Disclaimer: I don't own HP characters.... I don't own HP characters... I
don't own HP characters... JKR DOES, OK??? GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD!!!
Ok, sorry, over reacted a bit. Ahem. Yeah.
Chapter 16- Snowballs and Vials
Hermione's POV (still, I know)
As Christmas Break grew nearer, the weather grew colder and the students more restless. It was December 12th, the day before Break. It was the day of Lucius's deatheater meeting. It was also the day before the much anticipated Quidditch match, Gryffindor versus Slytherin. For me, this also meant something else, something potentially dangerous: Harry vs. Draco.
We had been driving the teachers absolutely insane, so they decided to let us out for the second half of the day. Draco, Hannah, Terry, and I were all sitting in front of the fire studying when a knock came on the portal. I answered, and was happy to see Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Lavender all standing there.
"Hey," Harry grinned at me, and glimpsed Hannah and Terry inside and waved. "It's finally snowing! We're having a snowball fight, you guys wanna come?"
I beamed. I love the snow, and snowball fights were great. "Absolutely, I'm in!" I looked over my shoulder, and Hannah nodded enthusiastically. "Meet you by the lake in half an hour?"
Ron nodded. "We're going to recruit more people. See you then."
I turned back to the common room, excited that it was Winter Break and I could have some fun with my friends. Hannah and Terry had gone upstairs, presumably for more layers of clothing, and I was heading up, too. "Come on, Draco, you'll freeze to death in what you're wearing."
"What makes you think I'm going?"
I stopped in my tracks and went back over to him. "What? You have to go! It's gonna be so much fun!" I grabbed his wrist and pulled him with me up the stairs.
Well, fine, whatever," I heard him mumble. "I'm only doing this for you!" he called before retreating to his room. I smiled.
Half an hour later, the four of us, Neville, Seamus, Padma, and some various other students from other houses were gathered and waiting for Harry and Ron. They finally came running up with Lavender and Ginny, and Dean in tow.
"Look who we found!" Harry grinned. We decided the fight should be girls against guys. Us girls went over, and some of us made snowballs while some built up a wall to duck behind, and the guys did the same.
"Ready!" Ron cried. "Set! Go!" I ducked right as a snowball from him sailed over my head. I threw one back, and Ron ducked, my snowball hitting Seamus right in the chest. The war had begun.
My fingers were tingling with cold, but I kept making and throwing snowballs. I heard Ginny yelp and she dove down as a snowball whistled past her, ruffling the top of her hair. She got up and fake-glared at Harry, who grinned and waved before dodging out of the way of the angry red- head's snowball.
I spotted Draco running toward the guys' supply of snowballs. I grinned wickedly, aimed, and fired, catching him right in the back of the head. He bent down, stood again, and whirled to face me, a wide smile spreading across his face. I noticed that he was cradling an arm full of snowballs. Before I knew what was happening, he was chucking them at me, one after the other. I heard him laughing as I tried to dodge them, but got hit by a few. I dove behind the wall, taking cover. I didn't dare get up, because I knew he would be waiting.
Getting a brilliant idea, I pulled my wand out of my robe. I stood back up, and sure enough, Draco was waiting for me. He started throwing again, but this time I was ready.
I pointed my wand at the first incoming snowball. "Wingardium leviosa!" I yelled, and the snowball stopped, and was just floating in midair. With a flick of my wrist, I sent it flying back right at Draco, who was out of snowballs now, and hit him in the shoulder.
Taking my example, many other students had drawn their wands, and we were now engaged in a magical snowball fight. Some sent snowballs flying through the air, and some melted the ones aimed for them with a charm taught to us by Professor Flitwick to seal in heat.
It wasn't long before Harry had called his broomstick to him and he was zooming through the air, showing off. Ginny was the first one to finally hit him with a snowball, and he rushed at her, pulling up abruptly before he knocked her over. She smiled, and he pulled her up with him onto his broom, rising up again.
