A/N: Hello, darlings! Almost 2 weeks to the day! Am I good, or what?

A few quick thank-yous: Oh, my reviewers. How I adore you. Good fortune and pink jelly beans upon all your houses. Super-extra thanks to Lorett for the fabulous beta job, as always.

Not much else to say, so without further ado, on to the chapter!

Chapter 21: Powerless

Draco saw the tears she shed as they drank the potion. He did not comment on them because he could think of nothing to ease her pain. He could think of nothing to ease his own, for that matter.

In all his young life, Draco Malfoy had never done anything halfway. He had known the most exquisite luxuries and the deepest sufferings. He hated with consuming passion, and though he believed in very little, when he did it was with a fierce and unwavering loyalty. Now he wished with all his heart that he was capable of feeling anything in moderation, because one more moment of this wrenching regret and insufferable, impossible, unexceptional Hermione Granger would succeed where his father had failed and finally break his heart.

In the brief moments of expectation that followed their consumption of the potion which he had once thought would be his salvation and now seemed hauntingly like the very opposite, he desperately watched her face. In moments of suffering and despair, of which he was sure there would be many, he wanted to remember that there was once a girl, more pure then he would ever be despite his pristine lineage and her muddy blood, who spilled tears for the loss of him. When the world began to seem like too much to bear alone, he wanted to remember that for a few short months, he hadn't needed to.

He watched her eyes, shimmering with unshed tears, and as he felt her grief pour over him, he gave up all pretenses and quit fighting his own. He didn't know if she ever felt it, because suddenly . . . it stopped. She was gone, though she still stood so close that he could reach out and touch her. He missed her, and was grateful, at least, that she couldn't feel it.

Her eyes turned to him, clouded with confusion and a fragility that made him wish he was the sort of man who possessed the strength and will to protect her and she was the sort of girl who would let him.

"Well, I suppose we should clean up," she said finally in a voice that seemed much to strong to be coming from someone who looked ready to shatter at any moment.

"I suppose so," he agreed quietly. He wondered if he imagined the way her eyes searched his own and then seemed to shimmer with renewed sadness.

They cleaned up in silence, and as Hermione finished up, Draco picked up the journal that still lay open on the table. He stared at the list of ingredients and felt more than a twinge of panic when he realized he was scowling at them, half-wishing that they had never found them, that the cure had never existed in the first place. He turned the page abruptly, hoping to banish such traitorous thoughts by removing their source.

He skimmed the following pages idly, absorbed in his troubling thoughts and barely registering the words he read, but he suddenly stopped and felt the blood in his veins go icy with shock. He read the sentences in question again and wondered if it was possible for his heart to sink and leap at the same time.

It has been a week since I discovered a way to block the symptoms of the Effect. I have not shared the secret of my cure with Edward, much to his anger, but I was unwilling to risk allowing another to ingest the potion until I had a full understanding of any side effects it may have. It was a wise decision, I have since discovered.

The cure is imperfect. Edward can no longer sense my feelings, but I am still aware of his. I speculate that both parties must drink the potion in order to block the open empathic link. Also, it appears that physical contact no longer invokes the reliving of one's memories, but it does temporarily restore Edward's awareness of my feelings.

The worst news, however, came this morning when Edward walked into the lab and almost fell over in shock. Apparently, the potion's effects last only a short while, and he was bombarded with the restoration of our open empathic link. I will have to collect further data in order to specify a more precise timetable, but I would guess that each dose of the potion will probably last no more than a week. Furthermore, I have discovered that the potion does not have any effect if it is consumed any later than five minutes after the brewing is complete, which means that, if I share the cure with Edward, we will have to be in constant contact with one another for the rest of our lives. More information is needed before a plan of action can be outlined.

"What is it, Draco?"

He looked up to find Hermione staring at him, her brow furrowed with concern. He couldn't help but notice that her eyes still seemed huge and wounded in her face, and he allowed himself a moment of weakness and wished he could soothe the pain

"We might have a problem," he said quietly. She frowned and began moving around the table to come stand beside him. He held the journal out to her, but instead of taking it she came to stand beside him and began to read over the bend of his arm. He wondered if she realized how intimate the gesture was, how much it said about the change in their relationship that she would so casually invade his personal space when she could have just as easily avoided any physical closeness with him at all.

