Disclaimer: Yeah…same as before. There's some glimmers of Half-Blood Prince-ish spoilers in this chapter, although since it's been out for over a year, I'm not sure if I even need to put that little warning on there. Anyway, there you go, and voici le chapitre trois—j'espère que vous l'aimez.
"Well, that should do it, I think," Hermione said slowly, looking back at the board behind Snape for a second to confirm her beliefs, then threw the last ingredient into their potion.
Much to her—and Malfoy's—happiness, its bubbles subsided, and the liquid turned a vibrant, almost ethereal dark magenta, the tendrils of vapor rising off emitting a pleasant fragrance. In other words, a flawless concoction. Which wasn't surprising necessarily in Hermione's mind, as she knew she would have produced a perfect potion anyways, but what was more shocking was that with her working with Malfoy, they'd neither murdered each other, nor completely botched their assignment. She looked across the table at her given partner, who looked into the potion himself, opened his mouth to make some probable trenchant insult, but then shut it again, much to Hermione's relief. She did not need his caustic attitude right now.
"I guess I'll just give Professor Snape a vial of this then," Malfoy interrupted the tense silence between them, and Hermione broke out of the assessing trance she'd been in.
"If you break it, I will make it my mission to kill you, understand?" Hermione snapped, her eyes scathing.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow at her retort, but then regained his signature smirk, to Hermione's dismay. "Don't worry," he said, and she knew he meant it to sound sarcastically convincing. "My grade depends on this just as much as yours. Although, come to think of it, my reputation wouldn't be too tarnished if I received a zero in this, now would it? Yours on the other hand…"
Hermione narrowed her eyes, knowing he was just trying to get a rise out of her—it was working—and grabbed his pale wrist again, her grip viselike. "Malfoy, I'm serious," she said, her voice dangerously low, quiet enough so only he could hear. Snape bearing down on them for being loud would only worsen her day. "Despite what you may think in that enlarged, self-centered brain of yours, you aren't superior to anyone, except perhaps your dumber-than-rocks cronies, and you'd better stop acting like it. At least when it's on a project wherein you and I are working together on it. Trust me on this—you drop this and it just may be the last cocky thing you have to do. Got it?"
Nothing registered in his face, no sneering, nor any comprehension, but he tore his hand away from her. "Don't get your wand in a twist, Granger," he said levelly. "I won't crack it. If you're so paranoid about it, do you want to bring it up to him?"
Hermione frowned. She was about to take it haughtily from him and give it to Snape herself, but relented. "I'll clean up," she said. "See that you don't make a mistake, because if you do, there'll be no potion left, and hardly enough time to brew another one."
Malfoy rolled his eyes, started to leave, then turned back, blue eyes cold. "And don't touch me again, Mudblood."
Hermione's wand was out in a flash, pressed into his stomach so quickly that no one noticed she had brought it out in the first place. "Give me a reason, Malfoy, any reason," she said. "and I'll make sure your manliness will really be in question. In a manner Muggle or magical…my choice. Has that gotten through your thick head?"
"Yeah, yeah, calm down, Granger," he said, voice surprisingly conceding. He stalked off down the center aisle, getting a few envious glances from some of the other tables, who were either covered in ash and unidentifiable goo, or trying desperately to get their potion to a shade even resembling fuchsia.
Hermione was seething from the moment he spoke his last sentence to her, even though she knew she shouldn't let it get to her, considering he'd been the annoying, conniving miscreant he was now ever since the first day of school so long ago. Her breaths came hard and fast as she desperately tried to keep her temper. She scooped up the remaining whole scarab beetles and stuffed them unceremoniously in their jar, undoubtedly with more force than was necessary.
"Psst! Hermione!"
She looked around, wondering who'd called her name, and then found Ron, looking urgently at her, his face soot-covered, with an unidentifiable substance matted in his hair. Hermione, even through his obviously calamitous situation, fought the almost irrepressible urge to laugh. Were it not for their deep-rooted friendship, she had no doubts whatsoever that she'd waste any time in snickering openly. As it was, she looked at him with a mixture of pity and mirth.
"What?" Hermione mouthed, now in the middle of screwing on the top of the roots that had nearly caused a catastrophe.
"Help!" Ron pleaded, and though Seamus and Dean looked at them, they turned again back to their own cauldron, desperately trying to dilute the spark-expelling sludge that had somehow fermented.
