I know this is a long chapter, I'm sorry! This is their first detention and a pivotal scene in the story.
Enjoy :)
Hermione
Hogwarts
September 1996
"Pay attention to his left arm 'Moine," Harry reminded her breathlessly while he did his best to keep up with her blistering pace.
"I'm not going to enter into conversation with him, you know that right?" Hermione said, making her terms abundantly clear.
"Just tell us what he does," Harry reasoned. "You don't have to talk to him. And watch his left arm!"
Harry's face was hopeful, and so was Ron's, even if the latter's expression was a mixture of confusion and unfettered support.
She considered her two friends, then nodded reluctantly, not wanting to disappoint them. Harry gave Hermione's arm an appreciative squeeze.
Hermione caught Ron's eyes linger on the spot where Harry's hand rested.
Ron's eyes slid to Hermione's, at which point they both reddened. She did her best to play off her embarrassment with a tight smile but then abruptly swiveled away, nearly falling in the process when her foot caught a raised cobblestone in the floor.
Her dignity in shambles, she retreated to the dungeons without another word.
She had barely poked her head through the thick, slightly damp wooden doors of the classroom when a booming voice nearly sent her careening back.
"Miss Granger!" Slughorn's thunderous voice exclaimed.
"Good evening Professor Slughorn," Hermione greeted politely after collecting herself. To her left, someone scoffed.
She knew it was Malfoy, but sought out his blonde hair and angular features anyway. Their eyes connected for a fraction of a second before he vehemently looked away.
Hermione, however, let her attention linger.
He looked uncharacteristically undone that night. His hair was rustled and almost messy, like he couldn't stop running his fingers through it. The white oxford button up he wore had the first few buttons undone, exposing a flash of skin that seemed to glow.
Heat was building in her cheeks when she looked up and saw that Malfoy caught her staring at him. She swung her face brusquely back to where Slughorn stood, praying to whatever Gods there were that Malfoy didn't think anything of it.
She was spying on him, Hermione justified. It's what she told Harry and Ron she'd to. Right. It was just spying, she thought to herself as she settled herself at the lab tables directly across the aisle from where Malfoy was.
"How lucky I am to have snagged two of the best potion makers at Hogwarts for a detention!" Slughorn declared boisterously from the front of the classroom.
"Now it's no good that you two were being naughty," the professor wagged his finger in a taunting way, "but I'll take it!". Malfoy scoffed again, giving the impression that the Slytherin prince was destined to be in a bad mood all evening.
Slughorn tapped his wand against the board revealing the instructions.
Potentia Infinitus*
Brew time three hours
"Three hours!" the words exploded from Draco's lips in protest. Slughorn merely chuckled.
"My dear boy, detentions are not suppose to be fun!" the professor teased.
Hermione, on the other hand, was beaming.
She could not believe their luck. They were going to brew Potentia Infinitus! The potion was only approved for seventh years, and often times the students wouldn't even be advanced enough by the end of term to even attempt it.
Hermione knew the potion by heart, naturally, but her curiosity was piqued at the sight of the asterisk, indicating a brew method that wasn't ministry approved to be published.
Malfoy continued his row with Slughorn in the background as Hermione got to work on her brew plan. If she cared enough, she would point out that by arguing, he only stood to extend the amount of time he would need to be there.
Minutes later, Hermione noticed that Malfoy stopped complaining. Chancing a peek at his station, she saw him head down, scribbling away at his parchment, likely constructing his own brew plan after giving into his fate.
"Please take note," Slughorn broke the silence, "that per the asterisk, the instructions are altered from what you may have seen in a book, not to say you'd know that off hand but..."
"The amount of Earlwig is reduced by half," Hermione interjected, having identified the difference.
Slughorn looked impressed. "I would normally award you house points for something like that, but I suppose it would not be appropriate seeing as you're in detention. " Slughorn laughed merrily.
Hermione bit the inside of her cheek and blushed fiercely. It may seem to others that she lavished in the praise, but it was the opposite. She detested it.