He watched her face, feeling the absence of their link like a physical ache as he tried to discern her reaction to the passage. Her features remained impressively impassive as the cure they had so long sought in order to break away from one another was essentially snatched away from them. When she finished, she looked up at him, her eyes guarded and almost calculating, as though she were hiding her own reaction until she could gauge his.

"Do you believe it?" she asked quietly.

"Don't see any reason to doubt her," he responded, still searching her face for any hint that might give away what she was thinking. He certainly hoped she wasn't going to wait until she figured out what he thought about it to reveal her own feelings on the subject, because it could be a long wait. He had no idea himself.

Draco suddenly found the entire situation ridiculous. Here they stood, having just discovered that they were essentially going to be bonded to one another for the rest of their lives no matter what direction they decided to take next, and all they could do was stare at one another with wary, guarded eyes, unwilling to react until the other did. Why were they not yelling or screaming or laughing hysterically or sobbing incoherently or jumping up and down for joy? They should be doing something at least, anything, or at least she should. He had been raised all his life to keep his emotions, his weaknesses, closely guarded, but Hermione had never seemed to possess the capacity to hide what she felt. Her lack of response worried him.

"Well, aren't you going to say anything?" he finally asked, more exasperation in his voice than he would have liked.

"Aren't you?" she countered.

"What would you have me say?" She surprised him by smiling very sadly at him.

"Doesn't it strike you how pathetic we're being?" she asked in response to his questioning look. "For months on end now we've been forced to be as close as two people can possibly be, and now we can't even talk to each other like civilized people."

"I know," he agreed, running a hand through his mussed hair wearily. "I'm willing to try it if you are." She nodded slightly and lowered herself into the chair behind her. Draco leaned against the desk, waiting for her to begin.

"Aren't you angry?" she asked. He blinked at her. It was not what he'd been expecting.

"No. Why on earth would I be?"

"Well, you've just learned that you're going to be in constant contact with a Mudblood for the rest of your life, bound to her forever no matter what you do. Doesn't that bother you?" There was a certain bitterness in her voice, paired with a small amount of hope that tore at his heart. He studied her as she sat there staring up at him and pondered the question she had posed, and as he watched that painfully ordinary face, he felt something in his chest, something small and fragile and oh-so-significant, shatter into dust.

And suddenly, he knew the answer. He was less surprised by what it was than by how easy it was to accept. He briefly considered not revealing it to her (so you'll have time to talk yourself out of it, his subconscious whispered traitorously), but he heard himself speaking the words before he could do anything about it.

"No, it doesn't bother me. And I don't think of you that way anymore."

"You don't?" He would have thought it impossible for her eyes to get any wider than they already were, but apparently he was wrong.

"No," he said evenly. He wondered if she knew how hard those words were to say, how much they meant to him, how precious a secret he had just shared with her.

"Why?"

"Isn't it enough just to know that I don't?"

"Yes, it's enough." And, damn it all to hell, she was crying again. Didn't she realize that he had no idea what to do with a crying woman? His instincts seemed quite convinced that the best course of action would be to gather her up in his arms and hold her until she stopped, but he was relatively certain that doing so would probably qualify as a sign of a coming apocalypse.

"Bloody hell, Hermione. There's nothing to cry about," he said irritably. And she laughed, and it was the loveliest sound he'd ever heard, and he was so pleased that he was the one to cause it that he didn't even find it odd that he found such happiness in making her smile.

"So what do we do now?" she asked when the laughter had subsided. It took him a moment to answer her because he was distracted by a tear that was still trailing down her cheek.

"I suppose we go study for our Arithmancy exam, and then in a week we make the potion all over again, and then we take it from there," he said finally.

"Sounds good to me," she agreed. The tear slid still farther down her cheek, leaving a shimmering trail in its wake, and before he knew what he was doing Draco reached up and brushed the it away with his thumb.

He wasn't sure, afterwards, if he'd forgotten that physical contact would restore the link or if he had remembered and hadn't cared. He was almost certain that he hadn't been consciously thinking of it, but he suspected that on some level he had known precisely what he was doing and what was going to happen once he'd done it. Either way, by the time either of them could do anything to prevent it, his skin brushed hers and tingling warmth seeped into his fingers where they touched her.