A scream from Lavender drew my attention back to the game. "Spy!" she screamed to us girls, collapsing in a fit of giggles into Ron's arms as he tickled her from behind. "Ron," she gasped, trying to hold back the laughter in attempt to catch her breath. "Stop!" But he relentlessly continued to hold her up and tickle her.
Harry zoomed past and Ginny gave me a heads up. "Hermione, look out!" she called.
I glanced up in time to see Draco flying at me on his broom, a pile of snow in his arms. He dropped it right over me, but was high enough up that I only got lightly sprinkled with snow. He landed back on the guys' side, and leaned against his broomstick. I grinned evilly at him, waved, and brought up my wand. Before he could run, I pointed at an area of snow next to him and muttered a curse to blow it up. The snow blew up and covered his whole right side in white powder.
Just then, Professor McGonagall leaned out of the window of her office and screamed at us. "No more magic for snowball fights!" she hollered, using a voice-magnifying charm to make it carry to us through the falling snow. Then she slammed the window.
"Game!" Ron called from his place beneath Lavender, leaning against a tree, just before sprinkling snow over her head. She glared back at him, and he grinned. "Okay, now game," I heard him say.
We all met back in the middle of our 'war-zone' and began walking back to the castle. I was talking to Padma when Draco flew slowly up beside me and landed, dismounting his broom.
"See, wasn't that fun?" I beamed at him.
"Yeah," he said, smiling a little. "Yeah, it was. I may even have been able to convince Ron that I'm not completely evil."
"You called him Ron."
"Yeah," he murmured thoughtfully. "Yeah, I did."
Still Mione
I sat in front of the fire thirty minutes later, in dry clothes, trying to warm up. Instead of putting on new robes, I had dug out some jeans I had in my trunk, and wore them with a warm, fuzzy green sweater over a dark green tank top.
Surprisingly, Draco also had jeans on, with a simple black shirt.
Suddenly I groaned, remembering something. "We have detention with Snape," I reminded him.
"Oh, great," he replied. "It's 6:15 now, we'd better go if we're gonna get anything to eat before."
I sighed, and he pulled me to my feet. We made our way down the corridor to the picture of the feast, and I said he new password. "Raspberry Jello." It swung open, and we took our seats at 'our table'.
An elf named Jackie brought us our food, and we started eating. I helped myself to as much mashed potatoes and fried chicken fingers as I wanted, then sat back and watched as Draco continued to devour the food.
At 6:50 I finally told him we needed to go. He grabbed a last piece of chicken and followed me to Snape's room.
We got there exactly 1 minute and 7 seconds late, and Professor Snape was standing there impatiently like he had been waiting all night.
"You're late," he growled, glaring at us when we walked in. He walked to the supply room, and we followed. Pointing at the cupboards full of vials, beakers, and who knows what else, he explained to us what our job would be. "I am leaving you two alone tonight, hoping you'll be able to do this simple thing. You will clean all of these," he said, gesturing at the overflowing cabinets. "And place them back in the cupboards neatly, without your wands. I put them under a spell so that you may only take them off my desk when the cleaning is done." And with a snap of his fingers, he was gone.
I groaned, while Draco simply stared unbelieving at all the dirty vials. This would take awhile.
I sighed for what must have been the hundredth time as I finished cleaning out a beaker, set it in the cupboard, and picked up a new one. "This blows."
"No kidding," Draco agreed as he set the last beaker in the cabinet and closed the door. "Ten down, two to go," he said. "We can finish these."
"Are you sure? Cause I don't think I can. It's stifling in here, and I'm going to go insane!" We'd been in that supply room for four hours, and it was 11:00. We'd gotten ten huge cabinets full of glass cleaned and neatly arranged in that amount of time, while managing to only break three vials.
"How about we take a break?" he suggested. I looked up at him and nodded eagerly, already up off my stool and halfway out the door.
