Hermione awoke the next morning to the sounds of frantic servants rushing about the house, their hurried footsteps making quite the noise on the stairs and along the corridors. She rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. She reached for her brown robe and went to her door. She opened it a crack and peeped out. Amazingly, there were no servants outside her door, waiting to take her for her bath.
She watched until a servant eventually went by. Hermione called out to her and asked her what was going on downstairs. It was the tiny girl from the day before. She looked somewhat horrified, as if she expected Hermione to try to escape while she was the only servant near the attic. Finally she said "Mrs. Malfoy has a sudden fever! We're looking for a spell to heal her!" and was gone in an instant.
Hermione wondered what all the fuss was about. To her knowledge, fevers were not that serious, and it should be fairly easy to find a spell for such things. In fact, she was surprised that they didn't already know one for such a common problem. She decided it was probably the way rich people were.
She watched the attic hall for a long time. No servants. No Malfoys. It would be a perfect opportunity to do a little exploring. After all, with everyone busy and so many servants rushing about, who would even notice her?
She opened the door quietly and took one step out into the hall. She was nervous, but she also felt exhilarated. She'd never snuck around in a mansion like this before. She'd never had the freedom to wander around anywhere. It was a new sensation for her, and she loved it.
She noticed that the door across the hall, Draco's "love room" had the light on again. Her mind told her to ignore it, she really didn't need to have a repeat of yesterday's misfortune. But suddenly she heard voices. Two male voices, in conversation. She stood next to the door, not daring to look in, lest Draco catch sight of her again. Instead, she listened as best she could.
"You really should go down to her, Mr. Malfoy," an unfamiliar voice said.
"I will, when she's better," she heard Draco reply.
"But… what if, dare I say it, she doesn't get better?"
Draco's voice rose. "She will get better! She always has before!"
The other voice became shaky. "Yes, but… the illness has gotten worse with time. It's becoming harder and harder to suppress the disease. Mr. Malfoy, I know you're fond of your mother, but you should be aware of… the possibilities. Your father is prepared for the worst. He really wishes you would come down and see your mother."
Draco was silent for a long time before he responded. "I just… I just can't look at her when she has one of her fevers. I know it's selfish, but I can't do it. Go and tell my father that I'll be down a bit later. I'll explain it to him myself."
"As you wish, Mr. Malfoy," the other voice said, and Hermione scurried to her room when she heard his footsteps head for the door. After she heard him walk down the stairs and out of the attic, she crept back across the hall. Draco had sounded like a completely different person, and she had to know if he looked different as well.
She peered into the room, being extremely cautious and ready to leap back out of sight if Draco so much as twitched his head. Draco was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. The walls no longer looked bright scarlet, but were a very muted shade of red. Gone were the shackles hanging from the celing and the satin bed coverings. It looked like a normal room now. Perhaps he'd charmed it the day before.
He looked so very miserable. She'd never seen him looking quite so hopeless. She was suddenly overcome by the urge to go and put her hands on his shoulders, to give him support and assurance. But he would laugh at her. He would mock her and send her back to her room. She knew it, so she remained where she was.
She watched him for many minutes before he looked up sharply. She had been so preoccupied with watching him that she'd let her guard down. She tried to duck out of sight, but it was too late. He'd seen her. She was rushing to her room and she felt him grab her by the arm and whirl her around. "What are you doing out of your room?" he asked harshly.
Hermione thought for a moment, trying to come up with a good excuse. "The noise woke me up, I just wanted to find out what was going on."
Draco dragged her back into his room and slammed the door shut behind them. "You were watching me again," he said.
"I didn't mean to. I heard voices, I only wanted to see what was the matter."
He sat down on the bed with a sigh. "It doesn't matter. I'm not going to punish you for stepping across the hall. It's not like you went wandering around the house."
Hermione bit her lip, recalling her earlier plans to do just that. Good thing she didn't. She hadn't been aware of how serious the situation was. She shifted from one foot to the other. She didn't know what to say. Would it be in poor taste to mention his mother? Would it be in poor taste not too, since he knew she had heard the conversation? She didn't have to wonder much longer.
"You've met my mother, haven't you?" Draco asked casually.
"Yes, the night you tried the counter-curse for the boiling spell," she answered uneasily, vivid memories of her night in his bed flashing through her mind.
"Yes, that was it. She seems like a cold person, doesn't she? I mean, she doesn't seem like a motherly type, right?"
Hermione didn't know how to answer that. She just nodded, hoping it would be an acceptable response.
Apparently it was. "She seems that way to most people, myself included. She was never very affectionate, and I can't remember her talking to me much, even when I was a child. But… she would often do things to let me know that there was more to her than an icy exterior. Little things that most people don't even pick up on. You know what I mean?" He looked up at her.
"I suppose so. I barely remember my parents."
Draco looked back down at the floor. "Oh, that's right. Your parents were Muggles." He looked back up at her. "Once, when I was very young, my father bought me a very rare, very expensive owl. I loved that owl. It was my first pet, the first creature I felt I had a connection to. A few weeks later, it died of some unknown illness. I was devastated. I cried for days. My father told me I was weak and that I needed to get over it. But I couldn't. A few days later, I came home to find an identical owl in a cage on my bed. My mother had tracked down another one for me. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. That's how I knew she cared for me."
Hermione thought that she should be smiling at the sentimentality of his story, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. Something about his voice was so very sad. "What's wrong with her?" Hermione asked without thinking. She immediately put a hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry."
Draco smiled faintly, an eerie, fake sort of smile. "My mother has an incurable disease. We don't even know what it is, but she developed it five years ago. Since then, she goes through sudden phases of weakness and fever. Sometimes it lasts only a day, sometimes up to a week. Here lately, the phases have been more frequent and more dangerous. The symptoms are becoming resistant to spells."
"I'm sorry, I really am," she said gently, placing a hand delicately on his shoulder.
He looked at her hand sharply, then back at her face. He seemed to be resisting the urge to swat it away. "I believe you, but I can't understand why. It's because of people like us that your parents are dead."
Hermione knelt down in front of him. "That's true. And I'll probably never wholly forgive your people for what they've done to me, but I can't dwell on that forever."
Draco stared at her, as if he were just now seeing her for the first time. Perhaps he'd never encountered someone who was understanding and sympathetic. Perhaps he didn't comprehend how she could show him kindness. Whatever it was, he seemed to be distracted from his present dilemma.
Suddenly he seemed to remember what as going on, and he stood up quickly. "I need to go talk to my father. You should be in your room."
Hermione nodded and walked back across the hall. She closed the door behind her and sat down on her own bed. She couldn't believe that she and Draco had actually had a civilized conversation. It seemed as if they had connected somehow. She hadn't realized that he was living with the constant fear of losing the one person in his life that he loved. How horrible that must be.
That was a different Draco in there today. It was a softer, kinder Draco, one that she had only gotten a glimpse of the night of the party. If only he could be like that all the time, she could easily fall in love with him. Who was she kidding? She was already falling in love with him! It was time she stopped lying to herself and trying to avoid the truth. Twisted as it was, she had fallen in love with her owner. It was no longer a question of whether or not. The question now present to her was "What do I do about it?"