Title: Attraction is Not a Factor
Author: Ash
Distribution: Anyone who already has some of my fic, anyone else who asks.
Disclaimer: Willow is not mine. Draco is not mine. The one would kill me with kindness, the other... uh, not. All for the best, I think, that Willow is Joss Whedon's and Draco is J.K. Rowlings.
Note: For Jinni, although this probably wasn't exactly what she had in mind. *g*
________
Willow gritted her teeth. This was torture, she thought.
Another low moan came from behind her.
Correction, she thought. This is hell.
A few seconds of silence and Willow's shoulders were starting to relax, inching gradually downwards from their previous position up around her ears.
"It's not possible!" Said the voice behind her in a low, mutter obviously not directed at Willow or, for that matter, at anyone besides the speaker's own frenzied self.
Yes, it is, Willow thought and her hands tightened on the book she held. She tried to focus on the pages in front of her and the meaningless blurs were just starting to resolve themselves into words and numbers when -
Another sound from behind her, this one suspiciously like a growl.
Willow snapped.
Turning around in her chair, she looked behind her to where Draco Malfoy was sitting at the Slytherin table. He was bent over a book that looked very similar to the one Willow was using and the table around him was covered with a white blizzard of discarded paper.
Draco didn't seem to notice that Willow was now staring at him, which she supposed was all to the good. He must be used to it, anyway. Everyone stared at Draco. Who could help it? He was that type, she thought nastily. Like a male version of Cordelia, walking down the halls of Hogwarts with a swagger in his step, collecting hearts and glances like they were toys.
Less makeup than Cordelia, though. More hair gel.
Which, a little voice whispered inside of her, made it all the more strange that his hair was currently in what a polite person would call 'disarray' and Cordelia herself would have called 'a crime against nature'.
Willow's heart sank. He must really be having trouble.
Damn.
Heaving a sigh, Willow gathered her book into her arms and stood up. She glanced furtively around the dining hall, making sure that they were still the only ones that had been driven out of the library by - in her case - irritation with the number of people and - in Draco's case - who knew what?
They were still alone. Good. She could get kicked out of Gryffindor for what she was about to do.
"Excuse me," Willow said hesitantly as she approached the Slytherin table. "Um Mr. Malfoy?" Mr Malfoy? She thought with disbelief. Good grief.
Draco lifted his head and fixed her with a glare that combined the coldness of ice water with the blankness of total non-recognition. There was also, lurking somewhere in those cold grey eyes, the merest hint of kicked puppy.
When Draco spoke, the puppy component was totally absent from his tone. Pure ice water.
"Is there a reason that you're bothering me?" Draco asked. And then, after a pause when Willow just stood there and looked at him. "Right. If you want someone to stare at, I believe that Potter is in the library."
Willow couldn't speak. What had made her think that she could talk to him? He was just ugh, pretty and darn it, she'd thought that she was over this incoherence thing. Still, at least she wasn't babbling.
"Go." Draco said after a long pause. He made shooing motions with his hands. "Run, little girl. If you hurry, perhaps Potter will give you a signed picture. If not, I'm sure that one of your Weasley cousins can be persuaded to get you one. Doesn't that sound like fun?"
Willow found her voice. "I'm not a Weasley." She said firmly.
"Wonderful for you," Draco said mockingly. "And it's reassuring that you have the ability to speak. It suggests that you also have the ability to walk. Away. Let's see, shall we?"
Willow was finding that her inability to speak was varying in direct relation to her desire to punch Draco in the mouth.
"All right," Willow said, glaring at him. "I'll just go take a nap, okay? After all, it's not like I have a Arithmancy test to study for or anything."
Draco's attention, which had wandered back to his book, returned to her with an almost audible snap. Willow hid a smile and turned her back on him, starting to walk away. Good one, Willow, she congratulated herself. He'd wonder about that. For once, she'd come up with a good exit line.
Except that, as it turns out, exit lines work out better when you actually exit.
"Accio!" Draco said behind her, and Willow's arms were abruptly empty. She spun around to see Draco looking at her review notes with interest.