I ran over and opened a window, leaning against the sill and soaking up the cold air. I had long since shed my sweater, and was wearing only my dark green spaghetti-strap shirt. When I was cooled off enough, I shut the window, but left my sweater off.
I was leaning against the wall, and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor, and Draco came to sit next to me. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall.
"You okay?" Draco asked.
"Yeah, just... bored out of my mind." I opened my eyes to look at him, and he nodded. "This has gotta be worse for you though. You have a Quidditch game tomorrow morning."
He winced "Yeah, I know. I'll probably fall asleep and fall off my broom." I laughed.
"No, you won't. It'll be fine. Of course," I added on second thought, "Gryffindor's gonna win." I playfully stuck my tongue out at him.
"No way!" he argued, laughing at my childishness. "Slytherin's team may not be that great, but they've got me. I'll catch the snitch, and we'll win!" I rolled my eyes, and got to my feet.
"Come on, let's finish up those last two cabinets."
Forty five minutes later, I set the last jar on the shelf of the last cabinet.
"Snape better appreciate this," I grumbled. "You can see your freakin reflection in those jars!" Draco laughed and led me out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I grabbed my wand off Snape's desk. "It would've been SOOO much easier with magic."
We trudged slowly down the maze-like halls lit by moonlight through the windows, back to our common room. We must've been about halfway there when we passed a large window in a deserted hall that I'd never paid any attention to before. However, when we passed by it, I gasped and did a double-take. I stopped walking and just stared out the window.
"Mione, wha-" Draco cut off when he saw what I was gazing at.
The view from this window was simply breathtaking. The full moon seemed to be hovering just over the lake, and the snow-covered mountains looked misty in the background. The snow was falling lightly on the ice- covered lake, and was barely distinguishable from the twinkling stars in the clear sky. I leaned on my elbows and stared out at it for a few moments before speaking. "It's beautiful," I whispered simply, in awe.
"It sure is," Draco replied. I turned to look at him, but surprisingly, he wasn't gazing at the lake as I had been. He was staring right at me, and when I turned to look at him, I found myself staring into his blue-gray eyes, and I discovered that they were almost exactly the color of the mountains in the moonlight.
About a million thoughts were running through my head as we stood there. Was I sure this was Draco Malfoy, and not an imposter? Cause he sure wasn't acting like himself lately. I think I liked him. I knew I liked him. A lot.
Slowly, he leaned in closer until our faces were mere inches apart. My thoughts were racing, and I closed my eyes as he leaned in and kissed me softly, gently. I almost hated to say it, but his kisses were better than Harry's... soooo much better. Harry's kisses made me feel good enough, but with Draco, I got such an overwhelming feeling of joy, pleasure, and even... love.
He pulled away briefly, then came back and I automatically deepened the kiss. My hands linked behind his neck, just resting on his shoulders, and his ran down my sides to my waist, pulling me closer.
He pulled away again, and just stared at me, a question in his eyes. Was I okay with this? I wasn't sure, but I knew I sure as hell didn't want it to stop. In response to his unspoken question, I drew him down to me and we kissed again, a long deep kiss. I felt his tongue slide along my bottom lip, and a shiver ran down my spine. I was certainly no expert on kisses, but I figured this one couldn't be this passionate and gentle at the same time, and be a side effect of some sort of potion or something. This was genuine.
We finally broke apart again for the need to breathe. Draco grinned widely at me, and I smiled back, breathing deeply. "So," I whispered, almost afraid to break the silence. "What was that?"
"I'm not sure," Draco admitted. "But I'm willing to find out what it turns into. What about you?"
"Yeah," I grinned. "I think I'd be willing to do that." Draco kept his arm around my waist and led me down the hall back to the common room.
A/N: YAY!!!! DRACO AND HERMIONE ARE FINALLY TOGETHER!!!!! YAY!!!! I'm so excited, are you guys!!?? I can't wait to write more of this. It's gonna be so fun! Thanx for all the wonderful reviews, hope you keep it up!
