Stuck In Love
Part Two
Nachzes Black-Rider

Hermione looked up from the fire bush she was pruning and raised her protective face mask as the unmistakable sound of the greenhouse door opening heralded Draco's arrival. Sparing him a glance, she turned away and replaced the mask, picking up the shears. "You're late," she told him coolly. "You were supposed to be here at five."

He sneered at her, lip curling, and snapped nastily, "Shut up, mudblood. No one asked for your opinion."

Ignoring the jibe, Hermione continued pruning. "Face masks and flame-retardant aprons and gloves are in the cupboard on the right," she said quietly. "Pruning shears are on the left."

"And what makes you think that I'm going to work, Granger?" Draco smirked, leaning back against a shelf.

Slowly, Hermione selected another branch and trimmed it. Her hand was shaking slightly as she responded. "Professor Sprout said she'd be coming back soon to check on us, and then she's going to give us something else to do." Draco frowned, and Hermione went on with, "She said she expects to see us both working, or she'll inform our heads of house, and take points off."

"So?"

"She'll contact your parents, too."

This time Malfoy's lips thinned in worry, and his blue eyes flickered. "…Fine," he spat, and stood, wrenching open a cupboard.

Silent, Hermione set her shears down and lifted the fire bush's pot, carrying it over to a shelf and setting it down gently. Selecting another bush, she carried it over to the table and picked up her shears again. Soon enough, the sounds of another set of shears joined hers, and she glanced across the table where Draco was steadily cutting off unneeded twigs. "Aren't you going to put on arm guards or a mask?" she asked him. He glared at her. Hermione felt a sudden surge of righteous anger, and she glared back. "Fine, burn yourself," she bit out, and viciously snapped a dying branch from her bush. Idiot, she thought, seething. Well, he'll know who's right when he ends up in the hospital wing later tonight!

Several more minutes passed in relative silence, both Draco and Hermione finishing pruning their bushes and selecting new ones to work with.

A half-hour passed, and then another, and then and entire hour crawled by…. Hermione glanced at her watch and gasped, startling Draco and making him jerk his arm up, yelling in pain as the flames of his bush seared his skin. "Oh, my God!" Hermione cried, dropping her shears and pulling her mask off, hurriedly crossing the room to where Draco was now nursing his burnt arm. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Draco bit out, hissing in pain when Hermione went to touch his arm. "Damn it," he yelled, "don't do that!"

"Sorry!" Hermione said quickly, withdrawing her hand and looking worried. "You should really get that looked at," she added. "I'm sure Madam Pomfrey would—"

"No."

"It would be just a short trip to the hospital wing; just enough to make the inflammation go down, and—"

"I said 'no', Granger."

"Look, I know you don't want to be seen in the hospital wing, especially not with me, but you need to have that looked at!"

"No!"

"Oh stop being such a big baby! Well, fine, then; if you're not going to let me take you to a professional, then I suppose I'll have to do it," Hermione said, exasperated. "Now give me your arm."

"No."

She glared at him, and waved her wand threateningly. "You'd better," she said warningly, "or I'll hex you. I've been learning the bat boogey hex from Ginny, so I'd show me that arm if I were you." Draco glared at her, and thrust his arm forward without a word, pointedly looking in the other direction as Hermione took it and studied the burn closely, tutting disapprovingly at the angry red colour of the inflamed skin. "Well," she said finally, "we'll need to run cool water over it for a while—probably twenty minutes or so—and then find some way of keeping it moisturized." She let go of his arm and added, "We can use the greenhouse sink for that; just set the faucet to 'mist', and keep the temperature steady so that when you test it on the inside of your wrist, it feels cool, but not too cold. We should be able to find something in these cupboards to use as gauze, and I'm pretty sure I know a charm that I could use for the moisture. Just let me check my spell book…." And she bustled off to her bag, pulling out a book and beginning to leaf through it feverishly, eyes scanning pages at a maddening rate. Draco just stared for a while before he walked slowly over to the sink and did as she'd told him, sticking his arm under the stream of water and relaxing slightly as the gentle spray began to soothe his irritated skin.

A while later, Hermione stood and picked up the roll of gauze she had found in one of the cupboards, walking over to where Draco was now shutting off the water and patting his arm dry on his robes, wincing slightly at the pain it caused.