"Excuse me," Willow said with frozen politeness. "Did you just summon my books?"
Draco didn't look up when he said, "No. Go and have your nap."
Willow's mouth hung open. Was he kidding? Her first instinct was to grab her books and run. Her second instinct was to grab her books and hit Draco with them. Her third instinct, backed by her older and wiser survival instinct, said that her first two instincts were morons and that Willow should just ask Draco for her books back. Nicely.
"Um," Willow said to the top of Draco's head. "I need those back."
"Why?" Draco said absent-mindedly, still focused on Willow's algebra review notes. "There's no way you could ever understand them."
Willow started to say, "Just because you can't understand them-"
Draco was finally looking at her and Willow really wished that he wasn't. She hadn't known that grey eyes could burn.
"Why should I?" Draco said. "Stupid, useless Muggle math techniques with no magic in them at all. There's no reason for us to learn algebra, of all things! Dr Vector has gone barmy, if you ask me."
"I didn't." Willow said sweetly, back on firm ground now. "And you must be really lost."
She could almost see the words 'Am not' hovering on Draco's tongue. He swallowed them and said instead, "I remember you now."
Willow didn't think she liked his tone.
"You're the American who grew up on a Hellmouth, right?" Draco continued, and now Willow knew that she didn't like his tone.
"Holmes, you've done it again." Willow said. She rolled her eyes. "Honestly. There are like what, three Americans in Hogwarts?"
"Five." Draco corrected. "But you, you're the only one who got here because you spent so much time on the Hellmouth that you absorbed the magic from it." His eyes wandered down Willow's body as if looking for visible signs of the magic she'd absorbed.
Willow fought the urge to look down and make sure that she was still wearing clothes. I'm not naked, she repeated to herself. Not naked. Probably not. Hmmm.
"That's me," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Hellmouth-y Willow."
"Some of the boys thought you'd be put in Slytherin," Draco said, his eyes returning to Willow's face. He looked amused. "Not likely."
"Well, yeah," Willow said, resisting the urge to drop her arms back to her side. "Not evil over here. Except when I'm a vampire. Or under a spell. But mainly, just human. And good."
"Obviously," Draco said in a way that made it very clear that he didn't mean it as a compliment. "That's my point. Just 'human.'"
"While you would be what?" Willow asked. Gorgeous, she thought immeadiately. Shut up, she told herself a second later.
"I'm a wizard, little girl." Draco said, and smiled. "A wizard from wizards."
"While you are less than a mudblood." Draco said.
" You're nothing but a Muggle who was in the right place at the right time and managed to survive long enough to get noticed." Draco said.
"You shouldn't even be here." Draco said.
All true, Willow thought. Which was why it was stupid that it hurt. He was an idiot, anyway. She wasn't going to cry.
"First of all," Willow said after a pause. "The right time to be on a Hellmouth is 'never'. Coincidentally, the right place to be, at any given time, is 'not on a Hellmouth'. Don't talk about things you don't understand."
Draco just raised an eyebrow. Willow got the feeling that it would take a lot more than sternness to upset him. That was okay. But she wasn't finished.
"Second," Willow continued after a pause, "I am a Muggle. My friends were Muggles too. So was everyone I knew, right up until the day I came here. Since you know so much about Muggles, do you happen to know what Muggle kids do while wizard kids are owling each other and playing with their first booksticks?"
Draco shook his head slightly, a faint smile still playing around his mouth.
Willow put her hands on the table and leaned forward until she was looking Draco right in the eye.
"They study math." Willow said meaningfully.
Then, without waiting around to see the effect her words would have on Draco, she grabbed her books and headed towards the door.
*Five minutes later*
"You have to stop summoning my books." Willow said again.
"Sit down." Draco said. It was a command.
"No."
"Do you want your books back?" Draco said.
Willow sat.
"I hope you know that this isn't really evil, what you're doing here. It's just annoying."
"Would you prefer me to do something evil?" Draco asked. "It can be arranged."
