#Things
aren't always as they seem,
So why still swim in the depths of a tide,
That's pulling you in,
Makes you think your life has been,
A waste of time#
Hermione and Draco stood kissing outside the Gryffindor Tower. They eventually realised what was happening after minutes of their lips meeting. They both pulled away and stepped back.
"Right, well, err, thanks again for walking me up." Hermione said trying to ignore the fact that seconds earlier she had been kissing her former worst enemy. Draco cleared his throat.
"That's, um, okay. So, I guess I'd better be going then." He managed to reply as he started to head towards the stairs.
"Oh, what time shall we go to Dumbledore tomorrow?" Hermione asked, remembering their meeting.
"It's up to you. I don't mind." Draco replied.
"Okay, well say ten a.m. then? Shall we meet at the bottom of the staircase, by the statue before Dumbledore's office? That way we won't have to disturb him twice by entering separately." She answered in her organised way.
"Yeah, that's great. No problem. I'll se you then, then."
Hermione smiled in response, then Draco headed back down to the feast. Hermione just stood on the spot for several minutes in thought until somebody talking disturbed her.
"Are you going to stand there all night or have you got the password? You're making the place look untidy!" The Fat Lady from the portrait asked Hermione, now she was awake.
"The password! Oh My Gosh! I don't have it! They always give out the passwords at the end of the feast! I totally forgot about it!" Hermione cried as she realised she was locked out.
"Sorry dear, but you know the rules: no password, no entrance." The Fat Lady told Hermione.
"Look, couldn't you make an exception- just this once? Please? I can't go back in the hall and I'll be out here until nearly midnight if I have to wait for everyone else to come back!" Hermione pleaded. " It's not like you don't know who I am. And I'm Head Girl after all."
"Oh, well fine! But don't mention this to Dumbledore else they'll have me replaced!" She warned Hermione as she backed down. Then, she quickly checked the corridor for anybody coming, and then slid the portrait across to reveal the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower.
"Thank you!" Hermione gratefully told the Fat Lady, and then went on through to the cosy common room.
Hermione looked around the room that she hadn't been in for two months and smiled. She had dreaded coming back to school after everything that happened with Ron over the summer, and she had been so worried about the Head Girl announcement: she had really wanted the place, but she genuinely didn't think she would get it. Now she was here though, things hadn't turned out quite as badly as she'd expected them to, in the end.
She realised she'd been stood in a trance again for several minutes, and carried on up to her dorm. The House Elves had brought everyone's cases up to their rooms for them, so Hermione began to slowly unpack.
She'd unpacked half her cases when she realised it must be nearly time for everyone to leave the feast, so she got changed into her pyjamas and climbed into bed. She wanted to be asleep before the others got there and started asking awkward questions. She pulled the drapes across to surround her four-poster bed and lay in the dark.
She couldn't sleep. How was she supposed to after the events that had occurred that evening? Draco certainly was a mystery to her. She still couldn't understand how he could change so drastically, but she was glad for the change either way.
'Well I'm only glad because we're both head pupils now and we would have had to learn to get along eventually.' The logistical part of her brain told her. But that didn't explain the kiss that happened so inadvertently. 'It was just a kiss, it doesn't mean anything,' she told herself, 'It just happened in the moment.' but that didn't explain why she wished it had lasted just a little longer, or why she kept seeing his face every time she closed her eyes.
At around eleven-thirty she heard voices enter the common room downstairs, and they got consistently louder as they approached the dorm. Lavender Brown, Lucy Jones, Parvati Patil and Ellen Worsen entered the seventh year girl's dormitory talking excitedly about their summer.
"Hermione? Are you awake?" Lucy asked her, but Hermione pretended to be asleep. "Because Harry and Ron want to se you downstairs to talk or something. You awake?"
"I think she's sleeping,
Lucy." Parvati pointed out when Lucy got no reply.
"Oh.
Alright then." She replied dumbly.
The girls got changed and then climbed into their own four-poster beds and left the room in the silence that Hermione found it in hours earlier, except for the gentle breathing of her fellow housemates as they fell asleep into happy dreams. In the silence, Hermione was able to think about everything that had happened that day and tried to make sense of it all. Eventually she must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew, the sun was just beginning to peek out from the horizon outside the window, and her bedside clock said five-fifty a.m.
She tried for another half an hour to get some more sleep, but when that failed, she grabbed a book out of her trunk and quietly headed down to the deserted common room. She sat and read for an hour, and then she must have nodded off for an hour and a half again, because when she woke there several people in the common room with her and her dainty wristwatch said nine-twenty. Luckily, as it was their first proper day back, the students were given the day off timetable to unpack and settle in again. However, Hermione now only had half an hour to get showered and dressed in time for the meeting with Dumbledore.
She ran down to Dumbledore's office to find Draco leaning casually against the stone statue. He peered at his wrist to check the time, then at Hermione who was breathing heavily after having just ran down three flights of stairs and back up a different set.
"Took your time didn't you? I thought you said ten?" He asked her coolly, as if none of the previous day's occurrences had happened.
"I did. It's only like a minute past ten anyway." She replied, annoyed, as she caught her breath.
"Actually, its four minutes past." He corrected her.
