Hermione took a breath and found her nose was quite stuffed, and a light
was in her eye. Her eyes fluttered open and she squinted against the bright
light. Pansy was gone from her bed and she had left the opaque flap to the
tent door open a sliver, just enough to lay a bright beam across Hermione's
face. It must have been late to have the light that bright, and Hermione
reckoned that she must have slept well past lunch. Turning over, she tried
to block out the light with her pillow over her head. Which worked, until
the restricted breathing room became suffocating and she threw the pillow
away. Awake, Hermione decided to get up out of bed and make up for missing
the morning work, she was sure that they more then managed with out her
help but she felt bad about Draco running off the night before and she was
hoping to work harder to show that she was responsible for her own actions.
She heaved herself out of bed and shut the flap to the tent, she pulled a pair of jeans and a t-shirt out of her bag, from under her bed and decided to just use a charm to wash up, if they hadn't traced any of the spells used by Malfoy's wand then she was sure a small charm would make no difference. After having performed the simple charm, she dressed the Muggle way and pulled on her running shoes, she was sure that she wasn't going to be riding so she left her riding boots where they were, on the floor. She tied sweater around her waist and stepped out of the dim light of the tent and into the bright afternoon sun. The sun was a crisp robin egg blue and not a cloud was visible for miles and a flock of birds where flying past where the only thing that pierced the pristine site. The air was crisp, the first sign that Fall was fast approaching. Pulling the sweater off her waist and over her head, she started towards the lesson arena, if it was after lunch as she expected, the lessons were going on down behind the tack room, where a valley dipped down to a large arena, where the lessons where held each day, the dirt that made up the arena was turned up each day after lessons, keeping it soft, or as soft as the floor could be, in case a rider fell from their horse they would land in the soft soil and leave with only a bruise. That is if they knew how to fall off a horse. Hermione recalled her very first riding lesson clearly, she was the very youngest of her class and the only one who didn't own her own horse, all the other girls and boys were more experienced then she was and they were sure to tell her. The first lesson the very ancient riding coach taught them was how to fall. You'd think that they would teach you how to stay on the horse first, but this coach said it was more important to fall off properly so that's what they learned, and it was the shortest lessons she ever had there was no demonstration, all the coach said was go with it. Let yourself fall. If you were to brace yourself you are more likely to break something.
When she had reached to top of the hill leading down into the valley she stopped to catch her breath, the fact that she couldn't breath through her nose made it hard to get enough oxygen, and her head had started to throb from all the pressure on her temples. She was glad that the hill leading down was much less steep and had a beaten path, free of tree roots and other very dangerous things to trip over, which she had suffered many time while chasing Chyan after her escape attempts. She was about to start down when a flash of red hair caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She turned just in time to see Ron pulling Harry into a group of trees. They didn't seem to have seen her so she walked the small distance and was about to ask what was going on, when she heard her name, so instead she crouched down to listen. She soon realized that they were fighting, Ron his usual demanding self and Harry his usual patient self. In the end she wished she hadn't listened in.
"What is up with you Harry? Why are you siding with Malfoy? I thought I was your best friend." Ron demanded, his angry words triggering her memory to when she had walked into Harry's tent to find him and Malfoy laughing cheerfully, and warmly with each other.
"It's not that I'm siding with him, its just, well, I know where he is coming from." Harry responded callously. Hermione remembered Harry's lack resistance to Malfoy and how close Hermione was to him in the previous days. He had been distant in conversations regarding Malfoy, not very Harry like. Ron cut through her thoughts.
"Well if you feel like that for her, then why did you let him say what he did at dinner yesterday? Why did you just sit there holding me back when you should have been furious? You are not being yourself Harry, and I don't like who you are becoming." If Hermione weren't hiding she would have hit Ron upside the head for that. He was being the disagreeable one, and he couldn't see it, it made her blood boil. Harry's response shocked her. Not only because he was calm but because of his words.
"Why would I beat up on him for being honest? You asked him if he liked her, in fact you asked, if I may quote," uh oh Harry was getting sarcastic, run for the hills. "'What Malfoy, all of a sudden you love Hermione?' What did you expect him to say?" Harry's tone turned vicious as he continued. "He was being serious, we spoke about it after we went to be last night. He finds it funny that the same thing can be going on in our heads, but he said he doesn't want to fight over her, he says the best way to go about this is to be honourable of Hermione's feelings and to act as if there is nothing different, and it doesn't help if you have babbling on and on about it when the plan is to act cool!"
"Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god!" those three words where the only one's that came to mind when Hermione turned and retreated for her hiding place, and she kept on repeating it in her mind as she sprinted the rest of the way down the hill and to the lesson arena, her stuffed nose forgotten. She almost said the tree words to Snape before she caught herself and asked for the potion he had promised her the night before. She gulped it down and handed the vile back to him, instantly her nose cleared and the headache receded to a slight tingly feeling and then too, disappeared. The teacher regarded her with an odd look before speaking to her sternly.
"I was hoping you would sleep longer Miss Granger, but the potion I gave you is designed to keep the drinker asleep for the required time for them to be refreshed, so I have no doubts that you feel one hundred percent better, correct?" Hermione smiled at her professor, who seemed to have lightened up in the last few days, and who had also seemed to take a liking to her. He spoke to her as if he was genuinely concerned about her, and she knew he was sincere.
"Yes professor, now that my cold is gone I feel I can do anything, thank you Sir. I was actually wondering if my horse has shown up so I can train." The look on his face told her that Draco hadn't been found, or hadn't found his way back home. Before he could respond verbally a hand grasped her elbow and she was being turned around.
"Mr Malfoy is there a problem?" Snape said from behind Hermione, who had done a 180 and was now staring at Draco Malfoy's grey eyes, it took a second to adjust to the fact that he was so close, and the fact that she knew how he felt and how his hand was warm even through her sweater. But after that second she realized there was a look of panic in his eyes. Snape's question went unanswered as Hermione was being tugged back toward the hill she had just sprinted down. She turned to the professor who returned her look of confusion with one of his own. Although, as she felt his hand slip from her elbow and drop to her hand, her thoughts and head whipped back to Malfoy and the serge of energy that she suddenly had pulsing through her. As they started up the hill Hermione saw Harry and Ron as they stopped their journey back down the hill to watch the scene in front of them. Hermione, and Malfoy quickly going up the hill (A/N: I think I used the word Hill too much!) hand in hand. She only had a second to glimpse them as Harry pulled Ron in the other direction and out of her viewpoint. The look on Harry's face made her snap out of her silence.
"Hey, what's going on? Why such the hurry?" He didn't stop to answer her question; instead he quickened the pace into a fast jog and answered hurriedly.
" They found Draco, he showed up on a farm a few miles out. They say he must have jumped the fence at a low spot." Hermione had a feeling that this wasn't why they were almost running, something else was wrong, and as he continues to tell her, his hand tightened on hers. "He has a cut, on his hock (the lower part of a horse's leg) its deep, and the farmer who found it said he was favouring that leg. It may only need stitches but Daniela says he might have torn a ligament, and you know what they need to do if that's the case. They are calling to vet to get him stitched up, or," He paused, stopped and turned all at once causing Hermione to skid to a halt, he still had her hand in his and he looked her in the eye with hurt, and continued, his voice low. "Or to put Draco to sleep." Hermione knew that was the alternative and she had no idea she was attached to the horse the had known for less then a week, until she couldn't stop the tears that flowed down from her eyes and over her cheeks, flushed from running. And she couldn't help but cling to Draco as he pulled her to him and encircled his arms tightly around her, her face buried against his shoulder, and his mouth at her ear whispering soothing words that were lost in her weeping. Until he said the obvious, without knowing it himself.
"We should be able to do something, that's what 7 years of school if for right." He said the words hoping to calm her down, which they did, but he hadn't meant them to spark Hermione into a frantic search of his pockets, in fact that was the last thing he had expected. But that's what happened, and he was at a loss for words, but being Draco Malfoy himself, that didn't last long.
"Hermione I know I'm irresistible but can you wait until later, I thought you would have liked to see your horse in his hour of need." She stopped her search rather expectantly and removed her hand from its place above his left back pocket. Instead of shying away like he expected she looked at him straight in the eye and asked for his wand.
"Give me your wand." Okay, so she demanded his wand, and to both of their surprise he pulled his wand out of his right boot. But he hesitated in giving it to her.