Chapter 16- Snowballs and Vials
Hermione's POV (still, I know)
As Christmas Break grew nearer, the weather grew colder and the students more restless. It was December 12th, the day before Break. It was the day of Lucius's deatheater meeting. It was also the day before the much anticipated Quidditch match, Gryffindor versus Slytherin. For me, this also meant something else, something potentially dangerous: Harry vs. Draco.
We had been driving the teachers absolutely insane, so they decided to let us out for the second half of the day. Draco, Hannah, Terry, and I were all sitting in front of the fire studying when a knock came on the portal. I answered, and was happy to see Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Lavender all standing there.
"Hey," Harry grinned at me, and glimpsed Hannah and Terry inside and waved. "It's finally snowing! We're having a snowball fight, you guys wanna come?"
I beamed. I love the snow, and snowball fights were great. "Absolutely, I'm in!" I looked over my shoulder, and Hannah nodded enthusiastically. "Meet you by the lake in half an hour?"
Ron nodded. "We're going to recruit more people. See you then."
I turned back to the common room, excited that it was Winter Break and I could have some fun with my friends. Hannah and Terry had gone upstairs, presumably for more layers of clothing, and I was heading up, too. "Come on, Draco, you'll freeze to death in what you're wearing."
"What makes you think I'm going?"
I stopped in my tracks and went back over to him. "What? You have to go! It's gonna be so much fun!" I grabbed his wrist and pulled him with me up the stairs.
Well, fine, whatever," I heard him mumble. "I'm only doing this for you!" he called before retreating to his room. I smiled.
Half an hour later, the four of us, Neville, Seamus, Padma, and some various other students from other houses were gathered and waiting for Harry and Ron. They finally came running up with Lavender and Ginny, and Dean in tow.
"Look who we found!" Harry grinned. We decided the fight should be girls against guys. Us girls went over, and some of us made snowballs while some built up a wall to duck behind, and the guys did the same.
"Ready!" Ron cried. "Set! Go!" I ducked right as a snowball from him sailed over my head. I threw one back, and Ron ducked, my snowball hitting Seamus right in the chest. The war had begun.
My fingers were tingling with cold, but I kept making and throwing snowballs. I heard Ginny yelp and she dove down as a snowball whistled past her, ruffling the top of her hair. She got up and fake-glared at Harry, who grinned and waved before dodging out of the way of the angry red- head's snowball.
I spotted Draco running toward the guys' supply of snowballs. I grinned wickedly, aimed, and fired, catching him right in the back of the head. He bent down, stood again, and whirled to face me, a wide smile spreading across his face. I noticed that he was cradling an arm full of snowballs. Before I knew what was happening, he was chucking them at me, one after the other. I heard him laughing as I tried to dodge them, but got hit by a few. I dove behind the wall, taking cover. I didn't dare get up, because I knew he would be waiting.
Getting a brilliant idea, I pulled my wand out of my robe. I stood back up, and sure enough, Draco was waiting for me. He started throwing again, but this time I was ready.
I pointed my wand at the first incoming snowball. "Wingardium leviosa!" I yelled, and the snowball stopped, and was just floating in midair. With a flick of my wrist, I sent it flying back right at Draco, who was out of snowballs now, and hit him in the shoulder.
Taking my example, many other students had drawn their wands, and we were now engaged in a magical snowball fight. Some sent snowballs flying through the air, and some melted the ones aimed for them with a charm taught to us by Professor Flitwick to seal in heat.
It wasn't long before Harry had called his broomstick to him and he was zooming through the air, showing off. Ginny was the first one to finally hit him with a snowball, and he rushed at her, pulling up abruptly before he knocked her over. She smiled, and he pulled her up with him onto his broom, rising up again.
