Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. In fact, with the exception of this laptop, a collection of shoes that I couldn't afford to buy in the first place, and a diamond necklace that my mother gave me for graduation, I own absolutely nothing of value. Really. Don't sue me. You'd have a better chance of getting money out of my cat.
A/N: I'm so sorry that this chapter took so long! I've been having a lot of trouble with it. If you were with me back when I posted Chapter 3, you will remember that I wasn't very happy with it. Well, I'm even more not happy with this chapter. I'll try to get the next chapter out tomorrow to make up for its utter crappiness.
Chapter 8: Reflections
Hermione did not go back to her dormitory. Lavender and Parvati were still sleeping, and she knew that Harry, Ron, and the other players on the Gryffindor Quidditch team had an early practice that morning and were probably beginning to trudge sleepily into the common room. She couldn't face them yet, couldn't face anyone. She raced aimlessly up the castle's many stairways, finally finding herself in the astronomy tower.
She pushed open the doors and raced onto the deserted balcony, leaning against the rough stone railing as she caught her breath. It was easier to breathe there, in the crisp air of the late November morning, where she could barely smell the acrid smoke of the bonfire. She closed her eyes against the blinding morning sun, but when she did she saw only the vivid sapphire eyes of the dead witch, so she stared out over the Hogwarts grounds, seeing nothing but the pervasive grayness of the landscape.
Hermione didn't know what to do with the knowledge she had just acquired. When Malfoy had simply been the cruel, spoiled, Muggle-hating Slytherin that she had always assumed him to be, it had been so easy to hate him. She missed those times now, now that everything that had once been black and white was a suddenly a thousand shades of gray. Could she hate him now that she had seen the suffering of his childhood, felt the goodness in him that his father had so brutally stamped out? She wasn't sure, but then, she wasn't sure about much anymore.
A flash of white-gold on the ash-colored landscape drew her attention away from her thoughts. Malfoy's insecurity, anger, and confusion drifted up from the ground below, distant but undeniably present. He seemed to sense her at the same time, for he glanced around warily. Hermione made no attempt to hide herself, but Malfoy didn't see her, and, shrugging his aristocratic shoulders, he continued to make his way toward the lake.
Hermione watched with a curiosity she neither wanted nor could ignore as he walked purposefully to the edge of the lake, the surface of which was as smooth and colorless as sheet metal. He stopped at the edge and stared at the water unseeingly, and in her mind's eye Hermione saw him standing at the edge of another body of water, so much younger and less troubled than he was now. She supposed he was once again studying his reflection for outward signs of an inner weakness.
She wondered idly if he saw in his reflection what she saw as she looked at him. Not his expensive clothes or his aristocratic face, but the loneliness that seemed to drift around him in a cloud as gray as the glassy lake and his troubled eyes. If Hermione had been asked to paint a picture of desolation, she could not have come up with a more fitting image than Malfoy looking out over the steely lake, his charcoal-gray cloak blending with the rocks and pebbles beneath his feet.
Perhaps her mental painting would have been less heart-wrenching if she had not been so intimately aware of Malfoy's state of mind. His unhappiness raced around her on the wind that blew from the lake. Of the myriad of troubling emotions he was feeling, the most prominent was a deep and abiding hatred. Hermione was surprised to know instinctively that the hatred was not directed toward her this time. She wondered who else he could possibly despise with such intensity. He was also deeply confused about something, though she couldn't imagine what it was.
While Malfoy's discontent drifted hazily up from the grounds below, Hermione contemplated the memory she had just relived through his eyes. It had to be one of the most defining experiences of his life, but she had no idea how it had affected him. Had his acceptance of his father's sick philosophy been permanent, or had it been a temporary acquiescence, brought on by the trauma of watching an innocent victim lose her life at the hands of the man he revered above all others? Had the passing of time and distance from his father's poisonous presence allowed his inherent compassion to reemerge, or had his mind been irreparably broken on a sultry summer night so many years before? Did witnessing the murder of a Muggle-born witch define him because it cemented his hatred for all those of less than pure blood, or because it had finally made him see how horribly wrong his father and the rest of the Death Eaters really were?
If his attitude and behavior over the last six years was any indication, the night that was so vivid in his memory had made him into exactly what his father had meant him to be, but Hermione wasn't convinced. She thought she had enough insight into Malfoy to know that what he was feeling was often different, if not in direct contrast, to what he was saying. She supposed that if she really wanted to know, she would have to ask him, which was possibly the least pleasant option she could think of. She was relatively sure that the best outcome she could hope for in such a situation was a scoffing refusal. She thought it more likely that he would throw another of his curiously painful tirades at her and stalk off in fury, but she felt oddly compelled to face him about the horrific memory she had just witnessed. She pushed herself away from the balcony decisively and began the long trip down from the Astronomy tower.
Malfoy sat frozen in his seat as a very horrified and disturbed Hermione Granger fled the Great Hall, the dull thud of the enormous doors echoing in her wake. Of all the grim memories of his unpleasant past, that horrible night in the summer of his tenth year would have been the last one he would have wanted anyone to see. It had never even occurred to him that his traitorous mind would dredge up something he had worked so hard to repress and display it in all its sordid glory for his mortal enemy. It had been months since a nightmarish reliving of those events had jerked him from a terrified sleep. He had not thought of it since, for he had discovered long ago that to dwell on it would only drive him mad.