"Very mature," Willow said. "Look, do you want my help or what?"
There was a long silence.
"C'mon," Willow said in a wheedling tone. "If anyone asks, I'll say that you threatened me with unimaginable horrors and indescribable visions until I was so frightened that I begged you to let me help."
"Really?" Draco said.
Willow shrugged. "Why not? Having a good Draco Malfoy torture story might help me bond with my fellow Gryfinndors."
"Rosenberg," Draco said, fixing Willow with a stare that made all of the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. "If you can make me understand this rubbish, I'll torture you like no Gryffindor has ever been tortured before. I'll make you a legend."
"Deal." Willow said, and grinned. She moved her chair up closer to Draco's and pulled her notebook towards her.
"Okay," she said. "Let's take it from the top. Factoring."
"Let's skip this part." Draco said with a grimace.
"The test is on factoring," Willow pointed out. "If we skip it, then we're done."
"We are?" Draco said innocently.
"No!"
Willow pointed with her pencil at their first problem: x2 +14x+48 = 0
"We want to find the values of x for which this equals zero," she said seriously, leaning over the paper. "To do so, we're going to factor the equation into two halves."
"Why?" Draco asked.
"Because" Willow started, and then faltered. "Because Mr. Vector told us to." She said finally. "Because it'll show us where the parabola intersects with the x axis. But most of all, because we want to get good marks."
"Right." Draco nodded. "Lead on."
"Okay, now we only have to worry about two numbers here. The '48' and the '14'. What we want is to find the two numbers that added together equal '14' and multiplied by each other produce '48'."
Willow looked at the blank look at Draco's face and sighed. "Let's try this again. Somewhere, in the vast continuum of numbers, there are two numbers that satisfy both those conditions. These are evil numbers, Draco. Nasty, sneaky, double-timing numbers that both add to produce '14' and multiply together to produce '48'."
Willow waggled her eyebrows in what she hoped was a sinister fashion. "No normal pair of numbers would do that. No decent pair of numbers. Look at 12 and 4. They multiply together to produce"
"48." Draco filled in when she paused.
"Right," Willow said. "But when you add them, you get 16, not '14'. They're normal. They're the kind of numbers that wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near the numbers we're looking for. The numbers we're looking for are sick, deviant little monkeys. And it's our job to find them and expose their perversity to the world!"
Draco leaned a little bit away from her. Willow brought her voice down a notch.
"And the way we do this," she continued. "Is by systematically going through all the normal, law-abiding numbers and harassing them until we find the sneaks we're looking for."
"We harass the normal numbers?" Draco said. One corner of his mouth had turned up and there was a strange light in his pale eyes.
Willow noticed and inwardly rejoiced. She was on the right track. "Yes!" She said emphatically. "Just like we've already done to 12 and 4. We brought them out and forced them to multiply and divide right in front of us, Draco! Like animals! Do you think they're happy about that?"
Draco shook his head. His eyes were glittering like stars now.
"And then we just tossed them aside," Willow said, waving her arms for dramatic effect. "Without even saying 'sorry for the inconvenience'. They're traumatized! They may never multiply again, not even when they're alone. We've already ruined two lives." She smiled, a wide shark's smile. "And we're just getting started."
"'6' and '8'" Draco said.
"And then" Willow said, her voice trailing off. "What?"
"'6' and '8'" Draco repeated. "Those are the numbers. Six times eight is forty-eight. Six plus eight is fourteen."
Willow's smile lit up her whole face. "Right!" She beamed at him. "So, you get it now?"
"I don't know," Draco said slowly, looking at her. "I think we should do a few more to be sure."
Willow nodded. "Better safe than sorry," she said. "What's the next problem?"
Draco looked at the page. He grimaced. "It's going to be a tricky one," he said. "There are fractions."
"Fractions?" Willow said, her eyes dancing. "Let me tell you something about fractions, Draco"
Draco put his chin in his hand and listened, his eyes on her face.
_______
Author: Ash
Distribution: Anyone who already has some of my fic, anyone else who asks.
