A/N: I'm not completely satisfied with this chapter, for some reason. I think it's because I started writing it, decided I didn't like the scene, started another, and had trouble with that one too. It was a case of not really knowing what should happen next (I mean, I know where the story as a whole is going, but I needed to get to that point first.) I hope it's not too bad. I'll get the next one out as soon as I can.

Chapter 15: The Passing of November

For Draco and Hermione, the last three weeks of November seemed to drag on, as weeks in November are apt to do. The threat of end-of-term exams loomed ever nearer. Their Head duties grew more demanding with the approach of the holidays and the decorations and festivities that went with them. A Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Quidditch match scheduled for the last weekend of term resulted in longer and more frequent practices. In short, Draco and Hermione, who perhaps out of all the students at Hogwarts were most in need of free time, had nothing that even remotely resembled it.

What little time they could scrape together was spent in the library, usually late at night, poring over the journals for a cure, though none was forthcoming. None of the journals they had looked through had even been from the correct time in Delilah James' life, and they could find no mention of Dr. Hopper, Edward Flannigan, or the events connected with her research into the Iunctus Mens. Malfoy had begun to voice the opinion that they were finding nothing because there was nothing to find, and Hermione secretly agreed with him, though she would never admit it. Those discussions usually ended with him accusing her of being an idiotic optimist and her responding that he was a whiny pessimist, though without the rancor that would have once characterized such insults.

Finally, the sun set on November and rose on a bright December dawn, bringing with it a renewed sense of purpose for Hermione. It was a Saturday, meaning no classes and no rush on homework, and since Gryffindor had booked the Quidditch pitch for the entire day, the Slytherin team would not be in need of Malfoy's services as captain. Therefore, he and Hermione had agreed to spend as much of their rare day of freedom as they could searching the journals.

Aglow with her newfound and inexplicable determination, Hermione marched into the library at the crack of dawn, ready to tackle an as-yet-untouched stack of journals that had been piled in a corner of the alcove she and Malfoy had been using as their base of operations. She stopped short when she realized that the table was already occupied.

She had assumed that the library was empty because she had never seen anyone but Malfoy there at that hour, and on a Saturday to boot, and she had not felt his presence when she had come in. He was there, though, one arm flung out over the table and his head resting on it. He was fast asleep, and each deep breath he exhaled made the lock of platinum hair that fell across his face flutter gently.

She wondered, as she rounded the table to see what he had presumably been working on when he fell asleep, why he had been sitting up all night in the library instead of in his private dormitory. He went to great lengths to avoid being in any situation in which he would be vulnerable or defenseless, and allowing himself to grow so tired that he couldn't drag himself off to bed before falling asleep wasn't like him.

She almost smiled when she realized what she had been thinking. How odd it was to realize that she was in a position to know what was and wasn't like Draco Malfoy. She supposed they had just spent too much time together in the past three weeks to have not picked up on certain habits, characteristics, and personal information.

For instance, she knew that he was allergic to dust mites, which she had discovered one morning when, exhausted from a strenuous Quidditch practice the day before, he had forgotten to cast his anti-allergy charm and had been overcome by a sneezing fit when she dropped a dusty book on the table. She knew that, when he was very tired, he muttered to himself in French, not English, which made her wonder if he thought in French as well. She knew that he had a particular fondness for an obscure wizard hard candy that tasted like amaretto and coffee and made one's skin tingle pleasantly as they were sucked, and that he always had some in his pocket.

These were trivial things, perhaps, but they didn't seem trivial to Hermione. They seemed shockingly intimate, the sort of things only friends, lovers, and relatives knew about someone, and she wondered idly what intimate, trivial details he knew about her.

She had reached his side of the table and quickly took note of the fact that he had been working on his semester project for their Advanced Study of Ancient Runes class. Each student (there were only five, and besides Malfoy and herself, all were in Ravenclaw) had been assigned a different text to translate. Hermione had been having a devil of a time with hers, and she knew Malfoy wasn't quite as strong a student in that class as she was. No wonder he had been up all night.

She went to wake him, but was suddenly hesitant to do so. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be in the same room with Draco Malfoy without a painful awareness both of his feelings an of her own. It was something of a novelty. She was standing there watching him sleep, feeling slightly guilty though she knew she was doing nothing wrong, when he woke on his own, almost as if he had sensed her studying him. He blinked sleepily, and her emotional awareness of his presence returned, though it seemed hazy and undefined. She supposed that was because he was still groggy with sleep.

She smiled at him before she realized she was doing it.

"Good morning," she said quietly. Those sleep-blurred, unfocused eyes turned in her direction, though he still didn't seem fully awake. Was he always so disoriented when he woke up? How unlike him that was, she thought. He was always so in control of himself.

That thought was soon forgotten, however, because what he did next was not only unlike him, it was utterly bizarre. A feeling of recognition, of sleepy happiness, drifted over her like a warm summer breeze, and then . . . Malfoy smiled.

It was not a sneer, or a smug mockery of a smile, or even his trademark smirk. This was an actual, honest-to-God smile, and it transformed his face.

