Disclaimer: Roses are Red; Violets are blue Note to JKR: I'm better than you. (Just kidding; please don't sue)

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~~`~`~ ` Falling Head Over Heels The Story of Hermione Granger and her relationship with Draco Malfoy By: Befuzzled





Chapter Twenty-Two ~ Pax Meax, Vis Meis



"And if I make it through the day Will tomorrow be the same? Am I just running in place? And if I stumble and fall Should I get up and carry on And it all will just be the same Cause I'm young and I'm hopeless I'm lost and I noticed I'm going nowhere fast that's what they say I'm troublesome; I've fallen I'm angry at my father It's me against this world and I don't care" ~Good Charlotte

Hermione looked up at Dumbledore after a moment. "So what kind of charms are we talking about?"

"Difficult and very extensive, but I have all my confidence two best students at Hogwarts in your year."

"You mean you won't be performing the charms, Sir?"

"No Mr. Malfoy. If you cast it on each other it will work better. Friendship and love are better protection that an old man can offer with a few muttered words. Look at Mr. Potter."

Draco looked confused, unlike Hermione he didn't know what the Headmaster was talking about. Hermione tried to unscramble it for him, "So you're saying if we cast the charms on each other it will essentially work like Harry's mom dying for him?"

"Essentially. Without dying for each other the bond would not be that strong, but with your magical skills and friendship it should be a good match against Lucius."

The two students stared at each other before the Dragon spoke, "Do you trust me?"

"I trust you."

"I trust you, too."

"Excellent. This will be a two-step task the first is learning and casting the charms. The second part will involve a potion that you will have to make together. It is very complicated. Professor Snape will only be able to tell you how to make it. Ask all the questions you need to, but once you start on the concoction you will be completely on your own."

"Yes, sir."

"Shall we go talk to Professor Flitwick so you can master this spell?"

They nodded and followed the teacher throughout the corridors of the castle earning a few stares and second glances from the other students in the hallways. It was awkward enough to be seeing a Slytherin and a Gryffindor walking side-by-side in the halls, let alone, being with the Headmaster himself. Draco was getting annoyed.

"Calm down Dragons, don't release your fury. Save your energy for the charms," Hermione whispered to the boy walking next to her.

"Yes, Sleeping Beauty. Would you get them not to stare though, it's so agitated."

Hermione quickened her pace to catch up to the professor and raised her voice, "So Professor, what other Prefect duties will you have for us after this?"

Dumbledore, who has always been quick to catch on to things, vaguely explained "Many, many, more. Just one task at a time Miss Granger."

Hermione said her thanks before hanging back with Draco without all the stares. "Better?"

"Yes, I should have thought of that."

"You would have if you didn't have such a hot head."

"I don't have a hot head I just have a lot of shit going on right now."

"I know and I'm going to help you get through it. What are friends for?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Liar, what about me? And Terry and Hannah? Even Crabbe, Goyle, and Parkinson?"

"Those goons? No they aren't friends. I have a lot of enemies in case you haven't noticed; they're intimidating to most people. And Pansy, she's the definition of the words 'ditz'. I thought part of friendship was communication - you have to be able to talk to be able communicate, right?"

"Okay, well you still have me. Oh good we're here."

"Ah, Albus, Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy, how nice to see you all," the short Charms Professor greeted. "How can I help you?"

"Well these two would like to learn some protection charms for an extracurricular activity."

"Ah, very tricky charms those are - are you up for it?" They both nodded silently. "Let's get started then. Are you staying Albus?"

"Just for a few moments, I suppose."

"Okay then the words you nee to know are:

Adorne meax pax

Addere meis vis Adserere de maleficus

Do either of you know what they mean."

Hermione looked deep in thought as she began to speak her translation, "Provide my strength, give me -"

"Give me my peace and protect me from evil," Draco cut in.

"Very good. Now practice saying that phrase a few times and then I'll teach you the wand movements."

For a half hour they practice reciting in unison. "I think we've got it Professor."

"Oh yes. Well the motions are swish, flick, and flick for each phrase in the enchantment."

"Well you both are coming along nicely with this. Meet me in my office once you are finished here."

"Yes sir." They went back to studying the fluent movements and were soon in unison.

"Now let's try casting the charms on inanimate objects for some practice combining the parts of the spell. Like I said it is rather difficult."

They spent the next hour or so casting spells on pillows and chairs learning to the movements, sending sparkling white lights across the room that were absorbed on impact.