A scream from Lavender drew my attention back to the game. "Spy!" she screamed to us girls, collapsing in a fit of giggles into Ron's arms as he tickled her from behind. "Ron," she gasped, trying to hold back the laughter in attempt to catch her breath. "Stop!" But he relentlessly continued to hold her up and tickle her.
Harry zoomed past and Ginny gave me a heads up. "Hermione, look out!" she called.
I glanced up in time to see Draco flying at me on his broom, a pile of snow in his arms. He dropped it right over me, but was high enough up that I only got lightly sprinkled with snow. He landed back on the guys' side, and leaned against his broomstick. I grinned evilly at him, waved, and brought up my wand. Before he could run, I pointed at an area of snow next to him and muttered a curse to blow it up. The snow blew up and covered his whole right side in white powder.
Just then, Professor McGonagall leaned out of the window of her office and screamed at us. "No more magic for snowball fights!" she hollered, using a voice-magnifying charm to make it carry to us through the falling snow. Then she slammed the window.
"Game!" Ron called from his place beneath Lavender, leaning against a tree, just before sprinkling snow over her head. She glared back at him, and he grinned. "Okay, now game," I heard him say.
We all met back in the middle of our 'war-zone' and began walking back to the castle. I was talking to Padma when Draco flew slowly up beside me and landed, dismounting his broom.
"See, wasn't that fun?" I beamed at him.
"Yeah," he said, smiling a little. "Yeah, it was. I may even have been able to convince Ron that I'm not completely evil."
"You called him Ron."
"Yeah," he murmured thoughtfully. "Yeah, I did."
Still Mione
I sat in front of the fire thirty minutes later, in dry clothes, trying to warm up. Instead of putting on new robes, I had dug out some jeans I had in my trunk, and wore them with a warm, fuzzy green sweater over a dark green tank top.
Surprisingly, Draco also had jeans on, with a simple black shirt.
Suddenly I groaned, remembering something. "We have detention with Snape," I reminded him.
"Oh, great," he replied. "It's 6:15 now, we'd better go if we're gonna get anything to eat before."
I sighed, and he pulled me to my feet. We made our way down the corridor to the picture of the feast, and I said he new password. "Raspberry Jello." It swung open, and we took our seats at 'our table'.
An elf named Jackie brought us our food, and we started eating. I helped myself to as much mashed potatoes and fried chicken fingers as I wanted, then sat back and watched as Draco continued to devour the food.
At 6:50 I finally told him we needed to go. He grabbed a last piece of chicken and followed me to Snape's room.
We got there exactly 1 minute and 7 seconds late, and Professor Snape was standing there impatiently like he had been waiting all night.
"You're late," he growled, glaring at us when we walked in. He walked to the supply room, and we followed. Pointing at the cupboards full of vials, beakers, and who knows what else, he explained to us what our job would be. "I am leaving you two alone tonight, hoping you'll be able to do this simple thing. You will clean all of these," he said, gesturing at the overflowing cabinets. "And place them back in the cupboards neatly, without your wands. I put them under a spell so that you may only take them off my desk when the cleaning is done." And with a snap of his fingers, he was gone.
I groaned, while Draco simply stared unbelieving at all the dirty vials. This would take awhile.
I sighed for what must have been the hundredth time as I finished cleaning out a beaker, set it in the cupboard, and picked up a new one. "This blows."
"No kidding," Draco agreed as he set the last beaker in the cabinet and closed the door. "Ten down, two to go," he said. "We can finish these."
"Are you sure? Cause I don't think I can. It's stifling in here, and I'm going to go insane!" We'd been in that supply room for four hours, and it was 11:00. We'd gotten ten huge cabinets full of glass cleaned and neatly arranged in that amount of time, while managing to only break three vials.
"How about we take a break?" he suggested. I looked up at him and nodded eagerly, already up off my stool and halfway out the door.
