Chapter 13-Draco said what?!

~*~ This took so long to get up and I apologise profusely and hope that you can all forgive me. This chapter is fairly long so it should make up for it a little. I love this chapter as…well you'll see! I can't believe the amount of reviews I got for chapter 12 and I thank every single one of you a thousand times over. I thank you one of those times in the thankyous at the end. Enjoy!

~*~

***

Nicolas sighed, frustrated. Both Draco and Hermione looked questioningly at him. He focused his attention on Hermione and tried to ignore the sullen and icy boy.

"So Hermione." He began keen to show off his good English, "are you feeling any better?"

Hermione gave him a polite smile.

"A little, thankyou." All three descended once more into a distinctly uncomfortable silence. Hermione groaned and flopped back against her pillows. This had been going on for two days now. Grandmere refused to let Hermione out of bed just yet and both Nicolas and Draco had hardly left her side for the entire time. She basically had to force them to go and eat and sleep in their own beds. Neither one would leave the other alone with her so she hadn't had a chance to talk to Draco about their situation and when and how they were going back to Hogwarts. She was becoming really worried for Harry and Ron and felt guilty simply lying in bed all day. At least tomorrow she would be allowed up and she would have to find some time to get Draco alone. She glanced at Nicolas and he stared intently back, 'what's with this guy?' Hermione wondered. When she had woken up two days ago Draco and Nicolas had been fighting. She had lain still and pretended to be asleep while listening to them, and what she had heard… well she didn't want to think about it.

***

Draco wrenched his eyes away from Hermione and glared at Nicolas. 'Couldn't this guy take a hint? It was so obvious he was making Hermione uncomfortable and the little warning Draco had given him should have given him some idea he was less than welcome…

***

~Flashback~

Nicolas poked his head round the door and smiled. Finally he had Hermione to himself. That little boy had done nothing but sit by her bedside all day and Nicolas didn't want him near 'his' Hermione. He had decided the day before that he would make her love him. It would be oh so simple; he had done it many times before. Chicks loved his unruly hair, dark handsome looks and sexy French accent. This young girl knew nothing of love she is so naïve! Nicolas found seducing girls as a sort of hobby. He would make them love him and want to go the whole way then dump them. It never occurred to him that it was wrong, he was, after all, doing them a favour. For a few days they thought that the sexiest man alive wanted them a feeling they would probably never get again. He smiled softly and went over to the bed. He was about to reach out and touch Hermione's flawless face when a voice spoke up from a dark corner.

"What do you think you are doing?" it hissed menacingly. Nicolas sighed. He had been wrong her little body guard was there after all.

"I have come to speak to Hermione." He snapped, frustrated.

"Can't you see she is asleep? Come back later."

"I want to speak to her now!" Nicolas whined like a petulant child.

Draco's eyes hardened and he looked the boy over. He had noticed him looking at Hermione with obvious longing all morning and he would not let this French punk ruin things between the Gryffindor and himself. Draco put on a false tone of nonchalantly and said:

"What do you want to talk about?"

"I was going to inform her that we were now dating." Nicolas smirked enjoying Draco's obvious efforts to keep hold of his temper.

Draco spluttered as if he was choking and glared at the other boy.

"You don't inform someone if you are dating you ask them to date you!"

"Maybe in your world." Draco jumped and looked at Nicolas thinking maybe he meant in the magical world but he soon decided he didn't know anything about their secret.

"Whatever," Draco was becoming quite adept at muggle speech, "just leave her alone for now, she is exhausted and she needs her sleep."

"She is mine, just remember that." Nicolas hissed leaning in close to Draco.

"SHE IS NOT YOURS!" Draco exploded, "She is her own and if she belongs to anyone at the moment it is me as I have saved her life on a number of occasions." He added proudly.

"Stop your shouting. You are just a boy, a beautiful creature like that needs a man and you don't qualify."

"Stay away from her." Draco snarled.

"I will do no such thing. In fact I will strive to do the opposite." Nicolas smirked and flounced out of the room.

"Son of a …" Draco murmured returning to his corner and Hermione who had listened to the entire exchange clenched her eyes shut and resolutely whished this wasn't happening to her.

End of flashback

***

Draco had finally had enough he turned to Nicolas.

"Look, will you step outside for a minute? Hermione and I have things to discuss."

Nicolas was about to object but Hermione added:

"Please Nicolas, just for a minute?" he silently nodded and glared at Draco who shot him a very triumphant look.

When the French boy had left Hermione looked at Draco expectantly and he stared blankly back at her.

"So…?" she prompted

"Hmm?... oh yeah. When do you think you will be well enough to try to get back to Hogwarts?"

"Soon, I hope it's just that Grandmere won't let me go just yet."

Draco's temper flared up instantly at Hermione calling the old woman grandmere.

"I'm beginning to think that you like just lying there having people wait hand and foot on you. There are people's lives at stake here Hermione and you're content to flirt with Nicolas and trespass on good people's hospitality longer than necessary."

"That's not fair, Draco you know that Harry and Ron mean more to me than anything and I would rather die than see them suffer!"

This did nothing to soothe his annoyance and in fact it only ignited it further.

"Oh so now all you want is to see boy wonder and his little Weasley sidekick."

