Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. I did not create them, I am only taking advantage of pre-established fictional characters in order to write a decent story.
___
Draco finally turned towards the Sytherin dungeons, mainly to please Professor McGonnagal. He could have stood there, in the chamber off of the Entrance Hall, for the rest of the night. He had never been so confused.
At first, after the Tattletale incident, he had assumed that there was some Polyjuice Potion involved or some other sort of disguise in place. He had never believed that Hermione Granger had actually been involved.
Until now.
Now, Draco reflected on the Quidditch World Cup incident.
He remembered how she had approached him afterwards, in the beginning of the term, minus tweedledumb and tweedledumber. He remembered how she had thanked him - thanked him for the warning he thought he had so carefully disguised as an insult.
It made him angry, that he wanted to protect her from such things. He didn't want to care about anyone, certainly not a Mudblood. But she had known and she had thanked him.
He hadn't been able to formulate a response at the time. She didn't seem to mind. She said a quiet "thank you for what you did for me", mumbled something about how she had reacted badly and she hadn't meant it, and that was it. He didn't speak to her for awhile after that. He refrained from insulting her for some time, but couldn't abstain from bashing her friends. He really hadn't intended for that curse to hit her. After that, though, she wasn't as civil as she had been. He never could bury his pride enough to apologize.
Then, fifth year, there was the day she ran into the library.
He hadn't thought of it as odd, at first… Hermione rushing to her favorite place... But she was crying. She was crying when she came in and after she collapsed at the nearest table, she continued to cry. He watched for awhile, not particularly concerned or really interested... It was just something to watch. Finally, when no one else talked to her, his curiosity got the better of him. It had a tendency to do this with matters involving Hermione.
He stood next to her for a few minutes and she refused to lift her head. Finally he cleared his throat. She glared up at him and then, once recognition sunk in... Then he saw something in her face that should have never been there when she looked at him. He saw relief in those sad brown eyes.
That, he supposed, that was really where it all began.
He continued ruminating on the subject of Hermione Granger until he fell asleep early the next morning.
**
She knew something was wrong as soon as she entered the common room. As much as she had been reflecting on what had just happened with Dra-Malfoy, she wasn't so lost in thought that she was completely oblivious.
Two pairs of eyes swung towards her, just as the portrait hole closed.
"Hey Ron, Harry."
"Hermione, can we talk?"
Trying not to allow her reluctance to reach her countenance, she stepped quietly over to the couch and had a seat next to Ron.
"What's going on?"
"That's just what we'd like to ask you."
Hermione stared. There was no way they could have witnessed her conversation with Draco. Malfoy. Dammit.
"Hermione?"
She focused on Ron. "Yes?"
"You've been acting really odd lately. You're distant with us, you don't pay attention in class… And now there are these rumors about what happened with you and Malfoy – "
"Nothing happened with me and Malfoy!" Her irritation was reaching all new levels. If that arrogant sod had been spreading lies…
"Hermione… I saw you when you got back that night. Something definitely happened."
Harry had decided to join the conversation. And apparently, they were talking about the cursing incident… Perhaps she should tell them. They'd certainly get a good laugh at her revenge on Malfoy.
What, exactly, had it been revenge for?
Oh, right. All of those years of name-calling and torment. It had been nice to practice some newfound skills, as well.
"Hermione?"
Yes, Ron, that's my name. She met his eyes to acknowledge the fact that he'd spoken but said nothing.
No, there's definitely no way I can tell him about the dark magic. No way. They wouldn't understand. They'd probably disown me. Just like they did third year. Just like… Oh, god… she couldn't think about fifth year right now.
She sighed and shook her head. "Look, I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine. I'm just a little bored, that's all. I've gone much too far ahead with all of my studies and I don't feel as though I'm learning anything new." That, at least, was true. She was a sixth year completely read up on seventh year material.
Ron and Harry exchanged a look.
She stood up and muttered a goodnight before climbing to her room. There wasn't much more of this tweedledum – tweedledee rubbish she could put up with. Who was she supposed to be? Tweedleshe?
