Disclaimer- I do not own Harry Potter© or any of the concepts derived from the book series. The book series is the soul property of J.K. Rowling.

To Keep it Simple

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As he'd predicted, the wand had only worked with Hermione for fate-associated reasons. The farther he got himself entangled in the mess he was in, the more expectant he became of such awkward twists and turns along the way. He closed the book and shook his head as he placed it back on the shelf. The book only reassured his suspicions. The wand he had did not effect the people he loved—for obvious reasons. He sighed and turned just in time to see Hermione walking towards him. She smirked and waved, standing a reasonable distance away.

"Lunch," she said.

Draco nodded, but even though he wanted to smile in reply or show some sort of emotion, it seemed impossible. He stared at her with a blank expression and cold eyes and brushed past her, leaving her standing alone.

Meanwhile, someone watched the two exchange their silent regards. She smirked and continued writing on her scroll of paper—even though he quill had not even been dipped in ink. She'd expected them to come here and research the thing she'd sent—and she'd expected none other then Draco to be the one to tell them what it was. It was all working out perfectly and soon enough she'd have what she wanted—and they'd never figure out it was her, either. She pulled on the green sweater vest, pressing out the wrinkles and stood, picking up her checked out copy of the Rise and the Fall of the Dark Arts.

Chapter 12- Everywhere You Turn

"Seeing as that the school year is approximately half over and the first years have gained a rough understanding of the rules they are to follow—Dumbledore and I have decided that there is no longer any reason to continue with the night sessions. I'm sure you are both relieved."

The witch folded a hands respectively in her lap, her half rimmed spectacles adding an intense look of wisdom to her aged features. She tilted her chin up a little higher and stood, nodding weakly as she turned to look at the two prefects.

"You two will determine a way to end your charade, am I correct?" she inquired.

Hermione nodded and shifted her parchments from one arm to the other, her hands aching to grab hold of her robe's ends and twist. The professor smiled and turned, departing from their presence as quickly as she entered it.

Draco turned to look at the Gryffindor prefect, his brow furrowing with an intense mixture of unexplainable emotions. He parted his lips to speak, but though otherwise and began walking as they had been doing before being so rudely interrupted. Hermione, frozen with shock and confusion, quickly regained her senses and hurried after him.

"Draco," she whispered down the deserted hall. All the students were presently in the dining hall, no doubt clueless of what the two prefects had just gone through. Harry and Ron had hurried ahead, entrusting Draco with the life of their dear Gryffindor companion. Seeds of friendship were beginning to sprout but no sooner had they been watered were they trampled upon. The gray eyed Slytherin slowed in his step, realizing that Hermione could not keep up with his suddenly brisk pace.

"What are we going to do?" she finally said after catching her breath. She had grabbed his sleeve to beckon for him to slow down, but had instead grabbed the feather of his quill and had pulled it unknowingly from his grasp. As he stared at her, she tucked the quill in between her books. He seemed more intent on ending the conversation then the whereabouts of his quill.

"Do about what?" Draco carelessly replied. Hermione furrowed her brow as they began walking again—at a reasonable pace.

"About this!" she exclaimed, gesturing to him and then back to her in a rapid succession of flicks of her index finger. Her voice was slowly beginning to heighten and Draco refused to have them turned into the butt of attention upon entrance into the dining hall. He pulled to a halt.

"Nobody knows that the sessions are over yet so stop turning it into something it's not. We'll stage a break-up later," he said as calmly as he would have said anything less serious. Hermione held in the gawk that was scratching at the surface of her facial features and blinked.

"Are you even serious?" she said, her voice intertwined with a hint of a hiss. "I think it would be wise to first get me out of this muddle with that blasted umbramotum before moving on."

"Who's to say we can't focus on that after we've resolved our conflict?" he said, moving into a walk again. They were nearing the entrance to the dining hall and Hermione was still lingering over the subject. Draco snatched the sleeve of her robe before they moved into view of the other students.

"Sit with Potter and Weasley. It won't seem so suspicious when we end the relationship later," he commanded. Hermione was shocked with confusion and a mixture of hurt and pain but did her best to hide it.

"Right.. right. That sounds good," she managed to stutter out. Draco nodded reassuringly but turned away with a ripple of his robe's hem. He gave her one last meaningless stare before walking in to greet his companions. Hermione stood by herself in the hall, helpless and tired.