"Whatever." She replied, frustrated. " Well shall we go in then?" She asked, indicating to go up to Dumbledore's office and avoiding mentioning their inadvertent kiss the previous night and fighting the temptation to kiss him again.
"After you." Draco said, "ladies first", he beckoned for Hermione to step forward and she showed her Head Girl badge to the gargoyle guarding the stairs up to the office. The gargoyle's eyes scanned the badge and flashed red as it registered the authority. Stone steps were revealed as it then slid across to let them pass.
Draco followed Hermione up the stairs to their Headmaster's office. From behind her, he smirked as he recalled how she had leaned in to kiss him last night. When he had gone back down to the feast, he entered the hall as he ever would, but inside he felt unusually happy. It wasn't necessarily the fact that they had kissed that filled Draco with gladness; it was more the fact that he had cleared the air with Hermione.
He had left the hall earlier that evening with the intention of apologising to Hermione, and he had returned with that accomplished. What he had discovered that summer had changed him in his every feeling for Hermione, and though his summer torments had been such terrible experiences for him, he was, in a way, grateful, because it meant he looked upon Hermione with such a different attitude. He had failed to tell her what had happened to him, but now, as he followed her up to Dumbledore's office, he knew he would tell her eventually.
Draco was brought out of his deep thoughts when they arrived at the top of the staircase and stood in front of a large oak door. Hermione knocked.
"Enter." Dumbledore replied from the large office.
After the successful meeting with the Headmaster, in which Hermione and Draco both learned of their duties and responsibilities as Head pupils, they left Dumbledore's office and paused at the bottom of the spiralling staircase.
"Well, I guess I'll se you later then." Hermione said.
"Yeah, I guess so." Draco replied, mirroring her own friendly, yet nervous tone.
Just as Hermione turned to leave and head back up to her common room, Draco spoke again, stopping her in her tracks.
"About last night," He started. Hermione turned to face him again, having wondered how long it would be before it was mentioned.
"It was a mistake- a heat of the moment thing. Let's just forget it ever happened, yeah?" She interrupted him before he could speak again. In truth, she was afraid of what he might say because inside, though she had resentfully enjoyed the sweet taste of his lips, she wouldn't be able to bare hearing Draco say it was a mistake, so had said it herself first. At least then she wouldn't have to stand through Draco's pungent words of regret, which she was almost positive she was about to hear. She turned and left then, before Draco could even reply to her comments.
Draco was left standing alone in the deserted corridor, reminiscing on their "mistake" form the previous evening, as Hermione had referred to it, and asking himself how something that had felt so right, could possibly be a mistake.
Later that day, Hermione was on her own heading to the library when she passed Draco standing with Crabbe, Blaise and Goyle. Draco and she exchanged looks, not really sure how to communicate with each other while others were present, and both feeling awkward after their conversation earlier that day.
"What you looking' at, Mudblood?" Goyle practically spat at Hermione as she passed them. "What you starin' at Malfoy for, you got some kind of problem? Mud in your eyes perhaps?" He continued, laughing as he spoke. And right on cue, Draco bitterly laughed along with Crabbe and Blaise. Hermione's face fell as it had done in the same way the previous evening when Draco had called her that name, and she searched in Draco's eyes for some sort of explanation for his behaviour, but she found none and continued to the library feeling a lot different to how she had when she'd seen Draco last.
Ten minutes later, Draco was still feeling guilty and confused about Hermione and so excused himself from his 'friends' and headed to the library where he knew he would find the Head Girl.
"What do you want?" Hermione asked Draco as he approached her in the deserted library.
"To say I'm sorry." He muttered. He wasn't used to apologising, and this being the second time in two days, it was hard for Draco to say aloud.
"Well I don't want your apologies. I just want you to tell me what's going on. Why all the personality transplants?" Hermione replied.
"I'm sorry, it's just that, well what was I supposed to do?" Draco argued.
"I don't know." She started, with a hint of sarcasm I her tone. "Urm, perhaps not laugh when one of your cronies calls me a Mudblood?" She suggested, annoyed at Draco for making out he was the innocent party.
"Sorry, but that's what I'd normally do. Otherwise I'd get a load of shit from them for weeks. And it's not like I said it anyway!" Draco protested.
"I know, but it's still the principle! You're Head Boy, Draco, and you're still laughing at pathetic name-calling. Maybe you could have explained yourself to them by merely saying you're not an immature first year anymore!" Hermione started. Draco stood looking at this beautiful woman that stood in front of him, rambling incessantly on about points Draco had got lost in minutes ago. "...I mean, they look up to you Draco. If you didn't laugh then they'd realise they were pathetic and stop. They respect you, Merlin knows why, and-" Hermione continued, before she was cut off by Draco putting his hands on her waist and pulling her closer before their lips met for a second time. This time the kiss lasted for a little longer than before, with a little more passion than their inadvertent kiss from the previous evening.
After, Hermione just stared at Draco in shock, lost for words.
"You do ramble on you know." He said simply when they separated their lips form each other's. "At least now I know how to shut you up." He smiled at her, and she couldn't help but not be angry with him.
"Well I do talk a lot you know. Therefore, you should probably get your practice in at shutting me up. What do you think?" She grinned as she pulled him into her this time, and they kissed again.
TBC