It was a habit she had trouble stopping. The minute a thought hit her synapses, it was rolling off her tongue. It wouldn't be so bad, but she was teased endlessly for it, and was tired of being called a know-it-all, or whispered about when she walked by, sometimes by friends.
The absent of some judgmental sound from Malfoy's station drew her interests. When she looked, he was peering over at her with a conflicted expression. Yes, there was loathing there, but lingering right under the surface was something else that he fought against. She couldn't make sense of it.
"Earlwig is mighty rare at present," Slughorn began, awkwardly twiddling his hands about, "so please mind your cuts. Any questions?"
"Sir, this potion calls for the cauldron to be covered for fifteen minutes after the earlwig is added. Earlwig is known to reduce in potency when in vapor form. Wouldn't that reduce the effectiveness of the potion?" Hermione asked, checking her notes again before looking up.
Slughorn inhaled deeply to respond, but instead Malfoy interrupted, momentarily stunning their professor at his lack of propriety.
"Earlwig vapor is only less potent at higher temperatures," Draco began, letting out a sigh to demonstrate how droll this was. "However, if you bring the ingredients down to a temperature of 0 or below immediately following a boil, the Earlwig reintegrates into the potion with a higher potency rather than lower, which is why the Earlwig can be reduced." Draco lazily looked up from his parchment. "Am I correct, professor?"
An uneasy chuckle escaped Slughorn's lips after the shock had faded from being interrupted by a student. "Right you are. Again, I wish I could give you points for such knowledge…"
"But," Malfoy continued, now smirking ever so slightly. Hermione studied him intently, and saw a flash of amusement dance in his eyes. She knew this look from the countless times he relentlessly bullied her friends. This was when he went in for the kill.
"You forgot to include the step to cool the contents," Malfoy angled his head towards the board. Hermione tore her attention away from his face for a second to look at the board, and sure enough, he was right.
Professor Slughorn expression deflated the instant he confirmed what Malfoy pointed out.
With Slughorn's attention fixated on his mistake, Malfoy turned his focus to Hermione, and to her surprise, his expression wasn't entirely unpleasant. He cocked a brow as if he was playing a game of chess with her, and with his last move, put her into check. As his eyes drilled into hers something jolted uncomfortably at the center of her chest.
"...Yes, right you are," Slughorn finally said, his tone subdued. He waved his wand to correct the step. "Well then, erhm, carry on with your prep."
Ten minutes of prep had gone by when Slughorn, who had made a point to double check the instructions several times over since Malfoy pointed out his error, took a breath, satisfied it was now right, and grabbed a stack of papers on his desk.
"Right then. You two seem more than capable, so I will leave you to it. You can leave your potions in the cauldron and I will bottle them tomorrow morning," Slughorn declared, making his way towards the exit.
Hermione let out a sputtering sound in surprise. He was going to leave her alone with Malfoy for three hours?
"Sir, that can't possibly be…normal. For detention that is, to leave students alone," Hermione stammered.
Slughorn laughed at Hermione's distress. "Oh Miss Granger. I thought the lack of a chaperone would be a treat for you two!"
And without another word, Slughorn swung the large wooden door open, closing it promptly behind him, leaving the pureblood Slytherin and the muggle born Gryffindor to their brewing.
Suddenly, Hermione felt flustered and hot despite the room being cold and clammy.
Worried he would catch her looking once again, but also unable to suppress her urge, she carefully glanced over to Malfoy's station to see his reaction.
Unlike her, he appeared oblivious to Slughorn even leaving and was completely engrossed in his prep, his brow deeply creased in concentration.
He pulled his hand through his hair as his eyes narrowed on something he had written, and a strand of platinum blond hair fell onto his forehead. Hermione cautiously continued to observe, and saw how his hands pressed down onto the table top while he considered his next steps, and how that action caused his next to strain.
She watched as he huffed a breath through his lips and sent the strand of hair that had come loose back up and over his head. It was such a human, non-detestable thing for him to do, Hermione thought softly, and a treacherous grin formed at her lips.
His blue eyes caught her honeyed ones red handed from the corner of his eye. A flicker of red flashed across his stare.