Moments ago they had been focused on one problem and trying to resolve it as a team. Now their bond had been shattered and was thus, leaving Hermione more vulnerable then she had been before. The memories of the umbramotum lurked in her memory and she wanted only to have somebody by her side to comfort her. The only problem was that he had left her to survive on her own and although she had wanted them to stop playing fools and admitting untrue confessions, she only wanted him at that very second. She gathered her wits and decided to act as coldly to him as he had to her. With a broken heart dragging behind her, she pulled on a cheery façade and walked into the dining hall.

Draco did his best to conceal the pain that was digging into his body like thousands of needles and pins being stabbed into him at once. His lips were clamped shut in a tight line and his nostrils flared slightly, but nothing too out of the ordinary that his lunch companions hadn't already become accustomed to. As soon as he sat down though, they were all wise to steer clear of bad conversation.

"Oh Draco," an annoyingly high pitched voice cooed from nearby. He grunted his disapproval and turned to greet the pug-faced Pansy Parkinson. With a sign, he proceeded into the realm of the unknown by embarking upon small talk with a dolt.

"You're not sitting with that fickle mudblood anymore," she said with a too cheery tone. "Do I sense a break up?"

Draco narrowed his eyes in disbelief at the length of her nose and how easily it intruded into other people's business.

"You know just as well as I do that the relationship me and Hermione had was entirely fake," he said angrily, earning him several stares from those around him. Unknown to Hermione and Draco, a majority of students had been rooting for their relationship's sincerity to lead honest relationships between other houses.

"Oh really now," Pansy said, a smile suddenly coming across her features as her attention began to move elsewhere. "It certainly didn't seem like it was fake."

Draco began to become annoyed with her prying but he did what he could only do to keep the belief that he was not honestly involved with a mudblood to light. Then again, it hadn't seemed as though that many Slytherins had disapproved of his behavior. But his family name, his reputation—all down the drain.. for Hermione? The conflict played out in his head but without thinking thoroughly, he decided.

"Did you think that I'd get myself involved with that mudblood? Your standards for me are too low, Parkinson. If you haven't realized, Hermione isn't my type," he said, quickly bluffing a series of excuses to cover his reasoning. Pansy raised a brow as she turned her attention back to him.

"What did you call her? And what did you call me?"

Draco blinked.

"What are you talking about?" he sneered.

"You called her Hermione—you called that mudblood, Hermione," she said, her eyes shooting daggers. "Then again—maybe the mudblood herself can tell us why you called her by her first name."

Draco's chest suddenly screamed with an unbearable pain that clawed at his ribcage and stole his breath. He slowly rotated in his seat and turned to greet Hermione, appalled and eyes wide with both pain and confusion. He opened his mouth to explain, but only air came out.

"You forgot this, Draco," she said, dropping his quill conveniently in his lap. "And you're right, Pansy. Why would a person like Draco involved himself with a mudblood such as myself."

The entire table's attention seemed to be focused on the conflict brewing before them. If they weren't careful, soon the entire dining room would be listening to them and they did not need the first years knowing the reasoning behind their nightly sessions. Draco found his voice again but when he managed to squeeze a syllable of regret out, Hermione quickly slammed it down.

"I'm not fit to have a relationship with a Slytherin, being the Gryffindor that I am, isn't that right? So that's how this is going to work? A non stop cycle of hate because gits like you, Pansy, will never stop believing that it isn't possible. Well, let me tell you—let me tell all of you—Draco was completely… wrong," she said, her voice falling to a dead whisper at the end of her brief statement.

"I think the real question now is—why would I involve myself with scum like Draco, here? Hm.. well let's see—he says slander about me behind my back. He considers himself the better one in this relationship because he's a pureblood and I.. am not.. and he thinks I should be grateful to even be in his presence."

The full attention of all members of the table were now on her and as she continued, more and more distaste was beginning to direct itself at Draco.

"And worst of all, he can't tell the difference between what's real and what isn't."

The look Hermione gave Draco was enough to fill in decades of experience. His wall that surrounded him so stubbornly was beginning to tremble with each passing second. More then just Hermione's eyes were upon him but the only ones of which he could see were hers. Suddenly, a pair of arms snaked around Draco's neck from the back. They clutched on lovingly but in a strangling manner and Draco froze.

Pansy smirked devilishly and ran her tongue seductively along Draco's ear lobe. Hermione's shoulders rose but the gasp did not come.

