Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, nor anything affiliated with it

Draco's POV

I sit on a large rock staring out upon the water, the soft breeze blowing through my hair. It's not too chilly even though it's mid-March. The air has the kind of warmth to it that you usually experience before a large thunderstorm and the dark storm clouds in the distance probably mean ones coming. The clouds have a really nice hue to them though, they're a kind of purple and orange mix due to the setting sun. I turn back stare at my reflection in the lake and it stares back at me.

Hermione and I are doing okay at the moment, but I feel kind of weird now that we aren't really dating. There wasn't really that much of a difference in how we treated each other once we were dating, but it felt less constricting when we were. Now I don't know if how I act or how I treat her is overstepping it a little bit and I don't want to alienate her either. The stress of that was getting a bit much so I decided to take a walk instead of hanging around with our friends this evening.

Classes were okay today; Ron and I managed to get a pretty good mark on one of our joint projects, just a handful of marks behind Hermione and Pansy. I smirk to myself as I remember the drama that happened when we found out that a) Ron and I were fairly civilized with each other and got along pretty well considering our history and b) Ron and Pansy were somewhat of an item.

I know Hermione is finding it quite weird and probably thinks there is something wrong with her old best friend. Sometimes she pesters me about what he and I do when we're not doing school work but just hanging around. We don't actually DO much, we mostly just talk about our past and try to explain our perspectives on how we treated each other. A couple of times though, Ron asked about how Pansy used to be and little things like her likes and dislikes. Nothing too much, though sometimes I couldn't answer some of them, but I'm still shocked I didn't see the whole thing coming in the first place.

The storm's getting closer now and the wind has picked up. You can see it whip across the now grey water, creating ripples and tiny little waves. It's like a miniature ocean and it seems to be foreboding. I didn't expect it to come this quickly, but I don't quite feel like leaving yet. I can feel my hair getting messed up a bit, but I don't really care about it. A couple of years ago maybe, but back then I was an arrogant git whose main goal was to look like perfection. I still care a bit, but not as much, and it's much more natural now than it was back then.

I can see the water, not too far out, starting to ripple and become distorted, almost fuzzy. I sigh realizing that it means that the rain has started to fall and will reach me soon. I transfigure my relatively light cloak into a heavier travelling cloak and cast a spell to prevent it from getting wet. I then stand up and head back to the castle so I'm not stuck out here for too long in the rain. Though I admire nature, Hermione is the one who loves the rain enough to get drenched, not me.

I'm about a minute to two from the main doors when the rain reaches me, starting with just a drizzle thankfully. I pull the hood of the cloak around me head to cover it for the little stretch I still have to walk. When I finally arrive at the doors and get inside, I transfigure my cloak back into the lighter version in case I forget later on and think I've misplaced it instead. It also makes it lighter and much easier to climb the stairs up to our dorm room.

When I get up, I see that Hermione isn't on the couch, but it isn't to unreasonable for her to have gone to bed early. Then I realize that she's probably on patrol tonight. I climb up yet another flight of stairs, though thankfully this set does not move, and enter my room. For the second time this week however, I grasped the handle a little too tightly and managed to cut my hand once again on the emerald coloured vines woven into it. I sigh before cast a quick healing spell on the bleeding area before sitting down to do a little bit of homework.

I start one of my charms essays and I'm about a quarter of the way through it when I realize that I can't really concentrate anymore. Before putting my quill back and leaning back in my chair, I carefully roll up the sheet of parchment and place it in my desk drawer. The sound of the rain hitting my window is quite loud and I cast a muffliato on it so that it doesn't bother me anymore. I get up and stretch a little bit, thankful that I can actually do that a little easier now without needing crutches. I don't really feel like doing anything tonight so I go get dressed into my pyjamas and crawl into my bed to sleep. Unfortunately it doesn't come as easily as it does nowadays. I easily spend two hours just tossing and turning before finally falling asleep around midnight.

I'm not even sure if I actually fell asleep, I felt like I was swimming in and out of consciousness and I wasn't really aware of my surroundings at all. One moment it would feel like I was drowning, the next like I was falling, then I'd be still and calm, the next I'm in the middle of the woods and running for my life. I couldn't tell what was reality and what was a dream. Eventually around 3 am, a clap of thunder woke me up and I bolted upright. I can see the lighting striking from outside, casting streaks of light in the shadows of my room. I guess I forgot to close the curtains before going to bed.

I try to lie back down, but I just feel really uncomfortable when I do. I feel really restless and I fight the urge to scream in frustration. I keep tossing and turning which makes feel really warm so I force myself to get up. It's obvious I'm not likely to get much sleep by just staying in bed. I might as well try to tire myself out for a bit. I get out from under my now completely messed up covers and use a quick charm to straighten them out. I then grab my cloak from earlier and transfigure it once more to be a heavier travelling cloak.

I walk down to the portrait and put on a pair of shoes. I exit into the hallway and feel so awkward. As Head Boy I won't get in trouble for being in the hallway past curfew, but I don't want to get in trouble with Filch either way. I'm trying to figure out where to go before I'm exposed by Ms. Norris when I'm suddenly filled with an urge to go to the Astronomy tower. I'm not quite sure why, but I hope there's a good reason behind the gut feeling I'm getting.