"Hermione you know if you're caught using magic, you can get into serious trouble and there are more then just a few Muggles around, the farmer is still here and Daniela, and then there are those kids that are helping out with the trail today and wont they think it is weird that the horse all of a sudden doesn't have a cut?" Hermione then grabbed his wand and his hand and preformed a spell under her breath. Hermione looked around her to see if her spell had worked, and smiled to herself. It had worked splendidly. Everything around her, from the murder of crows to butterfly that had been fluttering by, had stopped. Her freezing spell had worked. And if she hadn't held onto Draco Malfoy's hand he too would be frozen. She turned to him smiling and started to pull him to where he was leading her moments before. He gave her a look of shock and allowed himself to be pulled along.
"I wont heal the cut I'll just check for and fix any torn ligaments. No one will be the wiser and it will save poor Draco. You won't say anything will you Draco? Please we can't just let him be put down." She didn't know what had made her act as if she was at his mercy, if she wanted she could let go of his and hand and perform a charm to wipe his memory clear of this event, but she did. And then she waited for his answer as if she depended on his agreeing with her.
"Of course, we could never let them do that, but we have to get back to where we were before the spell, someone might have seen us and they would find it odd if we suddenly disappeared." She understood just then that he did like her, even if he hadn't come out and said it to her; his answer confirmed what Harry had said. Never before had she heard him speak to her with the tone he had just used, he had sounded concerned but also he had sounded devoted to her words as if they were carried down from the heavens on a golden platter by a group of angles.
They reached the tack room and they awkwardly climbed over the fence, still holding hands, and walked to the entrance where Draco the horse, was standing under the roof that jetted out of the tack room, usually horses were not allowed that close to the tack room and the feed, but Hermione suspected that Daniela had felt sympathetic towards the poor horse and besides, Chanda wasn't around to get mad. Hermione looked down to the horse's leg and instantly saw the cut, and grimaced. It looked horrible, and it most defiantly was deep enough to have done damage to the horse's mussels. Hermione almost let go of Malfoy's hand as she rushed to the horse's side.
"We have to work quickly," she said pulling Draco to sit on the ground next to her, so she could comfortably work on the cut, even if she could only use one of her hands. " It takes a lot of my energy to keep the freezing spell going it's not anything I can't handle but I don't want to take chances." She lifted Draco's wand to the cut and whispered the incantation, she had learned this spell from the infirmary, where she had spent more then a few nights waiting for Harry and Ron to come around after an adventure. This one had caught her attention and she read up on it, and she was glad she had.
As soon as the words left her lips the wand gave a shudder and a red smoke engulfed the horse, Hermione watched the cut intently and waited, if the ligament was torn the smoke above the cut would glow gold and last longer then the red smoke. As she expected the smoke turned the olive gold colour and then disappeared again, as if it were evaporated into the air around them.
"So it is a torn ligament," she said more to herself then to the silent boy beside her. But he responded anyway, though she could hardly hear him. The rush of the two spells she had just preformed was making her light headed, they were both powerful and complicated spells and drained a lot of energy out of a witch or wizard.
"So then get on with the spell, you don't look so good." She took up the wand again and urged her mind to remember the spell that followed the checking spell. When it came to her she was growing tired quickly and uttered the spell before she could forget it in her sudden fatigue. Content how the spell went, she turned to Draco and whispered through the pain.
"Help me up, we have to get to the hill before I can no longer hold the spell. If someone sees then we are shit out of luck." He nodded and pulled her to her feet, he took the long way around the fence instead of over it and they quickly ran to where they could remember standing on the hill. Unless someone was intently watching them then they would not be able to tell they had moved a muscle. When Hermione undid the spell, she could feel surges of energy passing through her, and she fought the urge to cry out in the pain it caused her.
"Are you ok?" Draco asked, but only received a weak nod. "Well we should go to pretend to be concerned to the horse now, I said I was going to get you and they would think it was kind of odd if I didn't return with you." He grabbed her hand again and they made the trip to the tack room again. And Hermione couldn't help but smile to herself on how well an actor Draco Malfoy could be.
~*~
At 1:00am, twelve hours after the vet had arrived and had stitched up poor Draco, Hermione lay awake staring at the blue slanted roof of her and Pansy's tent. She couldn't fall asleep, she had tried a countless number of times to force herself to sleep but she couldn't. Between Pansy's semi- silent snores, and the soft rustling or the trees, sounds that would have normally lulled her to sleep, kept her up and restless.
