A/N: Hello, my darlings! Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. Here is the new chappie, ahead of schedule and everything. Damn, I'm good.

Thanks goes out:

To for finally waking up and giving us a way to respond to our reviewers (not that I had time to do it this last round, but look for responses next time you review)

To everyone who reviewed, for your general awesomeness.

To Lorett, for being the world's best beta.

So here's the romance you've long been craving, my dears. I hope it meets up with your expectations. I quite enjoyed writing it.

Chapter 22: Crazy

It turned out that forgetting was much more easily said than done.

It wasn't that Hermione didn't try, because she did. She tried to forget the things she had felt in the abandoned classroom, the way his eyes has glittered and swirled as they'd stood talking in the hallway, the feel of his hand brushing her hair away from her face. She threw herself into her schoolwork with more fervor than even she would have ever thought possible in an attempt to banish the memories, but nothing helped ease the longing that plagued her in the days that followed.

When distraction failed to helped, she turned to rationalization instead. In her logical way of thinking, if you couldn't explain it away, you just weren't looking hard enough.

She began to slowly compile a list of the reasons that a relationship between Draco Malfoy and herself was possibly the worst idea ever conceived by muggle or wizard.

The first reason came to her as she watched him terrorize a young Hufflepuff second-year who had walked into him in the Great Hall.

#1: Draco is an arrogant, insufferable bully and all-around pain in the ass.

The next day, reason number two presented itself as she stared hopelessly down at her Transfiguration notes the night before the exam, not comprehending a word she read.

#2: If thinking about him NOW is detracting from my schoolwork, what would it be like if we were actually together?

Wednesday night, she came up with her third reason as she sat in the common room with Harry, Ron, and the other Gryffindor seventh-years and listened to them rail on and on about a nasty run-in they'd had with the Slytherins earlier in the day.

#3: Our lives are so different, our friends are so different, WE are so different. No one will ever understand.

Finally, on Friday morning as the students ate breakfast in the Great Hall and did a little last minute studying, a regal-looking owl with golden feathers landed gracefully on Draco's shoulder and offered him a letter bearing the Malfoy crest. As he read it, his eyes darkened and he sent Hermione an inscrutable and vaguely hopeless look. She did not know what the letter said, but she could guess, and it was enough to give her the fourth and final reason.

#4: No matter what has happened, no matter how he's changed, his family has not, and they would never allow him to be with someone like me. I could never ask him to turn his back on them . . . not that he ever would.

With this thought heavy on her heart and somehow failing to lessen the longing that already weighed it down, she headed to her final exam: Potions.

The dungeon was nearly full when Hermione arrived. The faces of her classmates were pale and tense, which was really to be expected considering the notorious difficulty of Snape's exams. Pansy looked positively ill (which, if Hermione were honest with herself, gave her a small thrill of vindictive delight) and a Ravenclaw girl with wild auburn curls was visibly shaking with nervous tension.

For the first time all week, Hermione did not feel unprepared. For some reason, the hours she and Draco had spent studying for this particular exam stood out with startling clarity in her mind, and she felt like a walking textbook on the subject of emotional potion-making. She had to smile ruefully at the realization that, in a way, she was a walking textbook on the subject.

Now that thoughts of Draco had crept into her mind, she knew it was no use to try to push them out again. She searched the room for him, and spotted him sitting alone at a table near the back, his eyes trained upon her as they had been all week.

As if her ongoing quest to forget what had flared between them wasn't hard enough, Draco had hampered her progress even further by never taking his eyes off her. She caught him staring at her almost every time she stole a glance at him (which was much more often than she cared to admit). He watched her as though he wasn't entirely sure he wasn't imagining her, as if his visual contact was the only thing keeping her from vanishing into a puff of smoke and memories. She wanted him to stop looking at her that way, and yet at the same time she wanted to stare right back at him until the whole world crumbled to dust around them.