Hermione nervously glanced up to the front of the room, but Malfoy was still talking to Snape. She did not fail to notice the vial with their perfectly made potion was on Snape's desk—in all its unharmed glory. She pursed her lips at seeing this; not necessarily because she'd direly feared for its safety, but because she was fairly surprised that not only had Malfoy done as she asked, but hadn't made all that big of a deal about her demand. And apart from his comment about how he "impressed Professor Snape with his Potions skills", he hadn't had much of his usual God-complex come out.
Although, now she thought on it, it probably wouldn't have looked very good if he'd ruined both of their assignment; or, he might have known she'd keep their potion stock just in case he decided to destroy it. Hermione scowled—the unfortunate thing was, the latter explanation was something as underhanded as Malfoy would do.
Sighing at the complication that was her life, Hermione walked over surreptitiously to Ron and Harry's table. She peered apprehensively into their cauldron, which remarkably closely resembled boiling asphalt. She raised an eyebrow at the both of them, Ron's expression between sheepishness and a helpless begging.
"What, your precious Half-Blood Prince can't help you out on this one?" Hermione said acrimoniously to Harry. He flushed as he instinctively touched the ragged but generally faithful Potions book. "Or," Hermione continued before Harry could defend himself, "is there nothing in there to let you cheat this time? Maybe your Prince just thought it was too simple a potion for you to brew and so didn't make any notes. And so now you've messed up your entire assignment just because you haven't worked on your own Potions adeptness."
Harry downcast his eyes, knowing Hermione was quite right. Harry hadn't paid too much attention to Snape's instructions, assuming he didn't have to because the Prince would assist him. But then, to his utter bewildered dismay, there was hardly a scribble on the splotched page for the Somnium Potion; just a minute scrawl off to the side about a spell apparently he'd been working on. Harry had looked on the preceding and succeeding pages for maybe a hint as to what to do, but to spectacular futileness. Staring down at the book as if it had been a traitor, he had had to explain it to Ron, who gave it the same expression. And then they'd exchanged a look that clearly was one of impending doom. Neither had exactly excelled at Potions in the first place, and so with their not paying any notice to Snape at all this year, they knew their failure was only a period away.
And now Hermione was giving him an "I told you so" look, to which he reluctantly realized he deserved. "All right, Hermione," he started with a sigh. "We suck at Potions, we know that; can you please help us? Do you really want it on your conscience that we've screwed up spectacularly?"
"Actually—" Hermione began, but then out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a movement, and saw Malfoy's head turn to go back down the aisle. Hermione turned back to them, shooting them a very apologetic look, before having to go back to her own table, if anything else than to avoid having Snape, or, almost worse, Malfoy, give her crap for abandoning something, even if it was just cleaning up. "I'm so sorry!"
"Hermione—" Ron started as she scurried away, then turned melancholically to Harry. "Well, I guess we're on our own then, mate."
"Merlin help us…" Harry muttered, throwing in a random handful of powdered toadstools; the potion turned a sickly green and then sparked magnificently before sluggishly returning to its former quagmire-like substance.
"Oh, sure," Malfoy said with a sneer, returning back to his and Hermione's table, looking mockingly at her flushed face. "You berate me endlessly for something I had no intention of doing, and then go off to help Weasel and the Chosen One. Nice."
Hermione flushed, both with indisputably mounting heat of the classroom and the undeniable truth of his statement. She never thought she'd say it, but Malfoy was right. Her conscience wasn't perhaps as sorry as it would have been if it were someone else being correct, but a small—nearly infinitesimal, but still there—twinge of guilt nonetheless. So maybe it was this vastly unexpected feeling that had her judgment be impaired for a bit. Feeling contrition for anything concerning Draco Malfoy? For her, not something she thought she would ever, or would ever want, to feel.
"Sorry…" Hermione murmured.
Malfoy raised his pale eyebrows a fraction of an inch at what she voiced. Needless to say, he was, well, dumbfounded. "What?" he said, for a moment his collected, arrogant demeanor cracking.
"You heard me," Hermione replied, voice retreating to barely above a whisper. It was bad enough saying it once—she wasn't going to say it again. Malfoy's surprise started to veer towards his smirk; Hermione saw this and interrupted before he could make some crude, unwanted remark. "Save it, Malfoy, just save it. I really do not need your petty criticism today, all right? Don't do it," she said wearily.
"What, Granger's not having fun in a class? Help me, I've fainted," he sneered sardonically.
Hermione glared at him. "No. If it will stop you, then no. I'm not 'having fun'," she conceded, only somewhat lying.
