Gifts
Chapter 3
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Draco Malfoy glared at his plate. Hermione was like a bee buzzing in his ear all the damned time. He could hear her buzz buzz buzzing as she blissfully went though her morning routine, unaware that her ever blasted emotion was running through her mind was simultaneously running through his mind. Not her every thought, Thank God. Draco was fairly certain if he could read her actually individual thoughts he would have thrown himself off of a very high building.
Or have thrown Granger off of a very high building.
Pansy stared at Draco from across the table with narrowed eyes...there had been something off about him that past few weeks. Pansy couldn't exactly figure out what it was, but whatever it was, it was confusing the hell out of her. Pansy, who would never let on to it, had quite a keen mind when if came to other people's emotions. Though, until recently, Draco had never really seemed to posses anything that really qualified as true emotion.
Except bitterness. Draco Malfoy was damned good at being a caustic bastard.
Draco looked up and noticed Pansy staring at him and smiled, which scared the hell out of Pansy. She was sure that her eyes had just grown to the shape of her owl's. Pansy's heart stopped. Where was the Draco that she had grown up with? Draco didn't smile, Draco smirked. And he didn't push his french toast around so despondently like that either. Draco was determined in every action that he did.
It had all started with those two weeks of detention. At first, Pansy had brushed off the subtle changes as lack of sleep, but now, after 5 days had gone by, Draco was looking more and more pathetic with each passing day.
Last night, instead of his usual routine of feeling her up, snogging for awhile and going to bed, Draco had asked to With her.
About two days ago, Pansy had seen Draco pick up a first-year's fallen book.
And now Draco had smiled.
Pansy was confused.
Crabb leaned over and asked Draco if he could help him with his Potions work that night and Draco nodded his head, not really lifting his eyes from the plate, but stabbing his fork into a piece of syrup drenched toast.
Pansy felt her heart warm. Sure, Draco had agreed to actually help someone, but at least he seemed rather vindictive about the toast.
And after Draco snarled when Potter's gang started laughing, Pansy was able to push her thoughts away. Everything was going to be fine.
A few tables down, Hermione was starting to get the feeling that there was something very troublesome going on in her mind. It was like there was a little line of electricity going through her thoughts...like a buzz buzz buzz all day long, slightly annoying her, but never really intruding.
It had started sometime after that first night with Malfoy and she hadn't been able to get rid of it. She had assumed it was simply originating out of the late nights in detention and with Malfoy but now, a few days later, her head was still...buzzing. That was really the only way to describe it.
Madame Pomfrey had pretty much said that Hermione had lost her mind when the old nurse hadn't been able to find anything wrong with Hermione's head. It seemed as if the woman completely dismissed anything that wasn't under her realm of knowledge. Hermione shook her head angrily, she wasn't going insane. That was certain.
It was wasn't it?
Hermione frowned and pushed around her french toast. She was slightly annoyed with it, which was strange as it was toast and deserved no real emotion. Toast is toast. Generally it shouldn't do anything outrageously offensive.
But that was another problem Hermione had discovered. She was annoyed with everyone and was coming off rather sarcastic, even to Harry and Ron. Harry had taken to not speaking much around her though Ron was delighted. He seemed to be timing to see how quickly he could make her jump up and bellow at him. Pig, Ron's owl, was also quite disturbed at the newfound changes in his master's friend and took to hooting at her from the window then promptly turning his back on her.
She noticed Harry staring at her warily, as if waiting to see if she would explode if he asked her to pass the butter. Though, Hermione supposed, there was a pretty decent chance she might.
Damned butter.
Hermione sighed and frustration and tutted to herself. This was ridiculous. She was tired of waiting around to see what would happen next. This had started with Draco, she just knew it. Hermione didn't know how she knew it. But she knew it.
As she stood up and straightened her skirt, Hermione realized in the back of her head that she would never have done anything like this without thinking out the consequences and working through her thought process before this whole strange thing had happened.
Well, Hermione supposed, that's what happens when it feels as if a bee is stuck in your frontal lobe.
Draco looked up in dread. She was walking towards him, and she looked rather ticked off. Draco noticed that she actually looked much like he used to a lot of the time. Draco winced when he saw that she was actually making her way through the crowd to talk to him. He didn't want to do this now. In fact, he rather wanted to curl up with a nice book.
Oh bloody hell. He was turning into Granger.
Draco watched in horror as Hermione reached out to touch his arm. She moved her hand so quickly he didn't even have time to yell.
The both tumbled to the floor and blacked out.
The Slytherins all fell silent and all of the Gryffindors, who had been watching Hermione's change became quiet as well.
Well, what were two rival houses to do when it seemed as if one of those house's members had somehow knocked out the other one.
The two breakfast tables leaped at one another.
Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape leaped into Practice action, quite used to these things occurring. However, if anyone had been looking at Professor Dumbledore (and no one was, as there was a rather tiny war taking up the right side of the Great Hall) that person would have noticed the Headmaster's knowing smile and amused set of his mouth.
