Disclaimer: How about this? As soon as I hit the lottery, develop the ability to telepathically influence the decisions of others, buy the rights to the Harry Potter universe from the great and most admirable J.K. Rowling, and therefore own Harry Potter, I'll let you know. Until then, let's just assume I don't.
A/N: Okay, don't hate me, but I suppose it's time to tell you guys that I will be going on vacation for a week and a half. Starting Wednesday. Ducks behind her desk for cover from any objects that are thrown in her direction. Don't hate me! I will update on Tuesday night, and try to get another chapter written before I leave so I can post it approximately halfway through the trip. When I return, updates will continue at their usual pace. Please, please don't hate me!
So this chapter is slighter longer than most are, and once again I am not entirely happy with it. Knowing how I feel about keeping Hermione true to the books, you'll understand why. Tell me what you think, please. On to the chapter!
Chapter 10: Her Darkest Night
He found her in an empty classroom, staring out the window and positively seething with fury. She didn't turn to look at him when he walked in.
"Go. Away." He ignored the command she issued through gritted teeth and moved deftly across the room to stand a few feet away from her still, tense form. At this distance, her rage was almost powerful enough to send him staggering back.
"I'm not evil, Granger," he said to the back of her bushy head. The sound that issued from her throat might have been intended as a derisive laugh, but it came out nearer to a sob. She turned to look at him with bitter disappointment and something akin to betrayal in her turbulent eyes.
"Really? Well, you do a fine job of hiding it." She was just about to turn away dismissively again, but he moved forward until their noses were inches apart. She glared back up at him with a fury to match his own, her eyes slitted and defiant.
"What are you going to do, Malfoy?" she asked, almost tauntingly. "Stare at me until I see reason and understand that I am an inferior life form? Talk me to death with all your pretty, empty words about heritage and ancestry and birthrights?" She tilted her head as though considering an idea that had just occurred to her. Malfoy sensed a dangerous and foreign recklessness rising in her, and he knew that whatever came out of her mouth next would be something they would both regret. "Or perhaps you'll just save yourself the trouble and get rid of me, the way your father would?"
He wondered vaguely when she had acquired so much power over him that so few words could hurt him so deeply. She had seen the monster his father had become, seen the atrocities he had committed. To hear her compare him to Lucius when she had been as much a victim of his cruelty as Draco himself felt oddly and horribly like . . . betrayal.
"I am not my father!" He was yelling now, though she was still no more than few inches in front of him. Whatever remorse she had felt (and, had he been calmer, he would have realized that it was both abundant and sincere) vanished, replaced by still more anger. He would not have thought calm, logical Granger capable of feeling anything so passionately.
"No, you're not!" she agreed, yelling right back at him. "You're not your father because your father has been festering in his hate for forty years instead of seventeen. That's what hate does to a person, you know. It consumes them. He's had half a lifetime to let his prejudice poison him, eat him alive from the inside, hollow him out until all that was left was the hatred. You're not your father yet, Malfoy, but if you don't wake up soon, you will be!"
Malfoy wasn't sure exactly what look came across his face when she said this, but whatever it was, it caused Hermione to take a step back and experience a thrill of fear. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously soft, and the words were out of his mouth before he'd even realized he was going to say them.
"You know nothing of me or my father. Don't speak of what you don't understand, you filthy Mudblood." The instant he said it, he would have given all the gold in his Gringotts vault (well, most of it) to take it back. If he thought he had hurt her in the Great Hall, it was nothing compared to what that word (a word he himself had heard so many times that it barely carried any more meaning for him than the term 'Muggle-born') did to her. He wondered if it was possible for a person's eyes to shatter, because that's certainly what hers seemed to do.
He fully intended to swallow his pride and apologize, but something in those shattered eyes gave him pause. He had the strangest sensation of déjà vu, and recognized why the look in her eyes seemed so familiar just in time to react. He'd seen that look once before: on a dreary afternoon in their third year, when she had shocked him speechless by slapping him smartly across the face. This time, he caught her wrist just before her open palm could connect with his cheek. The instant he did so, he realized his mistake, but it was too late to take it back. The room seemed to spin very quickly out of focus, and the last clear image he had was of those wounded, accusing eyes.