"Fuck off Granger," he grunted in a way that made her step back involuntary. He grabbed one of his bowls and headed towards the store room without a second thought.
She gulped down a breath and prayed that the prickle of embarrassment she felt crawling up her neck would stop immediately. She took another stabilizing breath.
Even if she wanted to engage Malfoy, if only to better understand his wildly erratic behavior, she couldn't. This potion needed every last ounce of her attention. She had to stay on track.
Draco
It had been two and a half grueling hours of brewing. The potion was more than advanced, it was nearly impossible, he surmised as beads of sweat rippled at his forehead. There was absolutely no room for error.
Smugly though, Draco knew his potion would be immaculate. Adding to that feeling of invincibility, he had made Slughorn look like a right fool earlier, elevating his mood even more.
He had spotted the error almost immediately. His initial plan was to save the reveal for Granger. He'd quite like to watch her have a mental breakdown when she realized the instructions were wrong and her potion was ruined. But he thought better of it and opted to just humiliate Slughorn. Plus, knowing Granger, there was a chance she would have figured it out and then he would have no fun.
He squeezed the rind of a Zling, a little green fruit looking much like a lime (yet smelling of peppermint), directly into the bubbling cauldron. He watched as three drops left the rind and land in the mixture, sizzling on impact.
Draco wiped the brow of his forehead. Despite his exhaustion, he found himself completely revitalized with the work. Maybe this detention was just the distraction he needed from the inevitable suicide mission he had ahead of him that year.
He reached for his bowl that contained Earlwig; a stringy black dried leafy thing. Having already pre-measured and pre-cut, he checked his watch for timing, and at the right moment, dumped it in. Quickly he covered his cauldron, then performed a wordless charm to bring the temperature down to 0.
He stepped back to wait. There was a 15 minute rest period before the last set of instructions. He let his hands fall to the lab table, bracing himself as he took in a labored breath, then blew it out forcefully.
To his left he heard Granger do a cooling incantation. Casting a furtive glance, he saw that she had just finished the step he had, and now stood similarly to him, hands braced against the table, head tipped back, inhaling deeply to catch her breath.
Ever since the intrusive thoughts he had about Granger while with Pansy, looking at her drove him to the brinks of insanity. None of what he was experiencing could be explained, or controlled, and it was threatening to break him.
Because despite it all, even if he hated it, watching her made him feel something other than darkness. Usually, he could count on her evoking the evergreen feeling of palpable disdain, usually when he'd catch sight of her unruly hair. But now, he'd periodically see her in class, slowly crossing and uncrossing her legs at her seat, sometimes accidentally flashing a glimpse of skin as her leg escaped her robes, and he'd feel a rush of blood uncomfortably course through him. The latter reaction to the mudblood was unwelcome, but all of it mixed together made him absolutely addicted, yearning for the next hit.
She pulled her frizzy hair into a messy bun atop her head, leaving a few curls behind that were stuck messily to her face. He watched as she checked her notes, and then the cauldron, and then her notes again. Her finger swirled absentmindedly across her neck as she leaned her head side to side, continuing to consult her writing. His attention drifted down from her face to a glisten of sweat that reflected off of the exposed skin just above the hem of her v-neck t shirt. A single bead of perspiration drifted lower down her chest, down below….
Draco threw himself back from his lab table suddenly, displacing a metal bowl off his table and clashing loudly to the ground. Something guttural rumbled in his chest as he steadied himself.
This was getting to be too much.
"What is your problem?" Hermione questioned him harshly.
He gritted his teeth. The fact that he was going absolutely mental was the problem. He walked around to the front of his table, picking up the bowl then promptly slamming it back down on his workstation. When he looked up, she was in front of his cauldron, peering at his potion.
"What do you think you're doing?" Draco asked in a rush, walking quickly to where she stood. When he neared her, he was overtaken by what he assumed was her scent. It was a mixture of lilacs, something fresh, and he couldn't believe it, but she smelled like books. She actually smelled like fucking books.
Her eyes flitted up to his, and then back down to his potion, seemingly unfazed by his tone.
"Your potion is very good," she noted, standing on her tippy toes to observe it again.