Finally after hours of tossing and turning Hermione decided to go for a walk, hoping it would help get her tired. She pulled on her jeans and her Weasley jumper, that ad the letters HG stitched in gold letters across the front, and then grabbed her wand from her bag where it had been safely tucked away, and left her tent as quietly as possible as to not wake Pansy. The temperature had dropped a great amount since she had turned in for the night, and she shivered as she zipped the tent flap back into place. She decided against a stroll in the woods at the fresh memory of her wolf encounter, so instead she headed out towards where the horses had been turned out last night to graze in the large field that separated the training arena and the entrance to the web of trails. The horses were friendly and enjoyed the company of a person with treats. So on her way to the field, she grabbed handfuls of oats and stuffed her pockets full.
When she had reached the field she was surprised to see someone was already there. His back was turned to her and he was sitting against a tree stump. If it hadn't been for the silvery wisps of hair that were visible, Hermione would have turned and left to find another place to walk, leaving this person to his solitude. But once she recognized him as Draco Malfoy she continued forward, and called his name.
Startled by the sudden break of stillness, he turned around quickly and presented his wand, but that was quickly dropped when he had seen it was her, and began to get up from his spot to greet her.
"Hermione," he said, brushing the dirt from his pants, which Hermione couldn't help but notice looked sexy on him. This thought brought a rose tinge to her cheeks and she looked away embarrassed of her own thoughts. "What are you doing up?" he sounded uneasy and he cast a look around, taking in the horses and trees around them.
"I couldn't sleep. So I thought a walk might have helped." Hermione looked at him, remembering what she had heard from Ron and Harry. Then remembering the not so distant past, where the boy who now claimed to like her had taunted her and had sent her crying many times without batting and eye. And now, as she looked at him, she couldn't help but ask him why.
"I want to ask you something," she made sure her tone showed that she wasn't going to ask him about his opinion on the weather. He didn't seem to be def because his almost content look dropped from his face and was replaced by one of worry. "Why, after all these years, after everything, why have you suddenly done a 360 and started acting like I was human and not a mudblood?"
As if he had been half expecting the question his face changed and then he turned red, not an angry red though, Draco Malfoy, cool, calm and collected Draco Malfoy was blushing scarlet. She couldn't see how her question could make blush creep across his cheeks, but there it was, vivid against his pale skin. Whatever answer she had been expecting wasn't the one he gave her either. His answer made Harry and Ron's chat seem vague and nonchalant. His answer wasn't even a long one, and she was at a loss for words. His answer almost made her sit down right where she was.
"Because I realized how wrong I was Hermione, and I realized how much I loved you." Two things she had never thought she would hear coming from Draco Malfoy, one was him admitting he had been wrong, and two was that he loved her, not only liked but loved her. And he was as serious as anyone Hermione had ever met; he was looking at her intently, waiting for a response maybe.
But her loss for words stuck, and when she finally decided what to say back to him, she was shocked that instead of speaking her response to him, she had moved in and was kissing him. Her hands reached up to cup his face in her hands, and then to entangle his hair, as silky as she had ever imagined it. She felt herself die and go to heaven as he kissed her back, thirstily. Who ever said actions speak louder then words really had something, because Hermione was sure nothing she could say would have left her feeling like this.
Draco's arms came up to wrap around her body, pulling her even closer to him, as if he loosened her from his embrace, everything would slip away and become unreal, a figment of his imagination. He crushed her against his hard chest and at the same time held her as if she were as slight as china. Whatever thoughts were going through her mind were hazed over by how right it felt to be there in his arms and to be kissing him with the same intensity and hunger that he was kissing her with.
When they stopped kissing, it was only for a breath, and their embrace didn't loosen. Draco rested his head against hers so she could feel his warm breath coming out in short shudders against her cheek. When he spoke his voice was hoarse and husky, it sent Goosebumps across her neck and she shuddered against him.