"That's enough!" Hermione shouted tears springing unbidden to her eyes, "don't you dare insult Harry or Ron after all they have done. They are kind and sweet and everybody likes them because they have such big hearts, something you wouldn't know about!"

"Blah, Blah, Blah hearts, kindness and all that rubbish don't matter now, Granger! We have to fight! We're not going to defeat Voldemort by telling him that his robes really bring out the colour in his eyes!" Draco snapped, reverting in his anger to her old nickname.

"You're wrong! Voldemort doesn't understand love or anything good and that is how we have to defeat him. We don't have magic and he would defeat us easily with that anyway and we can't physically fight him so we have to hit him with something else."

"Great!" Draco said sarcastically, "you take the six foot red rose and I'll take the giant box of chocolates and we'll beat him senseless with Valentines Day merchandise." He laughed cruelly and Hermione flinched.

"That's not what I meant." She whispered but Draco wasn't listening.

"Look, I don't care just let me know when you've had enough of basking in the false attentions of a big prat!" he stormed out and Hermione rolled onto her side and sobbed into her pillow.

***

About five minutes later the door opened quietly and Nicolas slipped in. He smiled as he saw her shaking shoulders and heard her heart wrenching cries. 'Perfect' he thought, damsels in distress were his speciality. He sat on the edge of her bed and stroked her hair gently. She jumped at his touch and looked up at him.

"Wha…?" she began but he silenced her by placing a finger on her lips.

"Shhh." He said "Tell me what happened." He was very taken aback when her watery eyes hardened and she snapped

"No!" at him.

That had never happened before! Oh well he enjoyed a challenge. He changed tack and decided to hit her with the big one.

"Je vous aime quand vous agissez dur!" He knew it was perhaps a little soon to say things like this but she could be gone in a few days and he never lost a girl.

Hermione didn't really listen but she recognised a few words. 'Je vous aime!' that was what Draco had said to her before he stormed out.

"What did you say?" she asked nonchalantly.

Nicolas grinned glad that she was interested.

"I said I loved you when you acted tough."

Hermione's eyes nearly bugged out and she felt faint.

"And the Je vous aime bit was…?"

Nicolas smiled even wider.

"I love you." He whispered huskily in her ear.

Hermione gave a small scream and jumped out of the bed. 'Draco had said he loved her?' she raced to the door and out into the corridor. She had to find him.

Nicolas flopped back onto the bed and moodily plucked at the threads of the bed clothes. 'Things weren't going as planned. 

***

~*~ Yeah! Will Draco and Hermione finally get together? Only I know the answer so I hope you all tune in next time to find out! My thankyous are as follows:

hazeleyez: You are so sweet and I'm so happy it is one of your favourites.

Stephanie: Interesting just about sums it up! Thankyou.

Cookie" Thankyou very much!

JudgeDP: I laughed so much over your review and I agree with you 100%! Thankyou as always.

Kristina: Your review meant so much to me, that is so sweet! Thankyou so very, very much.

Strife21: Wow your review was pretty speccy and it was great to get such a nice long one. In answer to your question yes and it was pretty hard to do! Don't worry about missing chapter 11 it wasn't up very long before I put chapter 12 up.

VanillaLily: Thankyoiu so much for saying so.

American-honey: Thank you so much, I'm so glad you liked it and hey you don't need to know French to get the gist.

H@T: Well I have written more and I hope you like it. Thankyou for your kind review.

Gaille: Thank you so much for your fantastic review. Your French is very good. (much better than mine!)

Chikata: Short but sweet thanks!

Icy Stormz: I seem to have released a little bit of French in a lot of people! I love your reviews so much they always make me want to write more! Thankyou.

Calypso in love: Well goodness! You sure reviewed a hell of a lot and I love you for it. I hope you got my reviews too. I'm sorry you have such an aversion to Fudge I just thought it would be an interesting sub plot! Thankyou so much, I hope you continue to read and review!

Cookie67: Thankyou very much I love it when people comment on the plot of my story!

Mirei nochi: I was a little confused by your review but I gathered that you liked it and I was so happy. Did what you thought would happen, happen? Thankyou anyway!

Chrissy: THAT was what I meant by chaos and I did write more!

Draco'sgurl: You are so lucky being completely fluent in French. I did my best and I hope it was alright. I don't think there is going to be too much in it but thankyou so much for offering and reviewing.

CC Montgomery: Wow I really love you! You are so nice and your review gave me a warm fuzzy glow! Please keep reading and reviewing you honestly made me feel so good about my story!

Mrs Scower: I am very sorry, BOB, but there will be no streakers in my story thankyou very much! Towels are as far as I will go! Ta for reviewing Mr Th… I mean Bob.

Anna Marie: I'm so inexpressibly glad that you liked it. I'm a wonderful writer? Shucks, that really means a lot to me! Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!

And an extra special thankyou to Steph who wrote me a deliciously long email and gave me many variations on my French. This girl is very cool and helped me so much. If you enjoyed the French in chapter 12 it is basically all her doing as she gave me corrections. Thankyou so much. Love ya!

And that seems to be it, and I can't believe all the nice people who have reviewed and made me so happy. You know every single one of you is great don't ya?! Chapter 14 will be up soon hopefully as there is an Easter break coming up and I will have some time finally! Thankyou to everybody for reading my story!