A/N: Am I happy with this chapter? No. Am I going to post it anyway? Yes. Why? Because I worked damn hard on it. Thank you all again for your reviews, they really do make my day! I'm so happy you all enjoy my story, and I hope you enjoy this chapter as well :) Love, CrazyAsACupcake x
Twenty minutes before the Hogwarts Express pulls into King's Cross, Malfoy makes his way back to the Slytherin's compartment. Pansy and Blaise are scowling at each other – clearly they never solved their argument.
Blaise looks up when Malfoy enters. "Where did you go?"
"I was tired." Malfoy drops into the seat opposite Nott – who is still asleep. He kicks him lightly, and Nott grumbles angrily at him. "I couldn't sleep while you two were bickering."
"So you disappeared for the entire train ride?"
"I was asleep; did you expect me to sleepwalk back here?"
"You left me alone with her." Blaise sneers at Pansy, who throws her hands in the air.
"If you really hate being sat with me that much, you could've gotten up and left!" She snaps, her anger showing on her cheeks.
"Why should I have to leave? Why can't you?"
"I'm not the one who has a problem!"
Malfoy pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut. They continue shouting at each other until he can't take it anymore. "What is the problem?" He shouts, making both of them pause. He doesn't miss the way Pansy's eyes flicker to his arm, the way she swallows.
She's afraid of you.
"Pansy is a baby." Blaise glares at her.
"How am I a baby? You're just a jerk!" She fires back.
Malfoy frowns, his question no closer to being answered. "What is the argument about?"
Blaise opens his mouth, but Pansy gets there first, a fire in her eyes. "It started as a joke, but Blaise took it too far, like always!"
"Oh, I took it too far? Did I? You really are a baby!" He fires back.
"I'm not a baby!"
Malfoy accepts he's not going to get a proper answer out of either of them and lets them continue yelling at each other.
When the train pulls into King's Cross, Malfoy makes a silent prayer of thanks to every entity he can think of, as they finally stop screaming. Pansy runs out of the compartment and presses her face against the window, grinning and waving madly when she sees her parents. Malfoy drags his trunk from where it was stowed above his seat, checking to make sure it's shut properly before he picks it up. Theodore Nott finally stirs from his sleep.
"Where's your mother, Draco?" Pansy looks back at him from where she's stood by the window. "Is she not meeting you?"
"I told her not to." He doesn't look at her. "She's not really in the right headspace to be going anywhere, so I told her I'd get to the Manor on my own."
Blaise claps his hand on Malfoy's shoulder. "Tell her Merry Christmas from me."
Malfoy nods, smiling. "I will. And I won't be able to do anything over Christmas, so I won't see you until we go back; I don't want her to be alone."
"You'll owl though, won't you?"
"I don't want to make her think I don't want to be there. Sorry, guys."
Blaise nods solemnly. "I understand. Give her my love."
Nott stretches, then wiggles his brows. "And mine."
Malfoy laughs, almost losing his balance as the train finally stops moving. "I will, Blaise." Nott looks at him in mock offence, but grins soon after.
They get off the train together, and one by one his friends split off to go to their own families. He watches as Pansy and Blaise apologise to each other (after seven hours) before parting ways. He watches Nott run to his mother like a first year, practically jumping into her arms; he probably would have done if he wasn't taller than her. He watches as one by one, they go, with their families, through the barrier into the main train station. He watches Hermione run through, alone, and quickly follows.
They pretend that the other one isn't there, and he looks around to see if any of his friends are hanging around the station. When he seems pleased that no one is there, he jogs the couple of paces between them and falls into step beside her.
"What's the frown for?" He asks and she jumps.
"I just can't see them." She bites on her lower lip and looks around. Her face lights up and she begins running, dragging her suitcase with the broken wheel behind her. She hugs a man with thinning brown hair and kind, crinkled brown eyes, then a woman with long hair that is clipped away from her face. They both smile fondly at her, and Malfoy thinks about turning and walking in the other direction. He thinks about going home, to his mother. He thinks about burying his face into his mothers shoulder as she holds him.