Not bloody likely. Why did she always get left out? First year, they hadn't even wanted to become friends with her until she lied to McGonnagal for them. And then, in second year, she had been petrified for the whole end of the term. Third year, they were angry with her for having the Firebolt checked and fourth year they were so angry with each other that she rarely saw either of them… not to mention the fiasco that was the Yule Ball... Fifth year… God, she didn't even want to think about fifth year. Great friends, huh?
Hermione rubbed her eyes and flopped down on her bed. This was ridiculous to even be thinking about. Of course they were her friends. All friendships had problems.
Sure, but how many friends ignore you until they hear rumors about you and then pretend to care?
She buried her face in her pillow, wiping away the tears that had no right to fall.
**
Dreams that night were nothing but a repetition of the nightmare that had been fifth year.
Hermione gasped and dropped her fork. The clank resounded in the table area surrounding the trio.
"Ronald Weasley, what did you just say to me?"
"I said, 'Bugger off and leave us to talk.' We don't need any meddling females to come between us. All you seem to want to do is destroy mine and Harry's friendship, Hermione. Why don't you go to the library or find yourself some other people to annoy or something, and stop hanging all over him all of the time? Can't you see how irritating you are?"
Her shock wouldn't allow her so much as a tear. Still unbelieving, and wanting desperately to chalk it all up to Ron's red-headed temper, she looked at Harry.
He was staring devotedly at his plate.
"Harry?"
He grimaced, but continued to study his plate.
That memory had woken her in tears. She still had a hard time understanding what had happened to pull them so far apart. She knew now that they had completely underestimated Harry's grief and guilt at Cedric's death. Ron hadn't known how to deal with it, and dealt by skirting the issue completely. She had just taken Harry's feelings personally, falsely believing that somehow, every emotion he was feeling had to do with her.
Oh, if she had only known how very wrong she was.
But she still refused to believe that this was it, that these miscommunications and hurt feelings were the cause of the destruction of their friendship. It should have been so much stronger than that.
She should have been stronger than that.
She would be now.
***
Draco had never watched the famous Gryffindor trio so carefully.
There was certainly something different about Granger. The way she sat with the two idiots only reinforced any theories Draco already had. She rarely looked at them, never opened her mouth, and seemed completely lost in her own thoughts. She wasn't even reading. Just sitting… Hermione idle was certainly not something a person would normally witness.
As if she felt his stares, Hermione suddenly looked up. Their eyes locked for a moment and Draco wondered idly if the moron twins would notice and attempt to hex him. Hermione winked at him then, gathered her things, and swept from the Great Hall, without so much as a wave towards Potter and Weasley.
He almost spilled pumpkin juice down his front after successfully tipping the goblet to his chin. What the hell was going on? Attempting to regain his composure, he set the goblet down and sighed. Before he could second-guess himself, he grabbed his books and rushed out after her.
**
Hermione bit her lip and rubbed her forehead. Surely, if he wanted to be civil, he would have come out after her by now.
She sighed. Surely, I read too much into things. Typical girl. She turned to leave her post outside of the Great Hall, only to be stopped by the blonde full of sneer.
"What is it in your little bushy head that makes you behave so oddly?"
Hermione frowned. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe she should just go right back to Harry and Ron and... and what, exactly? She turned her attention to the pointy-faced blonde boy in front of her.
All right, all I have to do is be polite. If he can reciprocate, maybe…Maybe I can actually talk to him. Maybe he'll make me a deal. She glanced up, meeting his curious stare.
"Well?"
"Must you always point out my faults? Can't you say anything to me without a veiled insult?"
Draco paused, taken aback.
"I could very well ask you the same thing."
A silence ensued for several minutes. "Alright, fair enough. Can we be civil with each other now, and stop behaving like children for a few minutes?"
Draco regarded her with interest. "Are we negotiating a truce?"
Hermione sighed, focusing her gaze on her shoes. "I don't know. But I…" she paused, unsure of whether or not she could really complete this sentence. "Iwanttocontinuetheconversationfromtheothernight."
Draco smiled. He wasn't even sneering. He was genuinely smiling. "You want to talk about dark magic?"
Slowly Hermione raised her eyes to Draco's. "Well… Yes."
Draco laughed. Hermione had never heard such an unwelcome sound. It was as if he had ripped out her very confidence and torn it to shreds. Her face fell and she prepared a full out defensive verbal onslaught when he suddenly stopped laughing.
