Title: Examinations
(Subtitle: Loser. Kisses. Winner.)
Author: luckdragon
Rating: oh, PG again I suppose
Summary: Life is full of tests. There's nothing that says they can't be fun.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, but I have invited them out to play.
Author's Note: Again, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has read and/or reviewed my little fic. I'm going to run out of ways to tell you all how awesome and inspirational you are soon! Well, this was a rather quick update, but I am rather fond of this chapter and was eager to post it. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it:
Days Zero through Four weren't really so bad.
Day Four and a Half was a different story.
It was around that time that Hermione noticed herself getting a bit irritable.
So, what now? She was supposed to admit that she wanted to kiss him for reasons entirely unconnected to foolish bets and academic prowess? Not bloody likely.
Not bloody true. Lousy prat. Lousy, appalling, rude, awful prat.
Perhaps it could even be considered more than "a bit irritable."
Hermione decided that this was the case when she nearly bit Ginny's head off for interrupting her studies to suggest a game of chess.
In trying to discern a cause for her disquiet, Hermione could only find one conclusion: that her recent lesson in counting was slipping away from the present and into the realm of "memory," thus leaving her in a sort of uncertain state.
Well, or it could be this horrific Potions essay. It was simply giving her one headache after another.
She worked on the assignment in fits and starts, all while cursing Snape for daring to assume that she had enough concentration for such an undertaking.
On Day Five, she was cross with everything and everyone, and was moved to curse at her quill in a decidedly un-Hermione-like fashion when it left blotches on her Potions parchment.
Get it together, she thought wretchedly. You don't see him suffering.
Indeed, Draco was going about life as usual and barely looked at her in the meantime.
This wasn't "sort of" an uncertain state. This was a downright ambiguous situation. It was an undefined circumstance. It was positively unclear.
Hermione forced herself to stop messing about with her thesaurus and refocus on her essay.
She managed to bury herself in academia for the next few days.
How did she do it? Well, she did have years upon years of practice. She hadn't known at the time that she was practicing for something, and frankly, she would have thought this too silly or too unlikely an instance to actually practice for – but now that it had arrived, she was grateful that she had.
She finished her essay, and it was returned not too many days later. Despite her rumblings, she managed perfect marks.
"Impeccable essay, Miss Granger," Snape said brusquely as he dropped her parchment on her desk. He made it sound like an insult.
Impeccable. Faultless. Perfect. The best.
Something dawned on her. She darted her eyes toward Draco. He was examining his own essay, and tossed a brief, hard, curious glance at her as well. Then, as if on cue, both snapped their eyes back to their own compositions.
Her stomach began to prickle, just a bit.
But things were still… indefinite.
After class, Hermione gathered her belongings and left the room with Harry and Ron. They both eagerly inquired after her essay grade.
"You've worked on that essay as though your life depended on it," Harry teased. "Now let us know if all that effort was worth it."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, "you'd better show us that you used the time that you gained by skipping the Gryffindor Quidditch scrimmage!"
Hermione laughed; despite her recent bad temper, their jibes remained kind-hearted. "As a matter of fact –"
"Got another perfect score, have you, Granger?" Draco sneered, appearing behind them as if from nowhere. "What a good little bookworm you've been."
Harry and Ron instantly bristled.
"Don't pay him any mind," Hermione said in her best Ron-and/or-Harry-soothing voice. "He just wishes he'd gotten top marks as well."
She and Draco exchanged a severe look, and she led her two riled friends away.
So, what now? Was he asking what she thought he might have been asking? If that was the case, he'd gotten his answer. So now she was supposed to go wait somewhere and see if he would appear?
No, that was giving him too much power. It was admitting her desires. It was making herself vulnerable.
But… it could mean…
It didn't matter. She wasn't about to subject herself to that kind of possible misery. She would only take medicine that she knew was necessary.
That night, she went to the library. That was normal enough.
Draco was there ahead of her.
That wasn't.
He was bent over his work – a book, a scroll, a quill. He didn't look up as she rounded the corner. This left her with little choice.
After a brief startled stare, Hermione ignored him and sat at a different table.
The next table.
She sat on the opposite side; they would have been facing each other had they been sitting together. Instead, she sat at the opposite end of her chosen table, as far away from him as she could get.
She still had him in her sights, however, and shot him little looks.
She shot him little looks as she took out her books and papers. She shot him little looks as she opened and arranged them. She almost glanced at him as she found the correct pages. She shot him little looks as she readied her quill.
"If you have something to say, I suggest you say it," he said irritably. "I am trying to study, after all."
She snorted and concentrated with steely determination on her books.
Bloody hell. He was going to make her admit it.
Well, she wouldn't.
Without looking up, she heard him push his chair back, and knew that he was leaving.
Blast. Double blast. She should have –
But instead, the suddenly surprising Draco Malfoy dropped into the chair beside her.
Then, without so much as a fleeting look in her direction, he turned back to his studies as though he were still sitting in his prior seat.
She cut him a glance out of the corner of her eye, and saw that he was entirely focused on his text. He may as well have been completely alone, just as she had found him.
Hermione sighed slightly and looked at her own textbook. What she was doing couldn't rightly be called reading.
Then she realized that she should really be taking notes if her performance was to look authentic.
She wrote the date at the top of the paper. She wrote "Arithmancy" and added the chapter number and title. She underlined these severely. She frowned and underscored the words a second time for emphasis.
She paused.
He might actually be able to see if she wrote something inane ("I am in the library" perhaps?), so she turned her eyes back to the book.
She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. No changes.
A bit farther down the page, she saw the first subject heading of the chapter and jotted it down, relieved to be able to keep up appearances.
She stared unseeingly at her book for a moment longer.
This was utterly infuriating. Her aggravated emotions resurfaced, and she ranted internally that she couldn't be expected to get anything done like this, and why was he there, and why didn't she just get up and leave…
She lifted her head to tell him off, and as she turned, he caught her mouth against his own in a single, prolonged, very angry kiss.
Startled, Hermione reflexively raised her hand not gripping the quill to the side of his neck, her thumb splayed over his cheek. It was not a delicate grasp, but it did do something by way of sealing their transitory connection.
She grew heated. Her breath quickened.
But then Draco broke off the kiss as abruptly as he had started it, and gathered his few possessions with speed. He stood.
"You win," he said tensely.
"I win," she whispered.
He left without another word and with a scowl on his face.
Hermione bit her lip and turned her bewildered gaze to the tabletop and her book resting uselessly across it.
The book contained much information about Arithmancy, but none about confused gropings and what they might mean, or why persons that she formerly thought might actually be human were suddenly vile again, so what use was it to her just now?