Completely ignoring the curious looks of the professor and the Ravenclaw boy, Malfoy stormed out of the Great Hall, not sure where he intended to go. The ceiling of the entrance hall soared above his head, and his footsteps echoed hollowly on the vast stone walls, but Malfoy felt closed in, suffocated by memories he didn't want and feelings he wanted even less. Almost blindly, he threw open the front doors and rushed out into the cold, bright morning.
Despite the too-bright sunlight, the Hogwarts grounds look gray and desolate. The bleakness of the landscape barely registered with Malfoy; all he noticed was that the air out here wasn't quite as confining and that the sight of the lake, so open and endless, was slightly easing his claustrophobia. He began to walk toward it, and was halfway there before he realized that he wasn't alone.
Granger's turbulent emotions were drifting hazily in the air around him, like wisps of smoke from a distant fire. He paused for a moment, trying to spot her, but soon realized that she was either very well hidden or too far away for him to see. Perhaps she was on the other side of the castle. That was just as well, because even though he had no illusions that he could put off seeing her forever, he couldn't face her again just yet. He shrugged his shoulders dismissively and turned back toward the lake, hoping vainly that its vast openness would somehow ease the pressure on his heart.
His shoes slipped dangerously over the slick stone and loose pebbles that had collected around a rocky outcropping on the lake's edge. He looked down at the glassy surface of the water, studying his reflection. He looked shaken, he realized with contempt. He looked exactly like what he was: a confused kid standing on the unstable foundations of crumbled life, a situation which he blamed solely on one person: his rat-bastard of a father.
Merlin, how he hated his father. He hated his weakness, his obedience, his warped and pathetic philosophy. Mostly, he hated what his father had done to him, how close he had come to making Draco into another mindless, inhuman servant of a half-blooded, hypocritical psychopath. He had decided long ago that he would die before he sacrificed his dignity and, most likely, his sanity to a cause that had been perverted by a lust for power and the madness of those who sought it.
Malfoy believed in preserving the purity of magical blood, believed that there was a class system to the magical community and that he, and others like him, was at the top of it. For a while, he had even believed that the Dark Lord and his loyal Death Eaters had the right idea. The more time he spent at Hogwarts, however, far away from his father's hypnotic words and pervasive Darkness that was a part of daily life at Malfoy Manor, the more he had begun to see how twisted the Dark Lord's philosophy had become. The life of the Death Eaters seemed wretched and pathetic to him now. It turned his stomach to think of once-noble and respectable pure-bloods cowering at the feet of a deranged killer with delusions of grandeur and the filthy blood Muggles running in his veins.
A flash of movement that was reflected on the mirror-like surface of the water drew his attention, and Malfoy turned just in time to see Granger flee from the astronomy tower balcony and disappear into the castle again. He supposed she had been watching him, and he wondered what she had been thinking that had made her so desperately confused that her uncertainty hung in the air around her even after she was gone from it.
Granger. He was glad she was inside the castle, because he knew that if she had remained on the balcony she would be able to feel the conflicting emotions she was arousing in him. She had been so hurt by his words in the Great Hall, and her pain had surprised him. She had always seemed so impenetrably strong, so nauseatingly self-assured. Nothing he had ever said to her seemed to do anything but annoy her, which he suspected had more to do with his childish spitefulness than any hurt feelings on her part. He had long ago given up on causing her pain with his insults; he taunted her now for the sheer pleasure of her comebacks, which were always immeasurably more clever than anyone else's.
He wondered, now, how many times his offhanded comments had pierced her heart, how many tears she had shed over his juvenile taunts. He felt a foreign and unwelcome tendril of guilt squeeze his heart painfully. He didn't like that he had hurt her, and he didn't like that he was sorry he had, and he really didn't like how her wounded eyes, still so proud and dignified even though they were clouded with tears, had reminded him of the eyes of the Muggle-born witch just before his father had struck her down with his useless rage.
He had never learned her name, but she haunted him even now. It had been several years before Draco realized the significance of that night. He could not pinpoint exactly when he had begun to doubt in the path that had been chosen for him, but he could remember with terrifying clarity the moment that he had begun to doubt in his own ability to follow it. That witch, despite her inferior blood and her questionable right to invade upon the world of wizards and magic, had been innocent. She had possessed a soul no different from his own. That did not, in his opinion, make her his equal, but neither did it make her expendable. Draco had realized in that moment that, when the time came, he would not be able to take an innocent life. It was the beginning of the gradual unraveling of his father's careful teachings. He would always be grateful to that witch, who, if she was anything like Granger (and he suspected she was), would probably be happy to know that her death had probably saved the lives of countless others who would now never die at the hands of Draco Malfoy.
Draco was still staring down into the water, gazing blankly into the eyes of his reflection, when he heard the doors of the castle creak open and felt Granger's presence wash over him like the cool breeze that whispered off the lake. He didn't turn to look at her, but he knew instinctively that she was coming to the lake, just as he knew that, if she asked him about the memory, he would be unable to lie to her. She stopped beside him, and his eyes met hers in the silvery water. For an instant, he thought they looked less honey-brown than sapphire blue, but then the wind sent ripples through the water, and when it calmed again, they were the same boring shade of brown they had always been, and for that he was grateful.
Neither said anything, but a few moments later, when Hermione turned to go back into the castle, Draco followed her. Behind them, the dark water now reflected nothing but the pale gray sky.
A/N: That was rather angsty, wasn't it? I'm not usually a good angst writer, which might be why I'm so unhappy with this. I had a lot of trouble with the part from Hermione's POV, but Draco's reflections flowed much more easily. I'll try to get the next chapter out tomorrow, and I'll try to remember that the next time I write angst, I just need to keep Hermione out of it!