His eyes narrowed. "I know"
"Ok," was all she said back to him before turning around and walking back to her station. He was tempted to go and judge her potion without an invitation, but decided against it. He didn't want to be that close to her again.
Draco stood stiffly at his lab station with nothing to do. All of his prep was done, and his station was clean due to his constant tidying as he brewed, so all he could do was pretend to look busy by moving around loose bowls, hoping she'd knock it off and leave him alone.
"You perform wordless magic?" Hermione questioned from her station. He looked to see her leaning against her lab table, body facing him, her posture looking slightly uneasy.
His body tensed. She needed to stop fucking interacting with him. Handling this madness in small doses was hard enough, but what she was delivering to him was nearly lethal.
"Stop talking to me," Draco warned through clenched teeth, looking away from her.
"We don't start wordless spells for weeks and you're already quite good at them. How is that?" Hermione continued, not abiding his request.
Fine, if she didn't want to listen to him, so be it.
Draco smacked his hands on his table, then turned and marched up to the insufferable witch. Her arms dropped and she backed away at his approach.
"You want to know why I'm so good, Granger?" Draco hissed, a smile gracing at his lips. He felt the venom building in him, which he embraced.
"Because my family are rich, connected, pureblood witches and wizards, that's how." he felt emboldened and leaned in closer to her, reveling at the fact that she edged away from him. Good, that's how she should react to him.
"We can do whatever the fuck we want, Granger. Which means when I'm not here, I practice to my hearts content. I don't get in trouble. But you can't do that now can you? And that's why purebloods will always be better than you, you filthy little…" he paused for a second, stalling on the word that used to flow off his tongue.
Her toffee eyes flared taking a step directly into him, latching onto the fact that he didn't outright say the word. Crossing her arms, she tilted her head up to him. "Say it"
Draco looked down at her small frame, her chin jutting up at him, declaring a challenge. Her eyes took up his whole line of vision. They were a mix of toffee and fine polished wood.
"You're not worth my time," he spat down to her in a snide way, then turned to walk back to his station.
"I'm confused," she said, feigning ignorance. "I thought all purebloods ever thought about was muggle borns. I'd dare call it an obsession. Your lot has died because you care so much about how we came to be," she paused, drawing in a thick breath. Draco's eyes tracked hers as she moved closer to him again, making the distance between them negligible. The unabashed confidence and bravado was pouring out of her, and he fought his body's reaction to it. He clenched his fists at his side.
"So what is it Malfoy, am I not worth your time, or am I, muggleborns to be precise, all you can ever think about?" she snapped, years of pent up anger clinging to every enunciated syllable.
A suppressed part of his brain pleaded with the rest of him to consider her logic. But the wizard he was brought up to be, the pureblood prince, rejected it unequivocally.
His thoughts lingered to his upbringing, and then his parents, and then honed in on his father.
"My father is in Azkaban because of you," Draco accused under his breath. He gripped the table to anchor him down in place, remembering that if it weren't for her and her little friends, his father wouldn't have been apprehended last year.
"I'm sorry you're father is in Azkaban," she told him softly. His eyes leapt to hers.
"You're sorry?" he repeated back incredulously, "you're sorry?" he all but shouted.
"Yes I am sorry," she continued, with raw sincerity. "It's not fair that your father is in Azkaban," she said and then added, "that's not something I would want for anyone."
She studied him, standing inches away, her soft brown eyes radiating a level of vulnerability that was in direct contradiction to her fierceness. He briefly thought he could be consumed by the complexity of her.
He shook his head, cursing his intrusive psychotic thoughts. His face became steely once again, and he forced more vicious sentiments to the surface.
"You and Potter are just a couple of fucking heros, aren't you? Had to save the day…" he spat, his voice emphasizing the cruelty in the words.
"Harry was tricked by Voldemort," Hermione blurted out, and a look of shock took over her expression, like even she was surprised by the level of candor she was showing him. After a pause, and for whatever reason, she continued. "Voldemort planted a vision in Harry's mind that he was going to kill his uncle, Sirius, at the ministry. It was to lure Harry there to collect a prophesy only he could find."