When at last he could breathe again, he opened his eyes . . . And found himself walking slowly out of the Hogwarts library. He -- well, Hermione -- seemed to be in no hurry to get where he was going, and his feet all but dragged along the rough stone floor. He gradually became aware of how utterly exhausted he was. His limbs felt stiff and weary, and the too-full backpack on his shoulders was shooting dreadful pains up and down his back. No wonder Granger was always so stern and unsmiling: if he walked around with twice his weight in books slung over his back, he supposed he would be a bit snappish as well.
He passed a window, and saw, far below him, a single, dim light from the gamekeeper's cottage. It must have been very late, for it was the only light he could see anywhere. The night sky was utterly empty of stars, and he suddenly realized that Hermione felt a strange and almost unhealthy feeling of kinship with the darkness. Before he could further examine this disturbing thought, he realized that he had stopped in front of an enormous painting of an enormous woman, who was wearing a frilly pink dress and dozing lightly in her frame.
"Atrum vicis" he heard himself self say in Granger's voice, though it sounded much more hoarse and defeated than he was used to hearing it. The woman nodded drowsily, and her portrait swung open on a hidden hinge to reveal a hole in the stone wall. Finally, after nearly seven years, he had discovered the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, but he found it wasn't as much of a thrill as he might have once thought it to be. He coaxed his weary body through the opening, hoping that, on the other end, he would find relief from his load of books and from Hermione's gloomy state of mind.
The Gryffindor common room looked much as he would have guessed it did: warm, rich shades of gold and scarlet everywhere, and furniture that emphasized comfort and practicality rather than quality and beauty. Though he would personally have rather slept on the cold stone floor of the entrance hall than spend time here, he had expected Hermione to find comfort and solace in her common room and the sight of her friends, who were seated around the fireplace and talking companionably about an upcoming trip to Hogsmeade. Much to his confusion, she found neither. If anything, he thought her uncharacteristic gloominess deepened as she took in her surroundings and listened to the quiet laughter of the group near the fire.
Malfoy was inexpressibly grateful when he found himself slipping the book bag from his shoulders and placing it on a nearby table. His respite was brief, however, because as the discomfort in his shoulders and back receded, awareness of his throbbing head and tired, scratchy eyes increased, and, if possible, his weariness seemed even more pronounced.
As he stood in the shadows watching the laughing group by the fire, he felt Granger rein in her longing to join them. In the flickering firelight, Weasley had a smile on his face, but Hermione was remembering him glaring angrily at her, furious and resentful words flying back and forth between them. With a heavy heart, Malfoy retreated further into the darkness, scooping up the discarded bag and passing silently from the room.
The tall spiral staircase he found himself climbing seemed to go on forever. He wondered if it was really as tall as it seemed, or if Hermione's exhausted limbs were playing tricks with his tired mind. When he finally reached the top, he opened a door labeled '3rd Years' and trudged inside.
Three four-posters were spaced evenly around the circular room. In two beds, the crimson curtains were drawn, and soft snoring issued from the one on the left. He dragged his weary body over to the farthest bed, where the curtains hung open and a single candle burned on the book-laden desk.
Sitting down on the edge of the four-poster, he began to slowly unpack the numerous books and rolls of parchment that strained the seams of Hermione's book bag. With each textbook that was revealed, Hermione's stress increased, weighing heavily on her already-burden mind. How many subjects was she taking? No wonder she was so anxious; there simply wasn't enough time to study all the things she apparently was.
The last thing he pulled from the bag was a small planner. He flipped it open with resignation and stared down at pages crammed with impossibly small writing, lists of assignments and due dates so long that they required pages and pages of space. It wasn't possible to do so much, Draco thought in his own mind. It just couldn't be done. It was little wonder that she was dead on her feet.
He balanced the planner atop one of the towering piles of books on the desk, and as he did so, his eyes were drawn to one of the other innumerable books scattered over its surface: The Legal History of Marauding Beasts: 1750 to Present . The sight brought a strange, hopeless sadness to Hermione's heart, and Draco saw in her mind's eye several sleepless nights of research and tearful goodbye to the gamekeeper and a hippogriff--the same one, he realized angrily, that had attacked him during his first-ever Care of Magical Creatures lesson. He wondered why that thought of that idiotic oaf and his murderous pet would inspire such painful grief. Furthermore, he wondered what exactly about this night made it so important; as far as he could see, he was simply witnessing the end of a rather long, stressful day in the life of a girl whose very nature demanded a certain amount of long, stressful days. What, he wondered, could possibly be different about this one?