Malfoy's smirk faltered a little. He obviously had expected Hermione to react more, and not just give in. He opened his mouth to say something—remarkably, she didn't think it would have been offensive or annoying; why she thought that she had no idea—but then thought better and turned away from her, idly scribbling on his parchment. Suddenly, he gasped, and Hermione turned towards him to see him rubbing a spot on his left forearm fervently, an expression of sure pain etched on his face.
Hermione frowned—she'd heard Harry's suspicions on the supposed Dark events that'd occurred recently in Malfoy's life, but she had to admit she'd thought it was unlikely. Even if Harry had said he thought Malfoy reacted strangely the day in Madam Malkin's at the end of summer. But now…she knew Malfoy was a lying, deceitful, hubristic bastard, but she hadn't thought he would have actually been made a Death Eater like his worthless father. Would he?
"Malfoy, what—"
"Mind your own damn business, Granger!" he snapped, his gray eyes hysterical.
Hermione was taken aback to say the least—not because she hadn't expected Malfoy to cut her off or anything, but because of his rapid tone change and words. He usually never full-out yelled frantically at them, habitually just a snide yet casual insult; yet here he was, shouting at her with wild intent. She blinked at him, trying to make sense of it. She glanced down briefly at his arm, which he still had a hand on, although underneath the shirtsleeve that had been pulled up in the mayhem, there was a distinctly almost-black crimson hue that contrasted grotesquely with his ivory skin. Her lips pursed again, but this time it was more for curiosity than for something now seeming as childish as not wanting a potion phial to be broken.
"I just was wondering what—"
"For once in your life, just shut your mouth! No one wants to hear what you have to say, damn it!" he yelled, and she literally backed away a few steps, starting to edge towards fear at the look on his face, the twisted expression of which marred his features.
"Don't you talk to her like that!" a new voice came in, and she saw Harry come up to them, anger flashing in his emerald eyes. Ron was a little further back, but he was still sending a look of pure venom in Malfoy's direction.
Malfoy turned to Harry, a little of his frenzied expression turning into a glare, but his hand was still clamped upon his forearm, and a glimmer of the hurt was still on his face. Harry seemed to slightly see this as well, as a minute crease appeared on his forehead, but it was shrugged off in interest of hatred.
"I'll talk to her in whatever way I want, Potter," Malfoy said, voice suddenly calm.
Hermione glanced between the two, Malfoy's stature slightly taller, but Harry's glare of nonpareil loathing was more than enough to compensate for it. "You vile, execrate—"
"Mr. Potter!" another voice appeared, this one silkily level. "Mr. Malfoy…what do we have here?"
Neither boy answered, too caught up in their own glaring match, Hermione still staring between them, thoroughly caught off guard by the events. "Professor Snape, we—" Hermione tried, but Snape cut her off.
"Silence, Miss Granger," Snape affronted contemptuously, turning again to Malfoy and Harry. "Let's see…that will be thirty points total from Gryffindor—twenty for you, Mr. Potter and ten for Miss Granger's impudence—and five points from Slytherin, Malfoy, to my disappointment."
"Professor!" Malfoy objected plainly, for the moment forgetting to keep Harry's stare. "Professor, it's your House!"
"Yes, Malfoy," Snape said. "And this is my classroom. You will do what I say, House or not."
Hermione found this highly disconcerting, as with the rest of the day's events—in any normal circumstance, Snape would have given Malfoy points for some ridiculous reason or another, but here he was taking them away. To say the least, she was caught unawares by all of this, and for a second wished this was all a dream and she'd wake up to find Potions class still despicable but normal nonetheless. Sadly, she knew that wouldn't happen.
"Yes, sir…" Malfoy muttered, giving Harry a furtive glance of detestation.
"Class dismissed," Snape said composedly, having turned back to the class but not from his spot. "And don't let me take my House points away again, understand?"
Malfoy hesitated before nodding, and Snape swept away, black robes billowing out, giving Hermione the bland impression once again of a highly undesirable bat fluttering out of the scene. "Come on, Hermione," Harry said, moving to grab her arm and pull her from the room.
"Just—Just a minute, Harry," Hermione said quietly, almost not knowing from whence the words came.
He frowned confusedly at her. "What?"
"I'll be there in a moment, I promise," she repeated, and he nodded after a few seconds; he trusted her judgments in general, but that didn't mean he always liked them, and when the person also staying behind was Malfoy, Harry really didn't like it.
"Okay. But if anything happens—"
"I'll be okay, Harry, really," Hermione said with a tentative smile, glad for his brotherly protectiveness, but politely refusing to give in just the same.