Draco's jaw went slack. Why did he not know about this? According to the Death Eaters, those captured were merely patrolling the ministry the night when Potter and his witless friend brigade showed up, followed by the order. Yes, they had tried to capture Potter once they discovered them, and a fight ensued, but the Death Eaters had not been the catalyst to the skirmish.
She could be lying to him. But if he was being honest with himself, that felt unlikely. What would she have to gain? And if anything, what she shared would be considered risky given his family's adjacent relationship to all things Dark Lord.
"Why are you telling me this?" Draco asked, his voice now missing the previous bite.
Hermione looked down at the ground, shaking her head slightly. "I really don't know," she hesitated, then looked back up.
Her lips screwed up in contemplation, like even she couldn't make sense of what was going through her mind. "Malfoy, you…" she looked apprehensive, but found her voice, "you are very intelligent. It doesn't make sense to me that you'd believe nonsensical things, that you could be brainwashed to hate the way your side does. How can you let it rule you?"
His skin burned and his vision turned white. How dare she presume to know anything about him, his life, his family, how he was raised. She knew nothing other than how to be a know-it-all mudblood wench.
She could never understand what it meant to live the life of a pureblood wizard. Survival in his world was not a given, it was earned.
With his sudden silence, and anger evident in his eyes, Hermione took a sharp step back, cautiously monitoring him as if he may explode. When he failed to say anything more, she reluctantly turned back to her station.
Hermione
She had gone too far. It was clear by look in his eyes.
At first, she felt electrified by the banter. When she challenged him to say the vile word for muggle borns, and he didn't, it was as if she won an undeclared battle.
But as time went on, as she pushed him further, he didn't react the way she expected him to. Before their detention, all he was to her was a bully; nothing more than a pureblood snob. But she was now seeing a depth to him that she had never noticed before. The recognition of it all made he feel unbalanced.
Leaving Malfoy's station, she checked her watch and was horrified to see that there was less than a minute before the next step.
Rushing to her table, she took stock of the bowls of ingredients that she had laid out in prep, doing her due diligence to make sure everything was still in order.
Once her charmed countdown clock on her watch lapsed, she ignited a flame under her cauldron and removed the lid. Within a minute, the contents of the cauldron were at a rapid boil.
The first step called for one lacewing to be lowered via a hover charm to the center of the cauldron, just above the mixture. Hermione pointed her wand at the ingredient and watched as the lacewing descended into the bellows of the cauldron until It disintegrated in the potion's vapor.
Then, she charmed the potion to mix counter clockwise on its own. After 10 turns, she spoke an incantation which redirected the mixture to go clockwise.
Finally she had to sift an ounce of grounded root of mayflower into the potion. To get the right consistency, she had to ground the roots down to a powder with a mortar and pestle before she started her brewing. There were no short cuts in magic to get the consistency fine enough to pass through a sift, there was only brute force.
As she jerkily shook the ingredient back and forth in the sift, releasing the fine powder, she heard Malfoy curse across the room.
His hand was straining through his hair, and then stilled on the top of his head as he looked around his station. Hermione knew that look all too well.
"What do you need?" she asked, continuing to sift the mayflower into her potion.
He gave her an insolent look, then turned back to his station, still searching.
"Malfoy," she repeated. He looked at her. "I can help you. What do you need"
He looked at his watch, and then back to Hermione, his features projecting the recognition that he was out of options. "I didn't grind the root of mayflower."
Hermione grabbed her wand and sent her remaining ground root over to his station. "I made extra"
The bowl landed in his hand. For a moment, he just stood there and looked at it.
"Do you need a sift?" she asked, trying to get him into motion so he didn't ruin his potion.
"No," he responded curtly, wordlessly accio'ing a sift from across the room. He measured out the amount needed, and began adding the missing ingredient to his potion.
Hermione pressed a finger into her sift ensuring the full measurement of the root had passed through. On her tip toes, she looked down as the last of the mayflower root faded into the sticky purple potion like melting snowflakes.
With a look of adoration at her creation, she let out an involuntary sound of joy. She couldn't help herself; she had just completed the most difficult potion she had ever brewed, and she brewed it flawlessly.