Though Malfoy thought the next logical step would be to throw himself down upon the gold and scarlet pillows and attempt to sleep away the utter exhaustion that was only partly of the body, he realized that Hermione had no inclination to lie down. Too many things to think about, he realized. She would lie awake for hours, until the unwelcome sun rose over lake, too weary to rest. He'd had a few nights like that himself, and understood.
Instead of making a useless attempt at slumber, he found himself wandering over to one of the many-paned windows that circled Gryffindor Tower. The window was thrown open into the endlessly black night, which was unbroken by the moon or stars. He couldn't even see a glimmer of reflected light from the castle on the lake or in the trees. It was the darkest night either of them had ever seen, and he, at least, had seen his share.
When Hermione's body began to pull itself up stiffly to sit on the window ledge, Draco was too surprised to resist (not that he could have). His aching feet were still clad in boring, sensible shoes that Draco himself wouldn't have been caught dead in. He swung them up onto the ledge with him, so that he sat sideways with his back against the cool stone. He was suddenly aware that he was holding in his hands what felt like a small hourglass, and rubbing its cold glass edges in a thoughtful manner. He wanted to look down and see what it was, but Hermione's eyes were fixed on the utter blackness of the night outside her window.
Looking out into the infinite blackness, he felt again that strange and unhealthy kinship with it, almost as if Hermione felt herself to be a part of it. He stopped allowing his own mind to wander and tried to focus on whatever Hermione was thinking that could inspire such an uncharacteristic feeling. After a moment's concentration, he was able to pick up thoughts of work that never seemed to end, of expectations that seemed more unreachable every day, of Hagrid's guileless trust in her ability and the dark knowledge that she would fail him, of Weasley's hard eyes and angry words, of her own quiet and desperate lonliness, of the bone-deep exhaustion that neither sleep nor rest could soothe. She was thinking, he realized with rising panic, that the darkness looked so comforting, so peaceful, so wonderfully empty of people and responsibility. She was thinking that it would probably be Monday, when a professor asked a question that no one could answer, before anyone realized she was gone . . .
In that instant, his foot slipped on the ledge with a scraping sound that seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence. A few loose pebbles fell into the bottomless darkness, and though he listened breathlessly for a long while, he never heard them hit the ground. He felt Hermione suddenly realize where her train of thought had been leading and how close she had come to following those pebbles into the suffocating blackness. With a surge of terror and self-protective instinct, Draco scrambled off the ledge and into the safety of the warm dormitory. He slammed the window shut so quickly that the resulting bang was loud enough to draw sleepy, inquiring grumbles from the two occupied beds. Draco paid them no mind as he firmly secured the latch and then leaned against the wall to calm his rapidly beating heart which, oddly enough, seemed slightly lighter than it had all night.
The abandoned classroom seemed blindingly bright when Draco returned to it, or perhaps it was only that it lacked the pervasive darkness of the memory, which had very little to do with lack of light. Granger's face was immobilized with terror and humiliation. He supposed his must be frozen in shock.
It was a long time before the numbness in his fingers reminded him to release Granger's wrist. Her arm dropped to her side, and though the angry red marks his fingers had left had to be painful, she made no sound of discomfort and her gaze remained locked on his.
"Please don't tell anyone," she whispered desperately. Her voice seemed impossibly loud.
"I won't," he whispered back. She nodded, and walked silently from the room. It was a long time before Draco found the strength to do the same.
A/N: So. Like it? Hate it? What do you think? Again, I hate to mess around with Hermione's past, but I don't think it's too far fetched. I've been re-reading the books to prepare for Book 6 and I paid particular attention to the Prisoner of Azkaban, because I feel like that was one of the hardest times of Hermione's life. This memory is supposed to take place on the Friday night before the trip to Hogsmeade when Harry messes with Malfoy's head while under his invisibility cloak. This was the day of Buckbeak's first trial, and a few days after a particularly bad fight with Ron regarding Scabbers' "death" and Hermione's intention of ratting Harry out if he sneaks into Hogsmeade. I thought it would probably be one of the hardest times of her life, and therefore a good setting for this kind of memory. I did my research, as you can tell. I wanted to timeline right.