"Professor, how much protection does this charm give?" Draco asked towards the end of the lesson.

"Well, Mr. Malfoy, it depends on the spell it's protecting from, the strength of the person who cast it, and the bond with the two people involved with the placement."

"Okay let's say Hermione and I are good friends, I cast it on her, against the curtacius curse."

"Well, unfortunately you would feel a lot of the side effects from the curse. It is a mighty powerful curse, and you are still an underage wizard, and let's face it you and Hermione have never been that close."

"Oh." Draco was disheartened. It wasn't the answer he wanted. Dumbledore said they're bond would be strong. "I suppose we should get to the Headmaster's office now."

"Yes I suppose. Take you for all your help Professor." They walked out of the classroom in the direction they had come from it. "What's wrong Draco?"

"The old coon said our bond would be strong and then Flitwick said you would still get hurt."

"Yes, he did. But Flitwick doesn't know that we are friends. Didn't you notice Dumbleodre said this was an extracurricular activity? Don't sweat it. If anybody has to do this I'm glad it's you. I trust you with my life you've saved it before."

"Hmm, I still don't like the answer Flitwick gave us, though."

"Get over it, honestly boy. We have to make a potion next and that needs all your concentration. Don't sweat the small stuff."

"That coming from you who has been studying for exams that won't happen for another six months."

"I'm not studying, I'm progressively reviewing."

"Whatever you say Mina. Peppermint."

~*~

They knocked on the door. "Come in." They walked into the lavish office, to speak with Dumbledore. He was at his desk and Snape was sitting across from him. Hermione took the farthest chair from him and Draco sat in between the two.

"Hello Professor." Snape just nodded the recognition. "Flitwick said we practice enough for one day so sent us here for the meeting, I guess."

"Yes Mr. Malfoy. Now you will work with Severus on that potion."

"I have been filled in on all the problems you've been having, Mr. Malfoy. I will not take any foolishness. This potion could be deadly if not made properly. I will take a week to make, and you two must be the sole participants in making it. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir, " they now nervous prefect replied.

"We will use a spare classroom so it cannot be disturbed. A password will be placed on the lock so only you two, myself, the headmaster, and McGonagall will know how to open it. I suggest you keep it that way."

The two friends looked at each other, expecting the worse to come from the professor. They wanted to support each other but didn't want to show any affection in front of the cold and cruel teacher.

"Now follow me we have some things to go over, before we start." The greasy Professor stood and left the room, robes billowing behind him as he sauntered through the halls and down numerous flights of stairs to the frigid dungeons. It passed up the normal Potions classroom without a backwards glance to an empty, abandoned room six doors down the halls.

"Alohamora," he mutters and slammed the door opened. He conjured two desk and a chalk board and summoned a number of old books. "Sit."

They students were not willing to test the strength of his patience at the moment so they obediently did as they were told and took the seats facing the blackboard.

"Tonight we will just be going over the information surrounded the process and reasons for certain ingredients. We cannot start the actual making of the potions until tomorrow night. It has to be brewed the week prior to a new moon, and lucky for you two that will be approaching in just eight days. We have a lot to cover so I will not tolerate any disobedience and you must always pay attention."

"Yes, Professor." Draco said as he watched Hermione pull out some parchment from her ever-present bag.

"The main and most important ingredient is Dragons' scale. This is one of the most durable materials known to the wizarding world and very hard to come by, I suggest you use it appropriately. There are the usually fillers of wolf's bane and toad spawn. More of the materials include shell of a dragon's egg, thanks to that git, Hagrid cherishing the precious dragon of his, we have that as well, and we will also need a piece from each of you. " Snape kept randomly rambling off more and more ingredients as Hermione diligently wrote every single one of his words down.

"These books will be useful in researching the concoction. Remember what I told you in your first year: I can tech you how to bottle fame and brew glory, and even put a stopper in death. This is so much more complicated then that. Once you start the fire for the caldron I cannot help you; I expect you to ask all you questions now and both of you must have a complete understanding of every element involved

"I also ask you to keep your mouth shut about this. DO NOT tell anyone and that includes Misters Potter and Weasley, Miss Granger. " Hermione looked up upon hearing her name and gave a blank but understanding nod.

"As with most potions, spells and curses, there is a counter curse. It requires having part of the original potion and will result in your death if the couterer choses so. So it is in you best interest to keep this from anyone and everyone. If one person found out and let it slip to certain others around here it could rather quickly get back to those who we are protecting you from. As a precaution we will destroy the potion once you have taken it, and will just remake it each time as necessary.