The man looks up at him, then, and the chance to leave is gone.
"You must be Draco." The man has a kind voice, but Malfoy can hear the slight edge. The man holds his hand out, and Malfoy shakes it firmly, smiling a smile he hopes covers the fear in his eyes.
"It's nice to meet you, Mister Granger."
"You can call me Paul, son."
Malfoy freezes. The informality for some reason makes his brain short-circuit. He can't think of a time he's ever addressed an adult by their first name. He can't think of a time he'd been called son.
"Most people call me 'Malfoy', sir."
Mister Granger – Paul – frowns. "Draco is your first name, isn't it?" Malfoy nods, and the man gives a smile. "So I'll call you that, if that's alright with you."
Malfoy finally lets go of his hand, then turns to the woman. "And it's nice to meet you, too, Mrs Granger."
She takes his hand in both of hers, smiling a friendlier smile than her husbands. "Call me Jean."
Malfoy frowns, looking towards Hermione. "Your middle name…"
"How do you know my middle name?" She laughs and he shrugs.
"I'm not as stupid as you like to think I am."
Hermione's dad picks up her strawberry suitcase and turns towards the exit. "We're parked over at Euston. We'll get home at around seven so we can get a takeout if you want – your choice."
Hermione lights up, following him like a puppy. Malfoy can tell she adores him. "Can we get a Chinese? It's been so long!"
"If that's what you want, then sure." Paul looks over his shoulder towards Malfoy. "You okay with a Chinese?"
"I have nothing against the Chinese…" He's suddenly very concerned about what kind of family he's going to be staying with over the holidays.
Hermione laughs, and his cheeks heat up. "As in Chinese food. For dinner."
"Oh," he pauses. "I've never had it."
"We'll just get you what Hermione normally has, then. She's very fussy." Her dad laughs.
"I am not!" She argues, grinning.
"Did you know she didn't eat anything but beans and potato smiley faces for 5 months when she was a kid?"
"Dad!"
He laughs again, and the group falls into a comfortable (well, mainly comfortable) silence. Euston car park is a ten minute walk from Kings Cross, and Malfoy spends most of it staring at the pavement, counting the cracks and avoiding stepping on them. He hopes his silence isn't making him seem unlikable – he doesn't know how to say that he has nothing to say.
When they reach the car, Paul pops the boot open and places Hermione's suitcase in. He then turns and makes a gesture for Malfoy to give him his trunk, which he does. Paul places the trunk next to her suitcase and closes the boot.
Jean and Paul get into the front of the car, and Hermione opens the drivers side passenger door before she notices Malfoy just staring at the car.
"Malfoy," she says, and his head snaps up at her. Her eyes are seem wider than normal in the darkness. "Are you okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be, Granger?" He responds, snapping himself out of whatever trance he was in and reaching for the handle. He slides into the car, thinking to himself that it seems rather small.
"Seatbelt," Hermione murmurs. He doesn't understand, and so she points at the grey strap hanging beside him. He pulls at it, and it becomes longer, much to his amazement. She points at a thing on his other side, and he manages to force the metal buckle into it (after a bit of a struggle). He leans back against the seat. His legs are far too long for this space.
Paul is watching him in the mirror. "Never been in a car before?"
"No, sir." His voice sounds weird. His hands feel cold. He feels sweaty.
Was this a mistake?
"You get travel sick on that train?"
Malfoy shakes his head. He doesn't think so. Was this knot in his stomach from nerves or from the journey? He doesn't know.
This was a mistake.
Paul sets up his TomTom. "We should be back in about 20 minutes. If you feel sick you let me know, I've got bags in the back or I'll pull over. Don't throw up in my car."
"I won't, sir."
"And you can stop with the 'sir'; I'm not your teacher."
"Sorry."
"You don't need to apologise." Paul meets his eye in the mirror. "It's okay, stop panicking."
Malfoy doesn't know how he knows he's panicking. "I'm okay," his mouth feels dry. "Paul."
Malfoy sees the corners of Paul's eyes crinkle in the mirror. "Good. Now, lets get going."