Was it any wonder, she thought, that she had performed abysmally on every examination she'd taken this week? Being Hermione Granger had been hard enough before Draco Malfoy had started staring at her and messing up her entire life in the process. She consoled herself with the knowledge that in a few hours time the term would be over and she would have two blessed weeks to put distance between herself and the heat in Draco's eyes.

Snape entered the room with a sneer and a flourish of his dark robes, and the restless, nervous chatter gave way to a painfully tense silence. The examinations were handed out with no further directions or suggestions, and Hermione quickly assessed the test. A list of difficult but not impossible multiple choice questions, and an essay . . . on the Partis Sensus potion.

If she had not been absolutely certain that Snape would deduct an obscene amount of points from Gryffindor, she would have laughed aloud. Instead, she smiled and shook her head very slightly at the utter appropriateness. She did not look up, refused to look up, but she was sure that Draco was smiling too . . . and looking right at her, no doubt. Oddly enough, the thought that they were sharing a private joke was somewhat comforting, and she began her test, unaware that a small smile still lingered on her face.

Two hours later, the exam was over. After assessing the expressions on her classmates' faces, Hermione added, "saved my ass on my Potions exam" to the short but oh-so-significant list of good things that came out of her adventures with the Partis Sensus potion.

Most students left the room in an agitated scramble as soon as they were dismissed, but Hermione, still basking in the glow of her assured success on at least one of her exams, packed her things at a leisurely pace and was therefore one of the last to leave the classroom.

She wasn't aware of his presence until he was standing not a foot in front of her. She could smell his spicy cologne and feel the heat of his skin, could see every luminous golden hair on the back of his hands and hear the soft, rhythmic sound of his breathing. They had not been this close since that moment in the hallway when she had turned him away (with perfectly good reason, she thought desperately), and suddenly his very nearness was making her forget why she'd been trying to forget him.

"Could we talk for a moment, Hermione?" he asked in a low voice. She finally gathered the courage to look up and meet his eyes and could not suppress the tremble that shivered through her when she did.

"Alright," she said in what she hoped was an even voice. She cast a glance at the door and saw Harry lingering in the doorframe, a small frown on his lips. She gave him a small, reassuring smile and waved her hand to tell him she was okay. He nodded and turned to follow Ron, but the frown did not go away, she noted. It saddened her slightly, and she thought again that she and Draco would never find acceptance from those they cared about the most.

She turned her attention back to Draco and found him still staring at her, and she was close enough to see that his eyes were a dark, hot shade today, like melted pewter.

"What did you want to speak with me about?" she asked, cursing the formality of her voice and her words because she knew he would see them for what they were (a defense meant to keep him at arms length). Her words seemed to snap him out of whatever reverie he entered when he looked at her, and he blinked in confusion before his inscrutable mask of coolness fell over his features.

"We need to discuss our arrangements regarding the potion," he said crisply. "The effects should be wearing off in approximately two days. We should be far enough away from one another that we will feel no immediate effects, but the dreams may still be a problem and we will have to deal with the restored link when we get back to school. Are you willing to risk that, or would you rather meet during the holiday and continue to take the potion on schedule?"

She blinked at him, shocked that she hadn't thought of the same thing before now. She must really be slipping.

"I suppose . . . I suppose it would be safer to wait until we get back to school. My parents' house is no place to be brewing potions or storing volatile ingredients, so we would have to meet at Malfoy Manor . . ."

" . . . And, for obvious reasons, we can't do that," he finished for her. She thought she detected a trace of bitterness in his voice to match the bitterness in her heart, but she might have been imagining it. She wondered if it seemed as unfair to him as it did to her that his family's prejudice still divided them even after he had found the strength and courage and will to reject it.

"When we have more time to plan, we can come up with an alternative meeting place, but for now, I suppose we'll just have to be very careful," she said quietly. He nodded his assent.

"Very well. Happy Holidays, Hermione," he said as he began walking to the door.