"Read those texts tonight and give me a page report on the information. Bring it to class along with your other essays, I will read it and if I feel you can comprehend the process then I will send word to meet me here tomorrow at nine. If not you will have an entire months preparations before we can make it again.

Go now and study, I will see you tomorrow and remember tell no one."

Hermione shoved her scroll of notes into her bag and Draco grabbed her elbow to escort her out of the room. They walked in an excited, scared, and understood silence to the Prefect common room.

"I guess this puts a damper on the trip we were supposed to plan," Draco said disheartened.

"Not necessarily, " Hermione rejoiced holding up a letter from Terry and Hannah with their list of ideas. Hermione laughed as she read it.

Hermione, (and Draco since you follow her around),

We came here expecting the walls to be screaming with the ideas you two managed to brew over the trip but were utterly shocked to silence when we walked in to not even a chalkboard of organization ideas.

We realized this was our chance to contribute to this little team effort of our as more than just the clean up crew, so we set to our own work. We made a list of exciting placed around Europe we didn't want to travel to far from home and what's there to do in Australia, America, or Asia? Those stupid "A" places.

Well anyway that list is attached to the back of the little letter of ours. On each of your desk we placed class list for the entire house so you can begin to think about what groups to set up or at least how many people should be in the group.

So at your leisure, of course, please select a few of our ideas and then leave us a message or um just talk to us in the great hall.

Yeah well we are going to go relax now,

Your accomplices,

Hannah and Terry

Hermione handed the wit filled note over to Draco and watched in amusement how his face first expressed confused anger, then relief, and anticipation.

"I would love to get started on that, but right now I think we have more important things to attend to, would you agree?"

"Most definitely." They sat sided by side at the table scribbling notes as the each skcowered, reread portions from their books, and paced them back and forth. They traded and compared notes and finally sat down to write a page long report on the potion.

As Hermione wrapped up the now scroll long essay they started talking about other things, "Do you still have the other potions essays we had to do for tomorrow?"

"Oh yeah, about that, I kind of thought, that you would um, do them." Hermione's eye tightened to slits, they almost looked closed, her face began to turn beet red, and her hands began to shake.

"You WHAT?" Draco was almost scared, all this over homework?

"Geez, Hermione calm down. I was only kidding. I gave them to Snape a week ago to hold onto. I told him that we didn't trust each other not to lose them. Gods, girl, what would you have done if I really didn't have them?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

"On second thought, not really." They sat in quiet for a few comforting moments. Two cats emerge from no where taking a content, and territorial seat on their owner's laps, purring. "Hey there Lucy. Been terrorizing the mice much?" She purred louder as he stroked her back and arched her spine to fit his hand.

"Do you think this will really work?" Hermione popped the question from no where.

"I sure as hell hope so." He began to move his hand over to his friends but the kitten shot him a look telling him he better not stop petting her, so he substituted by moving closer to her. "As much as I hate to admit this, you were right and Dumbledore does no what he is talking about half the time."

Hermione sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. "This is my entire fault, isn't it?'

"No, why would you say that?"

"Well, if I wasn't your friend you dad wouldn't have any problems. If I hadn't let you get the best me back at the beginning of the year we never would have had the flying lessons and then I would never know who Romeo was and then things would be so less complicated and ."

"Mina? Shut up please. It's really not you fault I reciprocated the feelings. I provoked you at the start of the year. I told Snape that lie about the flying lessons. I was the one who forced you to find out about the partner thing during Halloween. And I'm the one with the bastard father causing all of this. So don't blame yourself. We'll get through this. Okay?'

"Yeah. Draco?"

"I don't want to go back to my dorm tonight; will you stay here with me?"

"Of course, I don't want to go back either."

"Thanks." Hermione whispered dreamily. Draco laid his head on top of hers and they were soon both peacefully asleep.

~*~

Draco,

You have passed my test meet me at nine.

Ss

P.S. Inform Miss Granger.

Draco quietly put away the short note he received at lunch and jotted a quick one to Hermione

He walked over to the Gryffindor table, standing behind Hermione and made a rude comment to Paul as he sneered. "That was a cheap shot you took at the match Gold. Afraid that was the only way PotHead could win."

"Not exactly," he responded just as coldly with his own glare.