"Morning, Granger." As soon as her name left his lips, she saw the sleep recede, saw the Draco Malfoy she had come to know in the last month come back to himself. The smile was gone as though it had never been, and she felt its loss like a physical pain.

Malfoy looked around, clearly unsure why he was waking up in the library.

"What happened?" he asked. She settled herself in the chair beside him, feeling saddened by his wariness, his automatic assumption that he had to be on the defensive at all times.

"Nothing happened. You must have fallen asleep working on your Runes translation. I just got here." Malfoy nodded absentmindedly and looked down at a piece of parchment that was covered in runes, most of them scratched out, and lined with hurried, terse notes he had been taking as he puzzled over a particularly difficult series of symbols. He frowned, his frustration chasing away whatever warmth had lingered in Hermione from the momentary happiness he had experienced so briefly when he woke.

"Damn ancient idiots. Couldn't just write it all out nice and simple, could they? Had to make everything difficult for me. I've just about had it with that bloody class. No NEWT is worth all this." He continued with his derisive monologue on the horror that was Ancient Runes, but Hermione ignored him, having heard similar rants from him before. Most often these tirades were about the journals, but once, while they were patrolling the halls together, he had spent a good ten minutes bitterly and one-sidedly complaining about that day's Transfiguration lesson, which had been especially difficult for him. Hermione had noticed, though, that for all his complaining, he continued to search the journals with fervor to match her own, and the next time they had been in Transfiguration, he had turned his Labrador into a writing desk so ornately and beautifully carved that McGonagall had pronounced it "an impressive achievement," which was the highest praise Hermione had ever heard the teacher bestow on anyone but herself.

Finally, Malfoy ended his rant, his frustration apparently spent. He sent a sullen glare at her when she looked up at him from the journal she had begun to skim, but she took no offense from it. She'd been glared at often enough in the past three weeks to inoculate her against even his most withering stares.

"Would you like me to take a look?" she asked, motioning at the neat, halfway-filled parchment onto which he was obviously copying his final translation. He made a move as if to push the parchment over to her, but sense of surprise and then a anger that seemed more reflexive than justified overtook him, and he scowled at her and yanked the parchment back.

"Save your advice for people who ask for it, Granger," he snapped irritably. She sighed and shook her head. She was by now well-used to his occasional outbursts of bad temper. She thought they might be Malfoy's way of reminding himself of exactly who they were to each other when they were not in the curiously detached little world that their small, secluded corner of the library had become.

And what were they, she pondered as she watched Malfoy pack away his Runes homework and get ready to settle in for another day of searching? Not friends, certainly; she doubted that they could ever be friends, for in every way that mattered they were either exactly the same or completely different, which resulted in far too volatile a relationship to ever fall into such a mundane category. She doubted, too, that they could really be considered enemies anymore, either, or at least not the kind of enemies they had been before this all started.

She thought of the kind of enemies sometimes portrayed in Muggle movies who, though firmly on opposite sides of a looming or already-raging battle, can meet in mutual respect and admiration and speak to one another as equals. A worthy adversary, they would call one another. Is that what they were to each other now, she wondered? She thought of the way he had smiled at he before he had fully woken up, and decided that description didn't quite fit either. Perhaps they had reached a place that did not yet have a name.

So absorbed was she in her thoughts that at first she didn't notice Malfoy's change in mood. He had picked up a journal with the grim, hopeless determination with which he always tackled the journals. Not more than a few pages into it, however, he had paused, furrowed his brow, read a line again, and yet again. A sense of disbelief, of seeing things grew on him slowly. It was not until shocked realization dawned on him that Hermione, acutely aware of the powerful emotion, was drawn away from her inward musings.

"What is it?" she asked. He didn't look up at her, keeping his eyes locked on page as though it would disappear if he looked away. She got up and looked over his shoulder to see what had inspired such a reaction. He pointed at a line of text halfway down the page.

"Does that say what I think it says?" he asked, no small amount of disbelief in his voice. Hermione leaned in further, careful not to touch Malfoy as she did so. They had learned their lesson about physical contact, and had scrupulously avoided touching one another for fear of bringing on yet another of the unnerving memory incident. She read the words he had indicated and froze. She read them again, this time out loud, hoping that hearing the words might make her believe them.

"It happened today. Edward and I have finally been able to duplicate the correct conditions to induce the Effect. I hope this will provide us with all the information we have been seeking, though I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of using Edward and myself as test subjects. I intend to start immediate research into methods of remedying this unfortunate situation as soon as Dr. Hopper has collected all the necessary data."

Malfoy looked up at her as though hearing the words only just now allowed them to sink in. She looked back, unable to contain the small, triumphant smile that brimmed on her face.

"We found it."

A/N: Finally! I bet you thought they'd never find it, huh? I'm sorry if this chapter seemed a little uneventful, or if they seemed to get along too well. Keep in mind, though, that a lot of time has passed between this chapter and the one before it. Three weeks can change people. And I'm expected another Draco memory pretty soon, either in the next chapter or the one after it, so get excited! I haven't quite decided what I want his to be yet, but I have to throw one in because I already have Hermione's all planned out, and it wouldn't be fair to do a Hermione memory and not a Draco memory.