"Happy Holidays," she echoed as she watched him retreat. And suddenly, for no reason at all, she couldn't stand to see him turn the corner and be gone from her life for two entire weeks.

"Draco?" Her voice broke as she said it, and it sounded suspiciously like a sob even to her own ears. It was enough to stop him in his tracks though, and he turned to look back at her with a questioning raise of one eyebrow.

"Why do you stare at me?" She wasn't entirely sure where the question came from, and she was mortified that she'd said it, but it was apparently the right thing to say, because the unreadable mask fell away. Suddenly, he was there again, the Draco who had spent so many afternoons with her in the library, who smiled at her when no one else was looking, who saw her for what she was despite seventeen years of training to the contrary.

"Because I can't seem to stop," he said quietly after a moment. His expression was a mixture of longing and hopelessness. "What have you done to me, Granger?"

"Nothing," she stammered. "I've done nothing."

"Exactly," he whispered back, his despair so sharp and poignant that it was practically tangible. "You've done nothing, and that's what's really and truly terrible about all this. You're exactly who you used to be, and I'm exactly who I used to be, and yet here we are. Here I am, wanting you for no reason at all."

His words left Hermione feeling lightheaded and unstable. She didn't know what to say, so she simply stared at him. As he crossed the room to stand in front of her, is eyes seemed to be pleading with her, and she wanted suddenly to be able to give him everything that he could ever want or need. By the time he spoke again, she thought she probably would have given him the moon if he'd asked it of her.

"I feel like I've been shattered into a million pieces and then put back together, and somehow some of the pieces got lost in the process." He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, dropping his head until his forehead didn't quite touch her own. "Do you think I'm mad?"

"I think we're both mad, that the whole world is mad," she said quietly, fighting the urge to laugh. "None of this makes any sense at all."

His eyes opened, and though they were not touching, Hermione could have sworn she felt the heat race between them like arcs of electricity. She shivered slightly.

"What we said the other day, about the two of us together being crazy? That's still true," he said in an almost paternal warning voice.

"I agree," she said breathily.

"Do you care?"

For a moment, it seemed like no one in the world breathed or moved or did anything at all. The entire universe seemed to be holding its breath, poised on a precipice as it waited for her answer.

"No."

"Me neither." And then he kissed her, and she wondered if maybe the rest of her life had been the crazy part, and this was the first thing to ever happen to her that made any sense at all.

When Draco had lingered after class to talk to Hermione, he really hadn't meant for this to happen.

He knew insanity when he saw it. He knew that feeling what he did for Hermione Granger went against everything he had ever thought and believed. He knew that any relationship with her would be volatile and practically doomed to fail. He knew that no one would understand or accept what they had together. He knew that even if all of the rest of that fell away, his fate had been decided long ago and it did not include her.

He knew all this, and yet he couldn't seem stop wishing it wasn't so. He was vaguely aware that he was being selfish (which was fine with him, since he had no problem admitting that he was a selfish, arrogant bastard in general), but he wanted to be happy. Happiness was the one luxury the Malfoys could not afford, because happiness had an unfortunate tendency to overrule things like duty and family honor, and they couldn't have that. In short, if being with her made Draco happy, then it was very, very dangerous to be Hermione Granger. Her life would be worth less than nothing if his family even suspected that her existence was threatening the obedience of their son and heir.

And so he kept his distance, despite every fiber of his being telling him to stop being so damn foolish and grab onto whatever this was with both hands. He was inexpressibly grateful that she had been able to turn him away in the hall last weekend, because he knew he was just weak enough to give in if she showed even the slightest inclination to reciprocate.

He had been enormously impressed with his own will power as he'd stood not a foot in front of her and talked in a civil manner, never once giving in to the urge to reach out and touch her just to make sure she was really there and not a cruel figment of his imagination. He had been so, strong, had come so close to walking away. If only she hadn't asked him why he stared.

