but the figure in front of him was becoming clearer, she looked – yes, she – almost looked like...
"Help me..."
Draco sat up straight in his bed, beads of perspiration dotting his face. Panting heavily, he Accio-ed a glass of water to him, and drank in gulps. When he finally set down his glass, his eyebrows knotted together. Something in his dream...
I entrust this to you...
How could he have forgotten? Draco's eyes lit up, and he began to pull out his suitcase from under his bed, stealthily but quickly. He ran a roving eye over the dormitory, and seemed content with the snores that arose from each bed. Then he clicked his suitcase open.
In the pocket of one of the compartments, Draco unzipped it and took out a small little piece of parchment, sealed tight with the Malfoy seal. He had been very curious when had received it from his father just before he had left on the mission, but after a while, he had merely tucked it in that corner and forgot all about it, since he was not to open it until somehow he should be expected to do so.
Now that Lucius was dead, shouldn't he...?
With fingers trembling a little, Draco carefully cut the seal with a light from his wand, and then unfolded the parchment gently.
On it, was his father's familiar cursive writing, sharp yet beautifully curled at each end.
Draco felt his eyes mist a little, and then gritted his teeth.
Two, two, and three strides,
Cuts across him, a magic that divides.
A labyrinth of secrets, a ring of truth,
Keeps his power, keeps him aloof.
All that I know I pen with fear
For soon he will make me disappear.
Draco stared at the words in bewilderment. What did his father mean? Who was the him that Lucius was referring to? What was this about secrets and the truth?
Suddenly, it occurred to him, while re-reading the words. He stopped at the last line.
For soon he will make me disappear.
Draco flinched. The light in his wand extinguished.
With parchment in hand, he slipped out of bed.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Harry couldn't sleep; he kept turning from left to right; his scar was burning.
There was always something wrong when his scar was burning.
Intuition washing over him, he gingerly pulled out the Marauder's Map from a compartment in his suitcase.
"Lumos," he whispered, and a faint light sparked out of his wand.
His eyes widened.
Draco Malfoy was wandering about in the corridors at one in the morning. Definitely not a good sign. Harry stared harder, and gaped as he saw the dot of Draco Malfoy sidle into the office of Professor Severus Snape.
Harry crumpled the Map back into his suitcase, his eyes now plunged back into darkness.
There was a lot to Draco Malfoy than it seemed. And Severus Snape.
And he was going to find out.