Disclaimer: Willow is not mine. Draco is not mine. The one would kill me with kindness, the other... uh, not. All for the best, I think, that Willow is Joss Whedon's and Draco is J.K. Rowlings.
Note: For Jinni, although this probably wasn't exactly what she had in mind. *g*
________
Willow gritted her teeth. This was torture, she thought.
Another low moan came from behind her.
Correction, she thought. This is hell.
A few seconds of silence and Willow's shoulders were starting to relax, inching gradually downwards from their previous position up around her ears.
"It's not possible!" Said the voice behind her in a low, mutter obviously not directed at Willow or, for that matter, at anyone besides the speaker's own frenzied self.
Yes, it is, Willow thought and her hands tightened on the book she held. She tried to focus on the pages in front of her and the meaningless blurs were just starting to resolve themselves into words and numbers when -
Another sound from behind her, this one suspiciously like a growl.
Willow snapped.
Turning around in her chair, she looked behind her to where Draco Malfoy was sitting at the Slytherin table. He was bent over a book that looked very similar to the one Willow was using and the table around him was covered with a white blizzard of discarded paper.
Draco didn't seem to notice that Willow was now staring at him, which she supposed was all to the good. He must be used to it, anyway. Everyone stared at Draco. Who could help it? He was that type, she thought nastily. Like a male version of Cordelia, walking down the halls of Hogwarts with a swagger in his step, collecting hearts and glances like they were toys.
Less makeup than Cordelia, though. More hair gel.
Which, a little voice whispered inside of her, made it all the more strange that his hair was currently in what a polite person would call 'disarray' and Cordelia herself would have called 'a crime against nature'.
Willow's heart sank. He must really be having trouble.
Damn.
Heaving a sigh, Willow gathered her book into her arms and stood up. She glanced furtively around the dining hall, making sure that they were still the only ones that had been driven out of the library by - in her case - irritation with the number of people and - in Draco's case - who knew what?
They were still alone. Good. She could get kicked out of Gryffindor for what she was about to do.
"Excuse me," Willow said hesitantly as she approached the Slytherin table. "Um Mr. Malfoy?" Mr Malfoy? She thought with disbelief. Good grief.
Draco lifted his head and fixed her with a glare that combined the coldness of ice water with the blankness of total non-recognition. There was also, lurking somewhere in those cold grey eyes, the merest hint of kicked puppy.
When Draco spoke, the puppy component was totally absent from his tone. Pure ice water.
"Is there a reason that you're bothering me?" Draco asked. And then, after a pause when Willow just stood there and looked at him. "Right. If you want someone to stare at, I believe that Potter is in the library."
Willow couldn't speak. What had made her think that she could talk to him? He was just ugh, pretty and darn it, she'd thought that she was over this incoherence thing. Still, at least she wasn't babbling.
"Go." Draco said after a long pause. He made shooing motions with his hands. "Run, little girl. If you hurry, perhaps Potter will give you a signed picture. If not, I'm sure that one of your Weasley cousins can be persuaded to get you one. Doesn't that sound like fun?"
Willow found her voice. "I'm not a Weasley." She said firmly.
"Wonderful for you," Draco said mockingly. "And it's reassuring that you have the ability to speak. It suggests that you also have the ability to walk. Away. Let's see, shall we?"
Willow was finding that her inability to speak was varying in direct relation to her desire to punch Draco in the mouth.
"All right," Willow said, glaring at him. "I'll just go take a nap, okay? After all, it's not like I have a Arithmancy test to study for or anything."
Draco's attention, which had wandered back to his book, returned to her with an almost audible snap. Willow hid a smile and turned her back on him, starting to walk away. Good one, Willow, she congratulated herself. He'd wonder about that. For once, she'd come up with a good exit line.
Except that, as it turns out, exit lines work out better when you actually exit.
"Accio!" Draco said behind her, and Willow's arms were abruptly empty. She spun around to see Draco looking at her review notes with interest.
"Excuse me," Willow said with frozen politeness. "Did you just summon my books?"
Draco didn't look up when he said, "No. Go and have your nap."