Chancing a glance at Malfoy's station, she noted that he was now pressing the last ingredient into his sift, getting every last bit of the root as she had just done.
Hermione did not want to fixate on Malfoy, so instead, busied herself with tidying up her station. With a flick of the wand, everything went into motion to be cleaned, or to be put away.
As she sent the last of her work station bowls to the front faucet, she once again admired her perfect potion, and a reckless thought crossed her mind.
Potentia Infinitus was an incredibly valuable potion to have, especially during times of conflict. With just a sip, any drained magical abilities could be regenerated instantly. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have some of this very hard to come by potion on hand for the coming year.
Without second guessing herself, she pulled two half dosed sized vials from her book bag. Hermione was almost positive Slughorn would not notice if one dose was gone from the brew. There were at least 30 doses per each cauldron.
Discreetly, she siphoned some of her potion into her vials. The brew looked sickly sweet once visible in glass; it even had a soft shimmer to it. She corked each vial and placed them in her front pant pocket.
Satisfied that her station was tidy and clean, she gathered her things, looking forward to a good night of sleep after this exhausting and confusing night.
As she moved to the center aisle that split the workstations, Hermione looked up to see Malfoy heading in the same direction.
To her surprise, when they both reached the walkway, Malfoy gestured for her to go first, in an almost cordial manner. She muttered a quiet thanks, then headed for the door.
But when she reached out for the door, she felt a presence behind her that warmed her subtly. Startled, she turned around to see Malfoy close behind her, leaning over her frame and pulling the classroom door open for both of them.
She gave him a suspicious look, but his eyes didn't meet hers. They were downcast and void of anything.
The two silently made their way up the dungeon stairs, the tension in the air feeling thick, only subtly being cut by the soft scuffing sounds of their shoes against the stone stairs.
"Thank you for the ground root," Malfoy said, snapping the tension. The words sounded like torture for him to say.
"Of course, " Hermione responded nervously.
Another few steps of silence, then Hermione couldn't help herself but to try break the silence once more.
"I can't believe we got to brew Potentia Infinitus," Hermione gushed, sounding giddy.
Malfoy scoffed from behind, but she could have swore she heard some humor in the sound of it, "you're not suppose to like detention."
Hermione glanced back at him and rolled her eyes. "It's exciting to brew a potion that complicated."
"It wasn't that complicated," Draco argued. Up ahead, the glimmer of moonlight from the main corridor was becoming visible.
"Please," Hermione retorted. "What have you brewed that has been more complicated than that?"
Draco relented. "Fine, it was complicated". Hermione smirked.
They trudged up the last few steps and emerged into the hallway which was bathed in moonlight that poured in from the arched windows that lined the narrow corridor walls.
They paused at the top of the stairs, then, Draco cleared his throat awkwardly and he reached into his pocket.
"Since I know you'd never have the gall to do it yourself," he started, sounding instantly condescending.
From his pocket he produced a half dose vial of Potentia Infinitus. "I took two. You should take one. Since you helped me."
Hermione gingerly reached out and took Malfoy's potion that he held between his fingers, which made her suddenly aware of how close she was to touching him, and then placed it in her book bag.
After a beat she broke out into a grin and reached into her pocket.
"It seems only fair then that you should have one of mine then," Hermione smirked, holding out one of her vials to Malfoy. "I also nicked two."
It could have been a trick of the moonlight, but she was almost positive he look impressed.
He pocketed her vial, and let his eyes dance within the general vicinity of her face, but was hesitant to meet her eyes.
After several seconds of the two standing in silence together, neither making a move to leave, Hermione shifted her weight from one foot to the other, inadvertently tripping herself on the same cobblestone she had nearly fallen from earlier.
Malfoy's seeker like instincts caught her by the forearm before she could crumble and pulled her back into a standing position, but the minute she was up, released her arm abruptly and backed away. Hermione could not ignore how he shook his hand like he had just tracked it through mud.
"What the fuck Granger?" he barked at her. The hand that touched her clenched and unclenched by his side rhythmically.