I ran over and opened a window, leaning against the sill and soaking up the cold air. I had long since shed my sweater, and was wearing only my dark green spaghetti-strap shirt. When I was cooled off enough, I shut the window, but left my sweater off.
I was leaning against the wall, and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor, and Draco came to sit next to me. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall.
"You okay?" Draco asked.
"Yeah, just... bored out of my mind." I opened my eyes to look at him, and he nodded. "This has gotta be worse for you though. You have a Quidditch game tomorrow morning."
He winced "Yeah, I know. I'll probably fall asleep and fall off my broom." I laughed.
"No, you won't. It'll be fine. Of course," I added on second thought, "Gryffindor's gonna win." I playfully stuck my tongue out at him.
"No way!" he argued, laughing at my childishness. "Slytherin's team may not be that great, but they've got me. I'll catch the snitch, and we'll win!" I rolled my eyes, and got to my feet.
"Come on, let's finish up those last two cabinets."
Forty five minutes later, I set the last jar on the shelf of the last cabinet.
"Snape better appreciate this," I grumbled. "You can see your freakin reflection in those jars!" Draco laughed and led me out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I grabbed my wand off Snape's desk. "It would've been SOOO much easier with magic."
We trudged slowly down the maze-like halls lit by moonlight through the windows, back to our common room. We must've been about halfway there when we passed a large window in a deserted hall that I'd never paid any attention to before. However, when we passed by it, I gasped and did a double-take. I stopped walking and just stared out the window.
"Mione, wha-" Draco cut off when he saw what I was gazing at.
The view from this window was simply breathtaking. The full moon seemed to be hovering just over the lake, and the snow-covered mountains looked misty in the background. The snow was falling lightly on the ice- covered lake, and was barely distinguishable from the twinkling stars in the clear sky. I leaned on my elbows and stared out at it for a few moments before speaking. "It's beautiful," I whispered simply, in awe.
"It sure is," Draco replied. I turned to look at him, but surprisingly, he wasn't gazing at the lake as I had been. He was staring right at me, and when I turned to look at him, I found myself staring into his blue-gray eyes, and I discovered that they were almost exactly the color of the mountains in the moonlight.
About a million thoughts were running through my head as we stood there. Was I sure this was Draco Malfoy, and not an imposter? Cause he sure wasn't acting like himself lately. I think I liked him. I knew I liked him. A lot.
Slowly, he leaned in closer until our faces were mere inches apart. My thoughts were racing, and I closed my eyes as he leaned in and kissed me softly, gently. I almost hated to say it, but his kisses were better than Harry's... soooo much better. Harry's kisses made me feel good enough, but with Draco, I got such an overwhelming feeling of joy, pleasure, and even... love.
He pulled away briefly, then came back and I automatically deepened the kiss. My hands linked behind his neck, just resting on his shoulders, and his ran down my sides to my waist, pulling me closer.
He pulled away again, and just stared at me, a question in his eyes. Was I okay with this? I wasn't sure, but I knew I sure as hell didn't want it to stop. In response to his unspoken question, I drew him down to me and we kissed again, a long deep kiss. I felt his tongue slide along my bottom lip, and a shiver ran down my spine. I was certainly no expert on kisses, but I figured this one couldn't be this passionate and gentle at the same time, and be a side effect of some sort of potion or something. This was genuine.
We finally broke apart again for the need to breathe. Draco grinned widely at me, and I smiled back, breathing deeply. "So," I whispered, almost afraid to break the silence. "What was that?"
"I'm not sure," Draco admitted. "But I'm willing to find out what it turns into. What about you?"
"Yeah," I grinned. "I think I'd be willing to do that." Draco kept his arm around my waist and led me down the hall back to the common room.
A/N: YAY!!!! DRACO AND HERMIONE ARE FINALLY TOGETHER!!!!! YAY!!!! I'm so excited, are you guys!!?? I can't wait to write more of this. It's gonna be so fun! Thanx for all the wonderful reviews, hope you keep it up!