Her feelings had actually occurred to him.
"Look, Hermione, I'm actually not belittling you. It's just really hard to not laugh about the Mudblood best friend of the dark lord's arch nemesis…practicing dark magic." It was amazing how easily that word rolled off his tongue. Then again, it wasn't really important.
It was funny how little that nasty word meant to her now. She reflected on how, in the past, it had hurt her so much. She had taken it as an insult beyond all insults. In her struggle to prove herself in this, the world of magic, a world she had been destined to succeed in, there was one word that instantly degraded her and made her feel inferior. It was disrespect, it was hatred... it was mockery of her intelligence and hard work… it was the embodiment of everything she feared and hated.
But now, now she didn't believe him anymore. She didn't believe that the word carried any of that connotation with it when he spoke it. He couldn't pass it off as an insult anymore.
Still, he didn't know that. And he had used it.
She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. "Look, nevermind. Forget I ever said anything. Sorry about any trouble I've caused you."
She turned to leave, but was stopped by a vice-like grip on her arm.
"What do you want from me? Approval? Why involve me in your secret pastimes?"
She whirled around, irritation and embarrassment filling her every pore. How could he not understand? How could he not know? Did she really have to come out and ask?
When her furious brown eyes locked onto his confused gray eyes, she knew he didn't understand. Couldn't. How should he know?
"Draco, I want your help."
**
He didn't know if she said anything after that. It didn't really matter. He wasn't sure what he said in response. He was vaguely aware of the Great Hall emptying behind him. His hand was still gripping her arm. Somewhere far off he seemed to see her wince.
Hermione Granger had just asked him for help. With dark magic.
"You… I can… You want… What…"
For some reason, the barrier between his thoughts and his words had now become impenetrable. He was overwhelmed with a barrage of disconnected yet related subjects and couldn't, for the life of him, construct a coherent thought out of any of them.
Hermione shook her head then, pried his fingers from her arm and was gone.
**
She moved to Ancient Runes as quickly as her legs would carry her, but she couldn't outrun the embarrassment, the anger, and the confusion that welled up inside her. Nor could she outrun her tears.
She stopped short outside the doorway and performed a drying spell on her face and the front of her robes. She took a deep breath, entered the classroom and spent the next two hours focusing every ounce of energy and concentration on one of her favorite subjects… on the material she had thoroughly dissected over the summer.
By the end of the class she gave up trying to block her thoughts and succumbed to the temptation of analyzing every word from her conversation with Draco.
God, was she an idiot.
**
Draco returned to the present as soon as Hermione had left. His ability to articulate thoughts also returned. But Hermione did not.
This was not what he had been hoping for, for once.
He headed towards Binns' classroom, none too excited at the prospect of a long-winded lecture on goblin rebellions.
So, Hermione Granger wasn't the boring goody-goody Gryffindor that he had always expected. And she wasn't such a know-it-all, after all.
She had asked for his help.
**
Hermione skipped lunch that Friday, opting to spend her free time in the library. The same, blank parchment sat in front of her for a solid twenty minutes, awaiting a Potions essay for the next week that she had no intention of writing.
"Working hard, I see."
Her heart dropped into her stomach. Not now. I can't face him. Not yet. How will I ever live this down?
"Malfoy."
Seating himself across from her, he propped his feet up on the table and raised his eyebrows at her. "Given up on being civil, have we?"
"I think you pretty much decided that a few hours ago, didn't you?" Her voice had cracked on the last word. Dammit. She shouldn't let him know that he had hurt her. Her pride, that is.
Draco's mouth opened slightly. "I don't recall being rude to you at all. Actually, I would consider walking off in the middle of the conversation a little impolite, if you ask me."
Although this lightened her mood considerably, she refused to let her guard down yet. "I didn't." Calmly, she picked up her quill, loaded it with ink and began writing her essay.
Draco was not to be put off so easily. Pulling his feet down from the table, he leaned across it until she could feel his breath on her forehead. "Hermione. Stop. Look at me."
Hermione decided to obey, especially since her right hand had decided to start shaking and ink was being splashed in several different directions. Slowly, she raised her gaze to meet his, mere centimeters away.