Not less than a minute ago, Hermione thought she had it all wrong. What if Malfoy wasn't the one dimensional pureblood bully she had painted him as? Yes, he was still exceedingly unpleasant, but he was also wildly intelligent, and quick witted, and…
But now she knew; she had always been right when it came to Malfoy. He was nothing more than an ignorant, coward of a man, who thought just by touching a muggle born, he could some how be dirtied.
"Really Malfoy?" Hermione huffed, glaring at his reaction. "Are you absolutely serious right now? You think some how I have dirtied you. Just by you touching me?"
Malfoy's face hardened.
"How about you learn to properly stand?" He snarled, leaning in towards her menacingly. "What is wrong with you anyway!?"
"What is wrong with me?" her voice rose to a fever pitch. "I tripped, people trip all of the time. Are you absolutely insane?"
Malfoy went to turn but her arm shot out and pulled his shirt back towards her. His attention moved down to where she grabbed him, his jaw going slack at the audacity. She paused momentarily, staring at her hand and feeling the shock of having done it without thinking.
"How dare you…" he bellowed, lurching himself towards her. She didn't back down, but dropped her hand quickly.
"How dare me?" she shrieked back at him. It was all coming out now. "You're the one that is projecting your nonsensical muggle born propaganda on me. Are you listening to yourself Malfoy? You're just an ignorant pureblood!" Hermione's voice reverberated off the stone walls that surrounded them.
His chin jutted towards her face, and she felt a zing of electricity course through her.
"Making sweeping generalizations yourself, now aren't you Granger?" His body coiled around his muscles as he watched her under him.
Something in her squirmed. She shifted her body trying to free herself from the feeling. But it wouldn't shake loose. It was the realization that he wasn't wrong.
"What Granger? Did you wear yourself out yelling at me like a fool?" he mocked her. She was taken aback by how close they had become to one another, which was ironic, given the catalyst to the argument.
He smiled menacingly at her lack of response. "Admit it, you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You may be a little know it all, but when it comes to the wizarding world you know nothing. You're an outsider. You'll never belong."
She thought a sob could tear through her, because in that one line, he had captured every one of her insecurities about being a muggle born witch.
Hermione leaned into him, forcing him a fraction of an inch back, "you're pathetic Malfoy," she hissed, biting back the sting of tears that she was sure he could see.
This time, he said nothing, he just stared at her with a vacant expression.
"Learn to think for yourself," she choked out, angry at herself for getting emotional in front of Malfoy. "If you're going to live a life of hate, at least choose it. Don't be a coward and fall backwards into it."
The tensity of their stare flared. Again, she worried she had gone too far by the look on his face. But then, his expression simmered back to cold sheet metal looking blankly down on her.
And in that moment, she noticed that he smelled like a forrest in Summer after it had just rained.
She had to get out of there. She would not get worked up over Malfoy of all people. And with nothing else to say for herself, she turned on her heel and stormed away.
In her retreat, a constant stream of muttered half thoughts continued to quietly pass through her lips. Cursing purebloods. Cursing Malfoy. Cursing the wizarding world as a whole.
But what unsettled her most was this undefined, hazy awareness that something was growing within her that wasn't just anger. She could feel it itching its way up to the surface, demanding to be addressed. But how could she address something that she didn't understand?
Back in the Gryffindor common room, she was relieved to see that Harry and Ron had not waited up. She wasn't sure what she would tell them about her detention with Malfoy if they had grilled her on the spot. It didn't seem like they would care that she now knew he smelled like a perfect summer evening in the woods. Or that he was a viciously gifted potion maker.
She marched straight to her room, dropped her bag, gingerly pried the two vials of potion from her pocket and placed them in her dresser drawer, then transfigured her clothes to pajamas, shuttered the curtains of her four post bed, and buried herself under the covers.
Desperate for sleep, Hermione tossed back and forth in frustration. A hundred confusing and irritating thoughts kept roaring through her mind, keeping her in the waking world. With a huff, she resigned to the fate that likely she would not get much rest after the night she just had.
Thanks for reading! I promise not all the chapters will be this long :)