"You have no idea how long I have wanted to do that, Hermione," he whispered her name like it was precious silk slipping gently from his tongue and onto his lips. He pulled his head back to look her in the eyes, and she shivered again as she saw the passion behind the milky silver eyes that stared at her, although she was anything but cold. " I think I've loved you always, but my father has had his hold over me. I broke free Hermione, in our fifth year, and I realized that the intensity I felt for you wasn't hate but love. But I was afraid, I was afraid I would never be able to prove my love. I love you Hermione Granger." He kissed her again, and she knew she felt something deep for him. If it wasn't love then love wasn't far off.
She heaved herself out of bed and shut the flap to the tent, she pulled a pair of jeans and a t-shirt out of her bag, from under her bed and decided to just use a charm to wash up, if they hadn't traced any of the spells used by Malfoy's wand then she was sure a small charm would make no difference. After having performed the simple charm, she dressed the Muggle way and pulled on her running shoes, she was sure that she wasn't going to be riding so she left her riding boots where they were, on the floor. She tied sweater around her waist and stepped out of the dim light of the tent and into the bright afternoon sun. The sun was a crisp robin egg blue and not a cloud was visible for miles and a flock of birds where flying past where the only thing that pierced the pristine site. The air was crisp, the first sign that Fall was fast approaching. Pulling the sweater off her waist and over her head, she started towards the lesson arena, if it was after lunch as she expected, the lessons were going on down behind the tack room, where a valley dipped down to a large arena, where the lessons where held each day, the dirt that made up the arena was turned up each day after lessons, keeping it soft, or as soft as the floor could be, in case a rider fell from their horse they would land in the soft soil and leave with only a bruise. That is if they knew how to fall off a horse. Hermione recalled her very first riding lesson clearly, she was the very youngest of her class and the only one who didn't own her own horse, all the other girls and boys were more experienced then she was and they were sure to tell her. The first lesson the very ancient riding coach taught them was how to fall. You'd think that they would teach you how to stay on the horse first, but this coach said it was more important to fall off properly so that's what they learned, and it was the shortest lessons she ever had there was no demonstration, all the coach said was go with it. Let yourself fall. If you were to brace yourself you are more likely to break something.
When she had reached to top of the hill leading down into the valley she stopped to catch her breath, the fact that she couldn't breath through her nose made it hard to get enough oxygen, and her head had started to throb from all the pressure on her temples. She was glad that the hill leading down was much less steep and had a beaten path, free of tree roots and other very dangerous things to trip over, which she had suffered many time while chasing Chyan after her escape attempts. She was about to start down when a flash of red hair caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She turned just in time to see Ron pulling Harry into a group of trees. They didn't seem to have seen her so she walked the small distance and was about to ask what was going on, when she heard her name, so instead she crouched down to listen. She soon realized that they were fighting, Ron his usual demanding self and Harry his usual patient self. In the end she wished she hadn't listened in.
"What is up with you Harry? Why are you siding with Malfoy? I thought I was your best friend." Ron demanded, his angry words triggering her memory to when she had walked into Harry's tent to find him and Malfoy laughing cheerfully, and warmly with each other.
"It's not that I'm siding with him, its just, well, I know where he is coming from." Harry responded callously. Hermione remembered Harry's lack resistance to Malfoy and how close Hermione was to him in the previous days. He had been distant in conversations regarding Malfoy, not very Harry like. Ron cut through her thoughts.
"Well if you feel like that for her, then why did you let him say what he did at dinner yesterday? Why did you just sit there holding me back when you should have been furious? You are not being yourself Harry, and I don't like who you are becoming." If Hermione weren't hiding she would have hit Ron upside the head for that. He was being the disagreeable one, and he couldn't see it, it made her blood boil. Harry's response shocked her. Not only because he was calm but because of his words.
"Why would I beat up on him for being honest? You asked him if he liked her, in fact you asked, if I may quote," uh oh Harry was getting sarcastic, run for the hills. "'What Malfoy, all of a sudden you love Hermione?' What did you expect him to say?" Harry's tone turned vicious as he continued. "He was being serious, we spoke about it after we went to be last night. He finds it funny that the same thing can be going on in our heads, but he said he doesn't want to fight over her, he says the best way to go about this is to be honourable of Hermione's feelings and to act as if there is nothing different, and it doesn't help if you have babbling on and on about it when the plan is to act cool!"
"Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god!" those three words where the only one's that came to mind when Hermione turned and retreated for her hiding place, and she kept on repeating it in her mind as she sprinted the rest of the way down the hill and to the lesson arena, her stuffed nose forgotten. She almost said the tree words to Snape before she caught herself and asked for the potion he had promised her the night before. She gulped it down and handed the vile back to him, instantly her nose cleared and the headache receded to a slight tingly feeling and then too, disappeared. The teacher regarded her with an odd look before speaking to her sternly.
"I was hoping you would sleep longer Miss Granger, but the potion I gave you is designed to keep the drinker asleep for the required time for them to be refreshed, so I have no doubts that you feel one hundred percent better, correct?" Hermione smiled at her professor, who seemed to have lightened up in the last few days, and who had also seemed to take a liking to her. He spoke to her as if he was genuinely concerned about her, and she knew he was sincere.
"Yes professor, now that my cold is gone I feel I can do anything, thank you Sir. I was actually wondering if my horse has shown up so I can train." The look on his face told her that Draco hadn't been found, or hadn't found his way back home. Before he could respond verbally a hand grasped her elbow and she was being turned around.
"Mr Malfoy is there a problem?" Snape said from behind Hermione, who had done a 180 and was now staring at Draco Malfoy's grey eyes, it took a second to adjust to the fact that he was so close, and the fact that she knew how he felt and how his hand was warm even through her sweater. But after that second she realized there was a look of panic in his eyes. Snape's question went unanswered as Hermione was being tugged back toward the hill she had just sprinted down. She turned to the professor who returned her look of confusion with one of his own. Although, as she felt his hand slip from her elbow and drop to her hand, her thoughts and head whipped back to Malfoy and the serge of energy that she suddenly had pulsing through her. As they started up the hill Hermione saw Harry and Ron as they stopped their journey back down the hill to watch the scene in front of them. Hermione, and Malfoy quickly going up the hill (A/N: I think I used the word Hill too much!) hand in hand. She only had a second to glimpse them as Harry pulled Ron in the other direction and out of her viewpoint. The look on Harry's face made her snap out of her silence.
"Hey, what's going on? Why such the hurry?" He didn't stop to answer her question; instead he quickened the pace into a fast jog and answered hurriedly.
" They found Draco, he showed up on a farm a few miles out. They say he must have jumped the fence at a low spot." Hermione had a feeling that this wasn't why they were almost running, something else was wrong, and as he continues to tell her, his hand tightened on hers. "He has a cut, on his hock (the lower part of a horse's leg) its deep, and the farmer who found it said he was favouring that leg. It may only need stitches but Daniela says he might have torn a ligament, and you know what they need to do if that's the case. They are calling to vet to get him stitched up, or," He paused, stopped and turned all at once causing Hermione to skid to a halt, he still had her hand in his and he looked her in the eye with hurt, and continued, his voice low. "Or to put Draco to sleep." Hermione knew that was the alternative and she had no idea she was attached to the horse the had known for less then a week, until she couldn't stop the tears that flowed down from her eyes and over her cheeks, flushed from running. And she couldn't help but cling to Draco as he pulled her to him and encircled his arms tightly around her, her face buried against his shoulder, and his mouth at her ear whispering soothing words that were lost in her weeping. Until he said the obvious, without knowing it himself.
"We should be able to do something, that's what 7 years of school if for right." He said the words hoping to calm her down, which they did, but he hadn't meant them to spark Hermione into a frantic search of his pockets, in fact that was the last thing he had expected. But that's what happened, and he was at a loss for words, but being Draco Malfoy himself, that didn't last long.
"Hermione I know I'm irresistible but can you wait until later, I thought you would have liked to see your horse in his hour of need." She stopped her search rather expectantly and removed her hand from its place above his left back pocket. Instead of shying away like he expected she looked at him straight in the eye and asked for his wand.
"Give me your wand." Okay, so she demanded his wand, and to both of their surprise he pulled his wand out of his right boot. But he hesitated in giving it to her.
"Hermione you know if you're caught using magic, you can get into serious trouble and there are more then just a few Muggles around, the farmer is still here and Daniela, and then there are those kids that are helping out with the trail today and wont they think it is weird that the horse all of a sudden doesn't have a cut?" Hermione then grabbed his wand and his hand and preformed a spell under her breath. Hermione looked around her to see if her spell had worked, and smiled to herself. It had worked splendidly. Everything around her, from the murder of crows to butterfly that had been fluttering by, had stopped. Her freezing spell had worked. And if she hadn't held onto Draco Malfoy's hand he too would be frozen. She turned to him smiling and started to pull him to where he was leading her moments before. He gave her a look of shock and allowed himself to be pulled along.