The car peels out of the car park, and Jean begins asking Hermione how the year is going. Hermione is, obviously, happy to talk about how brilliantly she is doing in every lesson. Malfoy's leg is bouncing, and he looks out of the window to watch the scenery flash by (as much as it can 'flash' past in the dark). His nails feel like they're biting into the palm of his hand, and so he places his hands on his knees to try and ground himself.
He looks back out of the window, counting the lampposts as they drive past. Something touches his hand and he flinches, before looking down.
Hermione squeezes his hand with her own. She isn't looking at him, she's still talking to her mum, but her thumb traces circles over his skin. He twists his hand around in her grip, squeezing back, and he sees her lips twitch upwards.
"How's school for you, Draco?" Jean is addressing him now, giving him an opening to join the conversation.
"It's… It's good. It's difficult, at times. But still…good." For some reason he's struggling with making proper sentences. Was speaking always this hard?
"I've been helping him with Potions," Hermione pipes up.
"You struggle with Potions, Draco?" Jean turns in her seat to try and look at him – she's sat directly in front of him, so she has to twist herself awkwardly. He can see that her eyes are green, and bright.
"I don't struggle. I just…" He doesn't know how to explain that he doesn't go to lessons, sometimes. He doesn't know how to explain that he has bigger things than his lessons, bigger things that include helping a man who wants people like their daughter dead.
"He was sick at the beginning of November. He missed a few lessons so I'm helping him catch up. That's how we became friends, actually." Hermione answers for him. It's a half-truth, but sometimes half-truths are better. Sometimes it's nicer to lie to people than hurt them with the truth.
"Yeah," he nods, agreeing with her. "I got stomach flu a bit after my Quidditch match."
Jean twists herself back, so she's now sat properly again. "Oh, Hermione's told us all about Quidditch! What position are you?"
"I'm a seeker; it's my job to catch the Snitch," he laughs, thinking. "I guess without me the game wouldn't end."
Jean nods, and he can tell she doesn't understand, but that doesn't stop her from being interested. "Are you a good player?"
"Oh, definitely." He feels slightly more comfortable to be talking about something he enjoys. He feels less on the spot. "Some would say I'm the best in the year – in the school even."
"Apart from Harry." Hermione adds.
He regards her from the corner of his eye. "You don't honestly believe Potter is better than me?"
"I think you're both great."
"You have to pick one of us."
"I'm not picking sides."
She grins at him, and he hopes it means that she's joking, that he is actually better than Harry at something. He wants her to like him better than Harry – and he knows that's not possible ("He's like a brother to me," she had said all those weeks ago) – so he at least wants her to think he's better at something.
"Don't you think Quidditch sounds so interesting, Paul?" Jean is ignoring them, now. "Sometimes I wish that we'd be able to go and see it."
"It's so boring," Hermione groans. "You're honestly not missing anything."
"It's not boring at all, Mrs Granger." Malfoy looks at Hermione and she looks back at him, and for a second, they just look. For a second, he forgets what he was going to say. For a second, he studies her face and memorises it. For a second, she is all he can see. His face cracks into a smile, at her, for her, and she smiles back.
"It's the most boring thing ever." Her voice is soft, barely more than a whisper.
"It's incredible. You feel totally free, and when the Snitch appears and you dive for it -" He pauses, thinking of the moment his hand wrapped around the golden ball. "It makes you feel alive."
"You only feel like that because you play it. To watch it is tiresome, and it can take forever." She looks away from him, to her mum in the passenger seat. "The Ravenclaw game lasted six hours."
"You didn't even stay for the whole thing."
"It's boring!"
Her mum laughs, then, and catches them both off guard. "Paul, don't they sound like us?"
Malfoy's eyes widen as Paul chuckles, indicating to go down a street on their right. "Just accept that you're going to be going to Quidditch games alone, lad. Believe me, we had this exact argument about football."
"At least with football you know it's only going to be about an hour and a half," Hermione argues. "Quidditch can last for days if they don't catch the Snitch."
"And we don't go to the matches together, she goes with Wea- with Ginny Weasley." He doesn't want them to think they're a couple. He doesn't want them to hate him even more later on. It'll hurt the three of them less if she loses a friend, not a boyfriend.