"Let's make a deal."
She grimaced. She had a fairly good idea that anything Draco wanted from her would be something she wasn't willing to give up.
"What kind of deal?"
He smiled. His genuine smiles made him so beautiful. Especially in comparison to the way his face usually twisted into such horrendous smirks.
As if he had read her mind, the smile twisted into a smirk. "Don't worry, little Granger. I won't make you do anything too terrible."
She wanted to slap him. Why, when they were making such progress, did he have to become such an obnoxious twit again?
"If I help you with this, I expect you to help me with something in return. I'm not one to give out charity. And I don't think you'd trust me to help you anyway if you thought I was being completely altruistic."
Hermione bit her lip. "What do you need from me?"
"Your angelic reputation. Anytime I need something from the restricted section, you get it. Anytime I'm in trouble, you get me out of it. Anytime – "
"Okay, okay. I get it. But I may not have such an angelic reputation, since you told Dumbledore that I put that curse on you."
"Fine. I'll work something out. Give me some time and what you told him and I'll amend the situation. A little advice though, for next time…"
"Yea?"
"Don't curse me."
***
Ron didn't make any post-curfew trips that night and Harry refrained from watching the common room fire. The first Gryffindor match was the next day.
Ron smiled as he lay in the dark, quiet dormitory. He remembered how himself and Hermione had always constituted Harry's cheering section before, at games and even some practices. Last year the cheering section had dwindled to one when he joined the team and then no one, once the fight with Hermione had happened.
He wondered idly if she would come to the game tomorrow – if she even knew there was one.
He tried to suppress the feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was worried about something else. He tried to pretend that he wasn't worried that she would come and not cheer them on. He could almost picture her showing up in Hufflepuff colors, just to spite them.
But no, that had been last year's Hermione. She would have done something like that then. And… now, as Ron reflected on it more, he couldn't say that she would have been terribly unjustified. They had alienated her. They had hurt her. And he had played a major role. But they had made up.
He coughed, his face a little pink with the heat of the common room fire and the embarrassment of approaching her. She didn't look up.
"Um… Hermione?" She still didn't look up. He didn't even think that she was reading.
"Hey, about what I said about you and Harry… I didn't really mean it, okay? I'm sorry."
Then she looked up at him. No, she glared up at him, a fierce glint in her eye that he hadn't seen since she slapped Malfoy. "You mean to tell me that now, two months after you effectively smashed my heart, abandoned me and hurt me as much as you possibly could… you didn't mean it?"
He swallowed. He didn't like where this was going. But he nodded, all the same, at a loss for the proper reaction.
"So, for the last two months I have hurt and hurt about something incredibly significant and painful that you told me. The things you said and did to me that I took so seriously, that I cried myself to sleep over… you're telling me that they meant nothing? That you weren't even serious? That it was all lies? I suffered… for lies?"
Oh, no… He really hadn't wanted it to go this way. He took a deep breath and stared at his feet, very afraid of the crazed, angry look on her face. "No… I'm not saying that at all. I just… You know how I am, Hermione. I get angry easily and I don't think things through and… and… Well… You know me…"
"Do I? I don't think so, Ron Weasley. I used to think that I did, but I don't think so anymore."
She was looking down again, a very defeated stance in her shoulders. He sighed and knelt by her feet, looking up at her. "Hermione, I'm the same Ron I've always been. You've always known me. You and Harry… You've been my best friends from day one… and… I don't really know where I'd be without you… Either of you…"
She looked up and met his eyes then, tears forming in hers. "Oh, Ron. I just… It was so… I felt so…" She paused and sighed, as if she couldn't quite articulate what she was saying. Finally she smiled, a weak smile but a smile nonetheless. "Truce?"
He had nodded then and they had celebrated – all three of them – with butterbeer in Hogsmeade that weekend. But things never were the same. It felt as if Hermione was purposefully keeping distance between them. Ron would take two steps towards understanding her and she would retreat two steps into her shell, not opening up again for awhile.
She hadn't wanted to get hurt again. He understood that now, but now was far too late.
He sighed and rolled over, a pain in his chest where there hadn't been one before. He couldn't think about this now. He had to rest for the game.
Little did he know how much rest he would need afterwards.