"Now it's going to hurt for a day or so," Hermione informed him, once again taking his arm and peering at the burn on it. "I'd say two, three at the most, although I still think you should see Madam Pomfrey as well…." She frowned at his firm shake of the head, and pulled out her wand, pointing it at the burn and saying, clearly, "Frais aqueous." Immediately, a clear, viscous fluid oozed from the tip of her wand, and she used her hand to smear it over the abrasion, eyes flicking up to look at Draco when he hissed slightly. "Does it hurt?" she asked.

Shrugging noncommittally, Draco looked away as she stowed her wand away in her pocket again and began to wind the gauze around his forearm.

"Just tell me if it's too tight, alright?" she said. "We don't want to cut off your circulation."

Silence.

"Well, we're done," Hermione said a short while later, waving her wand at the edge of the gauze so that it knitted itself together, and smiling as if satisfied with something. "That should hold for a while, but you'll have to replace the gauze twice a day, and every time you do you'll have to re-do the spell." She handed him a slip of parchment with several lines of small, neat handwriting on it, and he put it into his pocket silently, avoiding making eye contact. She frowned. "I'm not going to contaminate you or anything," she said. "I may not be pureblood, or anything, but it's not like I have some kind of disease—" but she was cut off by Draco, who made a frustrated gesture and pulled his burned arm out of her grip, waving aside her protests and apologies.

"It's not that," he said roughly. "It's something else."

"Well then, what is it?" she cried, and for the first time, Draco noticed that there were tears beading at the corners of her eyes. He shifted uncomfortably as she went on. "You're not acting like yourself," she said, "normally you would have gone out of your way to drop a sarcastic comment, but you've been nearly silent this whole time!"

"Is that a bad thing?" Draco asked. "Look, Hermione, I don't know what it is, but when I…" he trailed off, swallowed, and straightened, "when I kissed you in class on Thursday, I had this feeling, and God help me, but I think I'm in love with you."

Hermione's eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. "W-what?" she questioned, voice wavering.

"I think I'm in love with you."

The witch shook her head and put a shaking hand to her temple to try to calm herself. "I'm sorry," she said, "I think I've just hallucinated. What was it that you were saying?"

"I said I think I'm—oh, bugger it," Draco exclaimed, and kissed her full on the lips.

Shocked, Hermione's mouth fell open, and only the sense of Draco's tongue invading was enough to make her jerk out of the stupor she had fallen into and push him away again, her hand flying up from her side to touch her lips. They felt so strange…tingly and warm….

While she was musing over this strange phenomenon, Draco gave a bitter laugh and brought both arms up to cross over his chest. "Okay, okay," he said. "I get it, you don't like me too." He shook his head, looking lost for a moment, and then spoke again. "I'll just leave now, then. This whole idea was a catastrophe."

"What? Oh, Draco, no! It's not that," Hermione said hurriedly, rushing forward to place an arm on the blond's stiff shoulder. "It was just such a surprise, and I wasn't expecting it…" feeling his tense muscles relax under her hand, she said, quietly, "please don't go." He turned, and looked at her—at the sparkle of unshed tears in her eye and the wet clumping of her eyelashes—and she glanced down, feeling silly. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I'm just a stupid, stupid woman…go if you want, I won't stop you…."

"Why?" Draco said, and she looked up at him again.

"Sorry?" she said. "I don't—"

"Why do you not want me to leave?" Draco asked.

Hermione flushed and stared openly at him for several seconds before she cleared her throat and looked down again. "I think," she said, "I think it's because…because…I'm in love with you, too," she whispered, meeting his eyes.

And when he kissed her for the third time in three days, this time, she kissed him back.

Fin

End Notes:

Well, I'd just like to say thank you to all the people who've read this—and, most of all, thank you to the person for whom this is for, my dear friend Victoria, and her fifteenth birthday. Of course, as that was in October, this is long overdue; but that's the way the cookie crumbles, eh?

Another note, the phrase "frais aqueous" is derived from French and Latin, and means something along the lines of "cool water". Once again, thank you for taking the time to read, and please review if you have anything to say, whether it's "I hated it!" to "I loved it!" to "I liked it, but it could have been better, and this is how" sort of thing.

Bye,
Nachzes