"And he goes with his girlfriend."
Paul raises his eyebrow, looking at Malfoy through the mirror. "You've got a girlfriend?"
"No, I don't." He shakes his head quickly. "We broke up; I broke up with her." He doesn't know why he has to clarify that he's the one that did the breaking up.
Hermione is staring at him. "You broke up with Pansy?"
"I thought I'd told you?"
"Apparently not."
The car pulls into the paved driveway of a two-story detached house, painted an off-white colour. There's a light on in the front room, the curtains are drawn. Paul gets out of the car to get their suitcases out of the boot, with Jean following to talk to him. Malfoy sits and stares at the house, thinking. It looks so much more inviting than the Manor. He wonders what the inside is like, if this is what he feels like just looking at the exterior.
Hermione squeezes his hand, and he turns to her. She's staring at him again.
"Why didn't you tell me you'd broken up with Pansy?"
He shrugs. "I thought I had."
"Well, you didn't."
"And I'm sorry."
She nods, biting her lip. "When did you break up with her?"
"About a week ago." He frowns. "Why?"
She shakes her head. "No reason." She drops his hand and climbs out of the car.
He follows – or tries to; he can't figure out how to open the door. Jean sees him struggling and comes to his rescue, smiling at him as she holds the door open for him.
"Thank you," he says softly, climbing out. His left leg has fallen asleep, and so he shakes it out as Paul hands him his trunk. "Thank you."
"He's very polite, isn't he?" Paul quips to Hermione, and she giggles.
"I wouldn't know; he's never like that with me." She smirks at Malfoy as he glares at her.
"I am always polite to you," he retorts.
She laughs. "And you're proving your point exceptionally well."
He rolls his eyes and she just smiles wider.
Paul unlocks the front door and they all follow him inside, kicking their shoes off in the entrance hall. Malfoy lets his eyes roam across the walls, at the seemingly hundreds of pictures of Hermione in her childhood, as well as pictures of Paul and Jean together. He stares at one picture to his right; a young, wild-haired, buck-toothed Hermione wears a black hat with two circular ears in front of a castle. She's grinning like anything, a bucket full of popcorn dangling from one of her hands.
"Disney World, 1987." He jumps at the sound of her voice beside him. She's looking fondly at the picture, something twinkling behind her eyes. "I'd give anything to go back."
"To a castle?" He frowns, looking back at the picture. "You live in one."
"It's not just a castle." She smiles, but something about it is sad.
He doesn't understand, but it doesn't matter. He tells himself that if they have the chance when everything is over, he'll take her there.
Paul starts up the stairs, beckoning for Malfoy to follow, which he does. The stairs are carpeted – something Malfoy thinks is weird. All of the stairs in the Manor are polished wood.
When they get to the landing, Paul points to a door directly to the right of the stairs. "That's Hermione's room – you don't go in there."
Malfoy nods, swallowing. Paul seems nice enough, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't hurt Malfoy if he wanted to.
Paul points at the door opposite the stairs. "That's the bathroom, and," he opens the door beside it. "This is your room." Malfoy peers around the door jamb, taking his first look at the guest room of the Granger's home.
The room has light grey walls, with thick grey curtains open at the window. There is a white chest of drawers in the corner, a full-body mirror on the wall directly beside the door, a floor lamp with a white lampshade beside the bed. The bed is a double bed, pushed up so it's against the wall with the door – if anyone opened the door during the night, he would just be able to see them stood in the hallway.
He shuffles in, dropping his trunk on top of the duvet. Jean watches him from the doorway, wringing her hands.
"They're the only green sheets we had," she explains, watching his face. "I hope that's okay."
He hadn't even acknowledged the colour of the bedsheets. They're a pretty pastel green, with tiny white flowers. He smiles, thinking about they had went to the effort to put green sheets on the bed just for him, though they didn't need to. He doesn't just like green.
"It's perfect. All of it." You sound like an idiot. "Thank you."