That wasn't the response Draco was looking for but thankfully Weasley had his own temper. "What do you want Malfoy?"

"Nothing, you would know about Weasley." He pressed the note down the back of Hermione's robes. "Trash like you doesn't catch on to much."

Hermione turned around and sarcastically supplied a "Sod off, Malfoy."

"That was original."

"Yeah kind of like the same hair do you been sporting for the past six years."

"My hair is perfect, I see you've finally tamed yours down."

"Yeah, and I did it the muggle way. No spells or gel" This brought a laugh from the rest of the table, but infuriated Malfoy and he walked off without another look back.

~*~

At nine o'clock they waited patiently in the cold empty classroom. Snape arrived late carrying all their need supplies.

"Start exactly at nine thirty and every night you must add new ingredients at that precise time. You may start down a do not mess up."

He retreated to the back corner and the two stared at each other. "Good luck, they whispered at the same time and started mixing the ingredients.

~*~

They next day Draco was wearing a new look and all of the Gryffindors at the table the past night pointed it out.

"Oh, was Malfoy offended by the muggle born?"

"Oh Malfoy can't even decide how to wear his hair by himself."

"Geez Draco I was only playing into your game I wasn't serious."

"So you don't like it?"

"No I do, I just didn't know I could affect you that much." He just shrugged.

"You didn't really - you just pointed out something and I agree. I needed a change the same look for all these years; what was I thinking? And now I can save some money on gel and spend it on more important things."

"Such as?"

"I don't know what ever catches my eye."

"Whatever you say, shall we go see what Hannah and Terry think of our decisions about this trip."

"Why not? Then after the meeting or whatever this is you can help me with the aritmacy homework."

"I'll help; I will not do it for you."

~*~

"So the idea of just the random numbers for the groups works with you guys?"

"Yeah, it's simple and it's fair. If any groups with totally dissemble each other we can always change out. But how many people do we want to be in each group?"

"Terry didn't you mention something about having four or eight people?"

"Yeah so we could put equal numbers from each house into the same group. Right now I think eight would work better so everyone has someone they are comfortable with, do you all agree?"

Draco thought for a moment, "Well I'm comfortable with all of you, and hardly any of the Syltherins, so what's that mean?"

"That you are weird," Hermione said flatly.

"That hurt," Draco said as he made the display of clutching his robes and falling onto a couch.

"So are you trying to imply that you want the four of us to be together and just split the other students into groups of eight?"

"Well that wasn't the intent exactly but that sounds like a great idea to me!"

Finally the Ravenclaw spoke again, "Okay so how many groups would there be when you subtract the four of us from the equation? What is that? Twenty- three? I think. So when you number just number up to twenty-three so we can get two into every group from each house."

"That's logical."

"Duh. I am a Ravenclaw for a reason."

"Okay that's out of the way. Did you two pick a place to go yet?" Hermione questioned.

"Yes half are going to Paris and the rest are going to Rome?"

"Where are we going to go?" Draco asked.

"How about both? We have half the amount of people so we can travel twice as fast."

Draco looked at Hermione and saw that glazed look in her eyes. "What are you thinking about?"

"The Louver and the Roman Coliseum, and all the museums in France and Italy."

"Now Hannah do you still think we'll be traveling twice as fast?"

"We could give her a time limit?"

~*~

They met every night at nine o'clock preparing the materials they would have to add at half past.

Each added material changed the color of the potion visiting all the colors of the rainbow.

Within the week they were done and the potion was absolutely perfect, settling on a pure milky white. And on the new moon they drank and casted their charms on each other.

Adorne meax pax

Addere meis vis

Adserere de maleficus

Bubbly warmth spread over them and they felt completely safe and secure, especially when they were close to each other.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~` ~`

My good ness it feels like every fourth chapter is a nightmare to write. I had severe brain damage while writing this one. It took forever and then I forgot to include something about the trip after I brought it up. I am so stupid sometimes - and to Kevin - shut up before you even say it.

What to look forward too: 1) they begin to feel the effects of the charms and potion 2) More trip planning 3) Another Quidditch match (Slytherin vs. Hufflepuff) 4) And some not-so-welcomed-visitors

I would like to apologize for the amount of time in between the chapters, with track, and we just got a new computer so I've been busy transferring my files this story just kind of got lost in it all. I ran out of ideas when I started writing this so it's taken forever. To keep myself from getting bored I have been writing chapters to later editions of this tale if it ever get that far.