Willow's mouth hung open. Was he kidding? Her first instinct was to grab her books and run. Her second instinct was to grab her books and hit Draco with them. Her third instinct, backed by her older and wiser survival instinct, said that her first two instincts were morons and that Willow should just ask Draco for her books back. Nicely.
"Um," Willow said to the top of Draco's head. "I need those back."
"Why?" Draco said absent-mindedly, still focused on Willow's algebra review notes. "There's no way you could ever understand them."
Willow started to say, "Just because you can't understand them-"
Draco was finally looking at her and Willow really wished that he wasn't. She hadn't known that grey eyes could burn.
"Why should I?" Draco said. "Stupid, useless Muggle math techniques with no magic in them at all. There's no reason for us to learn algebra, of all things! Dr Vector has gone barmy, if you ask me."
"I didn't." Willow said sweetly, back on firm ground now. "And you must be really lost."
She could almost see the words 'Am not' hovering on Draco's tongue. He swallowed them and said instead, "I remember you now."
Willow didn't think she liked his tone.
"You're the American who grew up on a Hellmouth, right?" Draco continued, and now Willow knew that she didn't like his tone.
"Holmes, you've done it again." Willow said. She rolled her eyes. "Honestly. There are like what, three Americans in Hogwarts?"
"Five." Draco corrected. "But you, you're the only one who got here because you spent so much time on the Hellmouth that you absorbed the magic from it." His eyes wandered down Willow's body as if looking for visible signs of the magic she'd absorbed.
Willow fought the urge to look down and make sure that she was still wearing clothes. I'm not naked, she repeated to herself. Not naked. Probably not. Hmmm.
"That's me," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Hellmouth-y Willow."
"Some of the boys thought you'd be put in Slytherin," Draco said, his eyes returning to Willow's face. He looked amused. "Not likely."
"Well, yeah," Willow said, resisting the urge to drop her arms back to her side. "Not evil over here. Except when I'm a vampire. Or under a spell. But mainly, just human. And good."
"Obviously," Draco said in a way that made it very clear that he didn't mean it as a compliment. "That's my point. Just 'human.'"
"While you would be what?" Willow asked. Gorgeous, she thought immeadiately. Shut up, she told herself a second later.
"I'm a wizard, little girl." Draco said, and smiled. "A wizard from wizards."
"While you are less than a mudblood." Draco said.
" You're nothing but a Muggle who was in the right place at the right time and managed to survive long enough to get noticed." Draco said.
"You shouldn't even be here." Draco said.
All true, Willow thought. Which was why it was stupid that it hurt. He was an idiot, anyway. She wasn't going to cry.
"First of all," Willow said after a pause. "The right time to be on a Hellmouth is 'never'. Coincidentally, the right place to be, at any given time, is 'not on a Hellmouth'. Don't talk about things you don't understand."
Draco just raised an eyebrow. Willow got the feeling that it would take a lot more than sternness to upset him. That was okay. But she wasn't finished.
"Second," Willow continued after a pause, "I am a Muggle. My friends were Muggles too. So was everyone I knew, right up until the day I came here. Since you know so much about Muggles, do you happen to know what Muggle kids do while wizard kids are owling each other and playing with their first booksticks?"
Draco shook his head slightly, a faint smile still playing around his mouth.
Willow put her hands on the table and leaned forward until she was looking Draco right in the eye.
"They study math." Willow said meaningfully.
Then, without waiting around to see the effect her words would have on Draco, she grabbed her books and headed towards the door.
*Five minutes later*
"You have to stop summoning my books." Willow said again.
"Sit down." Draco said. It was a command.
"No."
"Do you want your books back?" Draco said.
Willow sat.
"I hope you know that this isn't really evil, what you're doing here. It's just annoying."
"Would you prefer me to do something evil?" Draco asked. "It can be arranged."
"Very mature," Willow said. "Look, do you want my help or what?"
There was a long silence.
"C'mon," Willow said in a wheedling tone. "If anyone asks, I'll say that you threatened me with unimaginable horrors and indescribable visions until I was so frightened that I begged you to let me help."