He nodded, and gave Malfoy a last death glare, before leaving the room, grabbing the Half-Blood Prince's book (to Hermione's quick distaste) and his bag. Hermione turned back to Malfoy who, apparently, hadn't really noticed her company, as he was still distractedly pressing his fingers into his arm like he was trying to get rid of whatever was there by just that action. He was staring off to a nonspecific point on the wall, and Hermione vaguely wondered just what he was thinking.
"Malfoy…" she started, before realizing with a jolt that she hadn't the slightest idea of what she wanted to say.
It seemed her voice startled him into fully-consciousness, and he looked at her, first like she was the strangest thing he'd seen, but then recalling into his smirk. Although, she noticed, there was an unnatural tiredness to it, a grayish tinge having come over his coloring briefly. Her eyes narrowed at questioning what'd happened.
"What are you still doing here, Granger?" he asked, but the tone wasn't malicious this time—only fatigued half-query.
"I just wanted to know what exactly you were crazily on about," she said matter-of-factly, crossing her arms over her chest.
A shadow flickered over his face and his eyes darkened for a moment. "It's none of your concern…just leave it alone…"
"And—And if I can't?" Hermione questioned, words again foreign, although she had to admit she was, now, a little inquisitive. Her logical side told her that there was a high chance it was the Dark Mark he was hiding, but that didn't mean there wasn't more to that story.
"Then…" Malfoy started, then sighed. "You'll regret it."
And with that, he followed Harry's footsteps, his gait substantially less composed than usual; reluctant, trudging, tortured would describe it a bit better. Hermione grabbed her own bag, deciding perhaps this was something she was supposed to follow—Malfoy didn't capitulate or lose equanimity unless something was gravely wrong. Which wouldn't bode well for anyone.
"No, don't take him…not Malfoy…not Draco…don't take him! Don't take—I can't handle it…"
The voice was pleading; desperate. Figures were not much more than shadows, and yet the intents and abandoned pretenses and distress were all too apparent. There was a cackle, a grunting emitting of agony, and then silence. Silence that was penetratingly anguishing. The crying first embodiment sunk to its knees, repeating the same sentence, the sole meaning of it unknown except to the three people present.
"Take me instead…leave him…it's me you want…Malfoy, just don't…I can't…"
The figure looked to the so obviously evil opposition, who was pointing his beautifully hewn wand at the silhouette that was kneeling in front of him. "Silence," the voice had mocked.
The figure looked up into his face, and was rendered fully unable to stifle a horrified gasp. The green eyes were unmistakable—Harry's eyes. He smiled menacingly at her, and then pointed the wand at the shadow on the ground. "Avada Kedavra!"
"No! Not Malfoy…not him…why…how—how could you…"
"Hermione?"
The comforting voice broke into the darkness, coming from a bed next to Hermione's. She was now in the Gryffindor Girls' dormitories, having finally fallen into a fitful sleep, first as uninteresting as sleep usually was; plain dreams that were odd but not worth examining. And then came the nightmare. The nightmare that had seeped into Hermione's conscious mind, but much as she'd tried, she was unable to erase it. It had appeared for a few nights now, starting on the night after her Potions class. Somewhat luckily, it hadn't really impaired her abilities to concentrate on her other subjects, but when there was a lack in things to do, she found bits and pieces of it wiggling their way forth. And now she was plagued by sleep—an action she'd never found afflicting before. She hadn't had Potions again yet, but she did have it later today, and she wasn't necessarily looking forward to it, leastways of all being the unattractiveness of the subject.
"Hermione? Are you okay?" this time it was Parvati's tones that had disrupted the air in the dormitory, having been awakened by Lavender's original ones. "Hermione?"
Finally, Hermione's eyes snapped open, her subconscious having been idled away from the disturbing pictures by her roommates' voices. She turned away from them, pulling the covers up farther over her shoulders, her back now to the both of them, mind reeling as it had every time she suffered through the dreams. All she knew, however, was that she needed to figure out what they meant before they'd stop. A small part of her brain had an idea, an idea Hermione felt the need to quash before it evolved, but the more she had them, the more she wondered if they were somehow, in some strange, calamitous event, based on truth. Was some fraction of hers wanting to know more of Draco Malfoy? More than she had originally intended? It wasn't a pleasant thought to be sure, and yet, she realized with discomfort that maybe she had to decipher those questions before she analyzed her dreams. Because when dreams percolated into reality, repeatedly, there was something that needed to be addressed, even if it wasn't, to say the least, an appealing concept.
Chapter three finished—I've realized I might as well just be writing an entirely new Draco/Hermione, considering this has barely touched on what my original chapters were, but oh well. Tell me how you liked it, if you will. Thanks again!