"I wont heal the cut I'll just check for and fix any torn ligaments. No one will be the wiser and it will save poor Draco. You won't say anything will you Draco? Please we can't just let him be put down." She didn't know what had made her act as if she was at his mercy, if she wanted she could let go of his and hand and perform a charm to wipe his memory clear of this event, but she did. And then she waited for his answer as if she depended on his agreeing with her.
"Of course, we could never let them do that, but we have to get back to where we were before the spell, someone might have seen us and they would find it odd if we suddenly disappeared." She understood just then that he did like her, even if he hadn't come out and said it to her; his answer confirmed what Harry had said. Never before had she heard him speak to her with the tone he had just used, he had sounded concerned but also he had sounded devoted to her words as if they were carried down from the heavens on a golden platter by a group of angles.
They reached the tack room and they awkwardly climbed over the fence, still holding hands, and walked to the entrance where Draco the horse, was standing under the roof that jetted out of the tack room, usually horses were not allowed that close to the tack room and the feed, but Hermione suspected that Daniela had felt sympathetic towards the poor horse and besides, Chanda wasn't around to get mad. Hermione looked down to the horse's leg and instantly saw the cut, and grimaced. It looked horrible, and it most defiantly was deep enough to have done damage to the horse's mussels. Hermione almost let go of Malfoy's hand as she rushed to the horse's side.
"We have to work quickly," she said pulling Draco to sit on the ground next to her, so she could comfortably work on the cut, even if she could only use one of her hands. " It takes a lot of my energy to keep the freezing spell going it's not anything I can't handle but I don't want to take chances." She lifted Draco's wand to the cut and whispered the incantation, she had learned this spell from the infirmary, where she had spent more then a few nights waiting for Harry and Ron to come around after an adventure. This one had caught her attention and she read up on it, and she was glad she had.
As soon as the words left her lips the wand gave a shudder and a red smoke engulfed the horse, Hermione watched the cut intently and waited, if the ligament was torn the smoke above the cut would glow gold and last longer then the red smoke. As she expected the smoke turned the olive gold colour and then disappeared again, as if it were evaporated into the air around them.
"So it is a torn ligament," she said more to herself then to the silent boy beside her. But he responded anyway, though she could hardly hear him. The rush of the two spells she had just preformed was making her light headed, they were both powerful and complicated spells and drained a lot of energy out of a witch or wizard.
"So then get on with the spell, you don't look so good." She took up the wand again and urged her mind to remember the spell that followed the checking spell. When it came to her she was growing tired quickly and uttered the spell before she could forget it in her sudden fatigue. Content how the spell went, she turned to Draco and whispered through the pain.
"Help me up, we have to get to the hill before I can no longer hold the spell. If someone sees then we are shit out of luck." He nodded and pulled her to her feet, he took the long way around the fence instead of over it and they quickly ran to where they could remember standing on the hill. Unless someone was intently watching them then they would not be able to tell they had moved a muscle. When Hermione undid the spell, she could feel surges of energy passing through her, and she fought the urge to cry out in the pain it caused her.
"Are you ok?" Draco asked, but only received a weak nod. "Well we should go to pretend to be concerned to the horse now, I said I was going to get you and they would think it was kind of odd if I didn't return with you." He grabbed her hand again and they made the trip to the tack room again. And Hermione couldn't help but smile to herself on how well an actor Draco Malfoy could be.
~*~
At 1:00am, twelve hours after the vet had arrived and had stitched up poor Draco, Hermione lay awake staring at the blue slanted roof of her and Pansy's tent. She couldn't fall asleep, she had tried a countless number of times to force herself to sleep but she couldn't. Between Pansy's semi- silent snores, and the soft rustling or the trees, sounds that would have normally lulled her to sleep, kept her up and restless.