"Really?" Draco said.
Willow shrugged. "Why not? Having a good Draco Malfoy torture story might help me bond with my fellow Gryfinndors."
"Rosenberg," Draco said, fixing Willow with a stare that made all of the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. "If you can make me understand this rubbish, I'll torture you like no Gryffindor has ever been tortured before. I'll make you a legend."
"Deal." Willow said, and grinned. She moved her chair up closer to Draco's and pulled her notebook towards her.
"Okay," she said. "Let's take it from the top. Factoring."
"Let's skip this part." Draco said with a grimace.
"The test is on factoring," Willow pointed out. "If we skip it, then we're done."
"We are?" Draco said innocently.
"No!"
Willow pointed with her pencil at their first problem: x2 +14x+48 = 0
"We want to find the values of x for which this equals zero," she said seriously, leaning over the paper. "To do so, we're going to factor the equation into two halves."
"Why?" Draco asked.
"Because" Willow started, and then faltered. "Because Mr. Vector told us to." She said finally. "Because it'll show us where the parabola intersects with the x axis. But most of all, because we want to get good marks."
"Right." Draco nodded. "Lead on."
"Okay, now we only have to worry about two numbers here. The '48' and the '14'. What we want is to find the two numbers that added together equal '14' and multiplied by each other produce '48'."
Willow looked at the blank look at Draco's face and sighed. "Let's try this again. Somewhere, in the vast continuum of numbers, there are two numbers that satisfy both those conditions. These are evil numbers, Draco. Nasty, sneaky, double-timing numbers that both add to produce '14' and multiply together to produce '48'."
Willow waggled her eyebrows in what she hoped was a sinister fashion. "No normal pair of numbers would do that. No decent pair of numbers. Look at 12 and 4. They multiply together to produce"
"48." Draco filled in when she paused.
"Right," Willow said. "But when you add them, you get 16, not '14'. They're normal. They're the kind of numbers that wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near the numbers we're looking for. The numbers we're looking for are sick, deviant little monkeys. And it's our job to find them and expose their perversity to the world!"
Draco leaned a little bit away from her. Willow brought her voice down a notch.
"And the way we do this," she continued. "Is by systematically going through all the normal, law-abiding numbers and harassing them until we find the sneaks we're looking for."
"We harass the normal numbers?" Draco said. One corner of his mouth had turned up and there was a strange light in his pale eyes.
Willow noticed and inwardly rejoiced. She was on the right track. "Yes!" She said emphatically. "Just like we've already done to 12 and 4. We brought them out and forced them to multiply and divide right in front of us, Draco! Like animals! Do you think they're happy about that?"
Draco shook his head. His eyes were glittering like stars now.
"And then we just tossed them aside," Willow said, waving her arms for dramatic effect. "Without even saying 'sorry for the inconvenience'. They're traumatized! They may never multiply again, not even when they're alone. We've already ruined two lives." She smiled, a wide shark's smile. "And we're just getting started."
"'6' and '8'" Draco said.
"And then" Willow said, her voice trailing off. "What?"
"'6' and '8'" Draco repeated. "Those are the numbers. Six times eight is forty-eight. Six plus eight is fourteen."
Willow's smile lit up her whole face. "Right!" She beamed at him. "So, you get it now?"
"I don't know," Draco said slowly, looking at her. "I think we should do a few more to be sure."
Willow nodded. "Better safe than sorry," she said. "What's the next problem?"
Draco looked at the page. He grimaced. "It's going to be a tricky one," he said. "There are fractions."
"Fractions?" Willow said, her eyes dancing. "Let me tell you something about fractions, Draco"
Draco put his chin in his hand and listened, his eyes on her face.
_______
THE END
Tell me what you think?
I'm sorry, Jinni. I'm so, so sorry. But at the same time, I'm not. *g* Willow
and Draco are surprisingly fun to write together. And first and foremost, I'm
in it for the fun. (Also the comments. But mainly, yeah, for the fun.)