She smiles, then turns to Paul. "I think it's time for tea, don't you?" She goes downstairs, and Paul goes to follow her before Hermione scowls.
"I can't believe you get a double bed." She whines, staring at the bed with envy.
Her dad laughs. "When you can afford a new bed, you can have a new bed." He starts down the stairs, then turns. "You want…?"
"Chicken curry and rice, please."
He laughs again. "I said you were fussy."
"I am not!" She immediately protests. Malfoy watches the exchange with a tiny smile. He wishes his father would act like this with him.
"Pick something different then."
She opens her mouth, closes it, then scowls.
"That sound good to you, Draco?" Paul turns to him, and it takes a moment for Malfoy to realise he's the one being asked.
"That sounds great, thank you." He wonders if he's too polite.
Paul nods, smiles, then turns to Hermione. "You don't go in this room."
"I won't." She shakes her head quickly, and Paul nods once before going downstairs. She watches Malfoy from the doorway, leaning against the jamb with her arms crossed.
"What?" He frowns.
"Nothing. You just seem…off."
"I'm not off." He snaps the clasps of his trunk open, staring at the contents and wondering whether he should unpack or not. He decides he should, taking the neatly folded clothes out and placing them in the drawers beside the bed.
She's still watching him.
"What's wrong?" She asks from the doorway.
"Nothing."
"Something is."
"Granger," he sighs, turning to face her. "Nothing is wrong. I'm fine. It's all fine."
"You're sure?"
"I'm positive." He takes his pyjamas (green – maybe he does only like the colour green) and drops them on the pillow, then slides his trunk underneath the bed. "Okay?"
She smiles at him. "Okay." She starts down the stairs without making sure he was following her. She knew that he would be.
In their front room, there is a television set (Malfoy doesn't know what one of those is), a navy-blue leather settee and two matching armchairs. There's a low wooden coffee table covered in rings of water stains. An empty pink mug sits on the table. The carpet is blue, the walls are yellow. There's a bay window facing the front garden, with several potted plants and random ornaments decorating the windowsill. There's a wooden mantelpiece, with a mirror hanging above it. The mirror looks terribly out of place in the rest of the room.
He stands there awkwardly. He doesn't know if he's allowed to sit, or if everyone has a specific seat. Hermione is scanning through a pile of boxes underneath the television set, and she pulls one of them out.
"This is the one with the song we were listening to." She gestures for him to take a seat, and so he does, falling onto one end of the sofa. "We can watch it now or later."
Paul comes in from the next room over, sorting his coat out. "We're going for the Chinese now. We'll be probably half an hour."
Hermione nods, popping open the box she's holding. "Can you get me a fortune cookie?"
"If I don't forget."
She smiles at him, before slotting a thick, black rectangle into a machine. She turns the television on, and the screen comes to life, the title of the movie floating on in a cloud of bubbles. Paul groans.
"You're not watching this rubbish, are you?"
Malfoy looks at him over the back of the sofa. "It's rubbish?"
"Malfoy's never seen it," Hermione explains, pressing the play button on the machine.
"Ah," Paul nods. "She's only making you watch it because it's her favourite movie. You're allowed to say no."
"I don't mind," Malfoy smiles at Hermione, and she looks away from him, her cheeks heating up. Jean comes in, pulling her coat on. Paul smiles at her.
"Anyway, we're going." Paul opens the front door. "Don't do anything stupid."
"Don't worry, we won't," Hermione mumbles. She doesn't turn to say bye. Malfoy does, giving a slight wave before they shut the door.
She moves to the sofa and drops into the seat on the other side, her feet curled under her.
For a moment, he watches her. The way she tucks her hair behind her ears, the way she leans her cheek on her hand, the way her eyes sparkle as she watches the mermaids swim about on the screen. The way she smirks when she knows he's watching her.
He turns to the television.
"I always fancied him," Hermione murmurs when Prince Eric comes on screen for the first time. Malfoy feels a pang of jealousy towards the cartoon. "I think it's cause he's a prince."
"Why would you like someone just because they're a prince?" He asks, watching the way Ariel watches Eric.
"Because they're supposed to save you."