He couldn't lie to her, and once the truth had begun to pour out, there was no stopping it. When he'd finished, he'd offered her the chance to save them both and put an end to this madness as he could not, but she hadn't taken it, and damn it all, he just wasn't strong enough to walk away again.

And so he'd kissed her, defying a week's worth of his better judgment, six years of hatred and hostility, and an entire lifetime of beliefs. And it was worth it.

At the first gentle, tentative brush of lips to lips, warmth began to pour through Draco, tingling and sparking like an ocean of fireflies. Hermione's emotions flooded through him in the wake of the heat, and he felt himself shake slightly at the power of their combined desire. Her feelings poured through him until he couldn't tell the difference between her emotions and sensations and his own.

Draco had kissed his share of girls in his time (and a few other people's shares, if he was going to be perfectly honest) but he had never had kiss like this one. It felt alarmingly like coming home, like filling up holes inside him that he hadn't even known were there.

He wasn't entirely sure how long he stood there kissing her -- it felt like both an eternity and an instant -- but when he finally pulled away for air, his hands were tangled in the raw silk of her hair, and her small, pale hands were clutching the front of his robes as though he were the only thing keeping her from floating away.

Unwilling to break contact just yet, relishing the comfort of having their link in place, Draco did not pull away from her. Instead, he simply leaned his forehead against her while she caught her breath. Surprise and wonder flowed off of her, mixing headily with her tentative desire and a quiet sense of completion that mirrored his own.

"That was . . ." she began.

"Crazy," he whispered. She blinked at him and a horrible melancholy stole over her and pricked at Draco's heart like a tide of nettles.

"Crazy," she echoed sadly.

For a few long moments, Draco allowed himself the weakness of keeping her cradled in his arms, but he knew it couldn't last. He had to go home . . . Home, where he had duties and obligations and a life that had already been planned out for him and certainly did not include falling in love with Hermione Granger. That's what he was doing, he realized, had been doing practically since the moment she'd reached out and touched his arm in Potions class. And that was why this couldn't go on for another moment.

Very gently, Draco extricated Hermione from his arms. She looked up at him with sad, old eyes and kept his hand clutched in her own for as long as she possibly could. When their fingers finally fell apart, their link was snapped with cruel, painless abruptness. He felt cold without her there. He wondered if he would always feel cold.

"I have to go," he said finally. He knew she understood what he was saying: that he had to return to his world now, a world in which she had no place and what they had together was a dangerous thing for both of them. He knew she understood that he was saying goodbye.

"I know," she replied quietly. He smiled tenderly at her. She did not smile back, but he rather understood that, and with a small nod, he turned and began to walk out of the room.

He was not blind to the irony of the fact that he was only aware that he had a heart now that it was breaking.

"Stay." He halted in his tracks and closed his eyes, swallowing hard. Oh, please, don't ask me that, he thought despairingly. I might not be able to say no.

"What do you mean, 'stay?'" he asked quietly, not turning around.

"Don't go home," she said quietly. "Stay here." He knew what she was really asking him to do: choose this world over the other. Choose her over them.

"I can't do that," he whispered as he turned around to meet her eyes. They were shimmering with tears now, wide and pleading, and he was glad he'd already refused her request, because he wasn't sure he could find the strength to do it while she was looking at him that way.

"Not even now?" she asked.

"Especially not now," he replied. Perhaps he could have turned from them once, when he was putting only himself at risk by incurring their wrath, but now he had something to protect, something far more precious and valuable than his own tainted life. He could only hope she understood that.

She nodded finally, in a way that spoke of accepted defeat. Draco nodded back, and then he turned and walked away from her in every way that he knew how.

A/N: I know, I know, you're mad at me again. I can't help it, my dears, I have very little control over what spills out onto these pages. Don't you worry, though, things will work out alright in the end.

Just forewarning, the next chappie may be the last. It all depends on what I decide to do next. I don't know if any of you need to get mentally prepared (I certainly do), but I thought I'd let you know. In the meantime, review, review, review!