Finally after hours of tossing and turning Hermione decided to go for a walk, hoping it would help get her tired. She pulled on her jeans and her Weasley jumper, that ad the letters HG stitched in gold letters across the front, and then grabbed her wand from her bag where it had been safely tucked away, and left her tent as quietly as possible as to not wake Pansy. The temperature had dropped a great amount since she had turned in for the night, and she shivered as she zipped the tent flap back into place. She decided against a stroll in the woods at the fresh memory of her wolf encounter, so instead she headed out towards where the horses had been turned out last night to graze in the large field that separated the training arena and the entrance to the web of trails. The horses were friendly and enjoyed the company of a person with treats. So on her way to the field, she grabbed handfuls of oats and stuffed her pockets full.
When she had reached the field she was surprised to see someone was already there. His back was turned to her and he was sitting against a tree stump. If it hadn't been for the silvery wisps of hair that were visible, Hermione would have turned and left to find another place to walk, leaving this person to his solitude. But once she recognized him as Draco Malfoy she continued forward, and called his name.
Startled by the sudden break of stillness, he turned around quickly and presented his wand, but that was quickly dropped when he had seen it was her, and began to get up from his spot to greet her.
"Hermione," he said, brushing the dirt from his pants, which Hermione couldn't help but notice looked sexy on him. This thought brought a rose tinge to her cheeks and she looked away embarrassed of her own thoughts. "What are you doing up?" he sounded uneasy and he cast a look around, taking in the horses and trees around them.
"I couldn't sleep. So I thought a walk might have helped." Hermione looked at him, remembering what she had heard from Ron and Harry. Then remembering the not so distant past, where the boy who now claimed to like her had taunted her and had sent her crying many times without batting and eye. And now, as she looked at him, she couldn't help but ask him why.
"I want to ask you something," she made sure her tone showed that she wasn't going to ask him about his opinion on the weather. He didn't seem to be def because his almost content look dropped from his face and was replaced by one of worry. "Why, after all these years, after everything, why have you suddenly done a 360 and started acting like I was human and not a mudblood?"
As if he had been half expecting the question his face changed and then he turned red, not an angry red though, Draco Malfoy, cool, calm and collected Draco Malfoy was blushing scarlet. She couldn't see how her question could make blush creep across his cheeks, but there it was, vivid against his pale skin. Whatever answer she had been expecting wasn't the one he gave her either. His answer made Harry and Ron's chat seem vague and nonchalant. His answer wasn't even a long one, and she was at a loss for words. His answer almost made her sit down right where she was.
"Because I realized how wrong I was Hermione, and I realized how much I loved you." Two things she had never thought she would hear coming from Draco Malfoy, one was him admitting he had been wrong, and two was that he loved her, not only liked but loved her. And he was as serious as anyone Hermione had ever met; he was looking at her intently, waiting for a response maybe.
But her loss for words stuck, and when she finally decided what to say back to him, she was shocked that instead of speaking her response to him, she had moved in and was kissing him. Her hands reached up to cup his face in her hands, and then to entangle his hair, as silky as she had ever imagined it. She felt herself die and go to heaven as he kissed her back, thirstily. Who ever said actions speak louder then words really had something, because Hermione was sure nothing she could say would have left her feeling like this.
Draco's arms came up to wrap around her body, pulling her even closer to him, as if he loosened her from his embrace, everything would slip away and become unreal, a figment of his imagination. He crushed her against his hard chest and at the same time held her as if she were as slight as china. Whatever thoughts were going through her mind were hazed over by how right it felt to be there in his arms and to be kissing him with the same intensity and hunger that he was kissing her with.
When they stopped kissing, it was only for a breath, and their embrace didn't loosen. Draco rested his head against hers so she could feel his warm breath coming out in short shudders against her cheek. When he spoke his voice was hoarse and husky, it sent Goosebumps across her neck and she shuddered against him.
"You have no idea how long I have wanted to do that, Hermione," he whispered her name like it was precious silk slipping gently from his tongue and onto his lips. He pulled his head back to look her in the eyes, and she shivered again as she saw the passion behind the milky silver eyes that stared at her, although she was anything but cold. " I think I've loved you always, but my father has had his hold over me. I broke free Hermione, in our fifth year, and I realized that the intensity I felt for you wasn't hate but love. But I was afraid, I was afraid I would never be able to prove my love. I love you Hermione Granger." He kissed her again, and she knew she felt something deep for him. If it wasn't love then love wasn't far off.