I set of towards the tower and pull the hood over my head so I'm not as recognizable from my very pale, blonde, hair. Most of the hallways leading to the tower don't have windows and they can be quite chilly as well as a bit chilly, however there are spells that prevent precipitation from coming through so thankfully I don't get wet. I finally reach the base of the tower and climb up the stairs till the top. When I reach the top I immediately see why I felt the need to come up here and I'm so glad I chose to follow my gut instinct.

Near the edge of the tower, knees tucked up to her chest and leaning against a pillar, is Hermione. She appears to be sleeping, but seems to be very still. I rush over and quickly see if she's all right. Her skin is ice cold and I panic for a moment before realizing that I can see her chest rising and falling. Good, it means that she's breathing. I'm mad at myself for not checking to see if she was in her room when I didn't see her earlier. I'm also confused as to why she'd come up here and just fall asleep. She probably didn't choose to though, she was probably just really tired.

I try to figure out what to do next. The charms around most of Hogwarts prevented her from getting wet from the thunderstorm, but she is quite cold. I cast a small warming charm on her so that she doesn't get too cold and I notice her stir a little bit in her sleep. I don't think it will be necessary to take her to the Hospital Wing and I'd be quite reluctant to go back there anyway. I decide to carry her since I'm scared I may drop her if I levitate her and we're caught by Filch.

I bend down and gather her in my arms before standing up on very shaky legs. I lean backwards against the wall and take a deep breath to try and steady myself. This may prove to be more difficult than I thought.

I had completely forgotten about my legs being kind of useless. I groan and grit my teeth as I push off of the safety of the wall. I walk as steadily, but as quickly as possible to the other side of the tower. I all but stumble into the other wall and try not to let myself collapse like I've done in the past. The pain isn't too bad, what's worse is the uncertainty of whether or not I'm going to fall and drop Hermione. She's so peaceful now and I don't want to wake her up, but I can't leave her here.

Now for the harder part, getting down the stairs of the tower. The steps aren't exactly the largest and I can't see as well while I'm carrying Hermione. Not to mention my arms are starting to burn a little now. I use a bit of wandless magic, which is extremely difficult but also very helpful in battle, to summon my wand into my hand. Once I've gripped it properly, I cast a lumos so that I can see a bit of what's ahead of me. I then lean against the wall for support and shift down the stairs, trying to keep my balance and see what's ahead.

By the time I get to the bottom, my arms feel like lead and I'm breathing rather heavily. It's a little embarrassing since it wasn't that far, but right now I really don't care. Hermione is somewhat heavier than she looks and even if she wasn't, carrying a person is tiring and not exactly effortless.

I wearily transfigure a nearby torch lamp into a chair so I can rest for a bit without putting Hermione down. I sit and rest for a couple of minutes before transfiguring the chair back into a torch lamp. I then head back to our dorm, repeating the transfiguring process a couple of times on the way. It takes me awhile and I must have spent almost an hour outside of our room doing all of this.

I'm just very grateful that I wasn't caught by Filch at any point. Hermione stirs a little bit every now and then, but she never properly wakes up and I'm glad she didn't; it would have been very awkward if she did. The rational side of me is saying I should just relent and use magic to levitate her, but there is another side to me that is being stubborn and telling me to finish what I started. I guess that would be Hermione's Gryffindor influence.

When I finally reach the portrait to our dorm I'm overcome with a sense of relief. Then I realize that we finally switched the password yesterday and in my tired state I cannot remember it. Drat. I try to think about why we chose it, because I know there was a good reason. I can't even remember the conversation surrounding it now. It's on the tip of my tongue, but it just isn't quite there. If only I had a Pensieve right now.

When I look down at Hermione again I remember why we chose it, and from there, the actual password. It was 'fuzz ball'. The way to remember it was by looking at our clothes. The ferrets we got from George are great, but they do shed fur around the whole place and it's been getting on our clothes.

I say the password and it opens for me, or rather, us. I climb in rather shakily and struggle to get up the stairs to her room. I use her hand to open her room since I can't do it myself due to the privacy wards on the rooms. I lean on the door to open it fully and carefully place Hermione, still fully clothed, on the bed. I pull the sheets out from under her and pull them up till they reach her shoulders.

I suddenly feel really sleepy and I head back towards my room. I barely reach my bed before collapsing on it, still wearing my heavy travelling cloak. This time I dream of snow and fairies all the way till morning.

Author's Note: Next chapter should be up by Wednesday, maybe Thursday, I just left the draft in school but I've typed out a decent portion of it. I'm going to start a playlist exclusively for the songs in this fic called "AS,SE,TMM playlist" under the username of Pokey_314 like before. I know the last chapter was technically two point of view sections and could have been split into two, but I wanted to put it up as one so that it would make more sense and details would still be fresh in your head. I realized that in the previous chapter I had Draco running without any mention whatsoever of his crutches, so I made a little edit there recently. Basically, he stopped using crutches a couple days before the dance, but he still has trouble running and has a weird limp with it. I've been keeping an eye on my review count and was wondering if we could possibly make it to 20 reviews by the time I post chapter 48? Pretty please? I love hearing from you and feedback is always welcome! Thanks for the support and I hope you all have a great week, till next time!