"You're absolutely right. I am the real deal and you are not—but Draco's already been able to see that," Pansy said. Only Draco could see the water slowly rising up to cover Hermione's eyes in a film of tears. She refused to stoop to Pansy's level and without a word, turned her back on Draco and rushed to the exit. As quickly as she had lodged her existence into Draco's life, she was about to remove it. Pansy smiled as hundreds of pairs of eyes watched her with malice.

Harry and Ron had watched the entire scenerio from afar and it had taken both of their mental strengths' capacities and the strength of several Gryffindor students to keep them from launching a full fledged attack on Draco. The dining hall was utterly silent except for Pansy's brief snickers of triumph as students, dreamers and hopefuls waited for Draco's decision.

Draco watched Hermione's retreating back and for the first time in his life, he felt something slip out of his fingers that he could not buy back using any arrangement of galleons or other assortment of money. His throat grew parched and the fact that Pansy was clinging to him churned the bile in his abdomen. He suddenly stood up and threw Pansy's arms off of his shoulders, a look of disgust obvious on his features.

"What are you doing?" he heard her high pitched voice shriek after him as he ran after her.

"What do you think I'm doing, you loose git," he hollered back, earning himself a echoing string of applause. Hermione was so close to departing from the dining hall but he was easily gaining on her. Pansy continued to complain from her roost at the other end of the dining hall.

"Why are you going after that mudblood!" she shrieked.

"Because—because.." Draco's voice grew quiet again as time slowed and eyes of attentive students trailed after him. He saw her about to break past the doors and leave with untrue thoughts in her head. He couldn't let himself hurt her like that—because she had done the impossible and had given him room to believe in someone other then himself—he believed in her.

"I love her," he called out, loudly enough for the entire hall to hear and to surprise Harry and Ron enough to have them tumble from their seats. Hermione halted in her step and turned around, tears slipping from the corners of her eyes. He closed the last several feet before them and quickly tightened his arms around her. He wiped away the droplets on her cheeks.

"Hermione Granger—please—for-.. for.."

Draco was stumbling over words, unable to ask what he was just about to ask. It was all that was left that was supporting the heavy wall of pain and hurt around him and if he pulled that out—then all that would be left would be him, vulnerable and weak. Was he willing to sacrifice that all for her? He didn't need to think twice to find his answer.

"Forgive me," he pleaded.

Hermione watched as their drama became a soap opera for the entire dining hall. She blinked away the remnants of her tears and glanced around at the hopefuls surrounding her. Then she spotted Ron and Harry in the back of the dining hall, approval beaming from their faces. Well—if her two companions approved—she could only do one thing.

"How could I not?" she said with a shrug. Draco picked her up and spun her in a circle. Hermione closed her eyes and laughed.

When she opened her eyes again, she was still in his arms but—in another position. They hadn't done anything intimate—they had simply shared a conversation and fallen to sleep to the sound of each other's voices. Hermione's window had been pushed wide open and the thoughts of the umbramotum had drifted away. Now that they had admitted their feelings to one another so bluntly, all their worries and problems no longer existed—even if in reality they still very much did.

The students had approved of everybody's behavior that afternoon—all except for Pansy. What had happened to her, nobody knew. After Hermione and Draco had been swarmed by a number of students with questions and only good wishes, Pansy has stormed off in anger. The two prefects hadn't noticed at all.

Draco woke up to the night's beckoning and the moon's seductive glow. He curled his hand tighter around her shoulder and pulled her closer to him—as if that was possible. She sighed and patted Draco on the shoulder with a slowly sobering touch. She could feel the cool evening breeze on the back of her neck and shivered in reply. He quickly sat up to heed to her body's demands.

"I'll close the window," he told her, causing her to sit back down just as she had moved her feet towards the edge of the bed. Draco moved toward the window pane but just as he reached to close the window, something black and wispy darted up and knocked him in the chin. His head jerked back and knocked itself against Hermione's armoire and he slumped down to the ground. His vision lost focus as Hermione launched herself from the bed to his aid. Before she could reach him, the worst that could've happened, happened. A string of darkness wrapped itself around Hermione's mouth and prevented her from screaming. It then dragged her into it's misty shadow and proceeded to pull her out the window. Draco lay helpless, his conscience fading and his limbs losing all feeling.

"Hermione," he managed to finally say as her body was pulled out the window.