As soon as the contact was made, a jolt of awareness shot between them and crackled in the air like heat lightening. He felt all the usual things from her -- her oh-so-familiar presence, a sparkly happiness, the gentle affection she had begun to harbor towards him and which he had pretended hadn't pleased him to know end -- but there was something else there now, something volatile and shocking and unbelievable. Desire. It pulsed around Draco in waves, shimmering like liquid light. It shouldn't have been, shouldn't have existed for either of them. He wondered how long it had been there, how long they had been hiding and ignoring and denying it. There was no denying it now.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, Hermione wrenched herself away from the touch, severing the connection and leaving a gaping hole in Draco where her longing had been. Without another word, she turned and fled the room. After barely a few seconds' hesitation, he went after her.

Hermione fled the abandoned classroom as though the hounds of Hell were snapping at her heels. She didn't have much experience in such matters, but unless she was much mistaken, the emotion that had pulsed into her body from Draco's touch, which she suspected he'd been feeling from her as well, was quite the opposite of hatred.

She turned a corner in one of the second floor corridors and tripped over an uneven stone. The interruption in her rhythm made Hermione suddenly aware of the burning in her lungs and the screaming protests of her legs, unused to such strenuous activity. She stumbled to a halt in front of a large, gilded mirror, putting her hands on the table that was situated before it, dropping her head and resting her weight on her arms as she caught her breath.

When her heart began to slow, she raised her head and stared into her own reflection. She searched her face for something, anything, that might have inspired the flash of heat in Draco that had seared her skin and melted the silver of his eyes. There was nothing. Frizzy hair and boring eyes and plain features. He should not have felt it, should not have confused her so horrible, should not have made her feel it back.

She had never felt anything like that jolt of longing that Draco's touch had sparked to life in her. Not with Ron, and certainly never with Viktor. Was this what Lavender and Parvati had been giggling incessantly about for so many years? Was it true what they said, that it was rare and wonderful thing that should be held onto with both hands and all the passion one could muster?

She wanted, inexplicably, to cry again. That aching need was supposed to go hand in hand with love and comfort and respect, was it not? But it was also supposed to be uncontrollable, to strike in unexpected places and take the choice away from its victims.

"Not him," she whispered to her reflection. "Why did it have to be him?"

And then he was there. He skidded around the corner, his face slightly flushed, his shimmering hair in disarray, and when his eyes locked with hers in the mirror, she felt her heart sink as she realized she was powerless to turn away.

When he spoke, his voice sounded ragged and strange, the refined drawl strained to the point of being practically unrecognizable.

"It's crazy. You and me together -- that's crazy, Granger. You know it is." She did know, but she had the odd feeling that he wasn't really trying to convince her as much as he was trying to convince himself.

"So do you," she replied.

"So what do we do about it?" he wanted to know. She gathered her will, every ounce of strength and courage she possessed, and turned to face him.

"Nothing," she said, hoping her voice conveyed a finality she didn't feel.

"But --"

"Just ignore it, Malfoy," she repeated with admirable composure.

"Fine, we'll ignore it," he agreed in barely more than a whisper. He blinked, and his eyes had gone strangely flat again. "Do you still want to study for Arithmancy?" he asked suddenly.

"I don't really feel like studying anymore," she whispered back. "Maybe tomorrow?" He nodded curtly, bowing his head in a formal way that she suspected might have broken her heart just a little bit. He turned to leave, but stopped suddenly and turned back to look at her. His eyes were once again dark, like molten silver, and she hoped he couldn't see her tremble as she stared at them.

He took three slow steps toward her, until the tips of their shoes were almost touching and just stared at her. For an insane moment, Hermione wanted nothing more than for him to stop being so damn noble and kiss her. Instead, he raised his one hands as if to stoke her cheek. His fingers drifted a centimeter away from her skin and brushed the curl that so often hung in her eyes behind her ear. She could feel tendrils of his need for her drifting between their skin like wisps of smoke.

"Goodbye, Hermione," he whispered. He walked past her and for a long time she stood staring at the spot he had just occupied. Then she began to make her way back to the library to collect her forgotten Arithmancy books, feeling as hollow as the stone hallways as her footsteps echoed on the walls.

A/N: And there you have it. Actual romance! I know, I know, you're still in shock. When you regain control of your higher cognitive functions, hit that review button and make my day!

Now, a few questions answered:

Several people have asked how much longer this fic is going to be. Answer: I don't know for sure, but I would wager that it won't be more than four or five more chapters.

A LOT of people have asked how much longer you will have to wait for the kiss. Answer: Approximately 2 weeks, my darlings, because it's coming up next chappie! Whoo-hoo!