A/N: Hola. Here's chapter 11, a heck of a lot later than usual. Enjoy.

Draco was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom examining the blackish, purplish dagger wound that marred his bare abdomen. It was a hideous, painful wound, one that he wished to be rid of as soon as possible. He was counting on Granger's new potion to heal it.

Granger.

Against his own will, the image of her face rose and clung to the front of his mind. He shook his head immediately to rid himself of her, but it was pointless. She was already there. He could picture her with that look of vehemence she always wore on her face when the two of them were having an argument. Her lips would purse into a thin line and her nostrils would flare…her brown eyes would blaze to life…

The image changed. He now saw himself kissing those lips while those brown eyes popped open in surprise.

Standing there in front of the mirror, looking at himself but seeing another, Draco had never before had such a strong urge to punch himself in the face. He just couldn't control his thoughts anymore. They were under Granger's control now. She had infiltrated his mind and taken full command.

It went beyond annoying, beyond anything he could bare. She was ALWAYS there with him, even when she wasn't in the damn room. Why had this happened? How could he have let it? He was infuriated with her and with himself.

He'd always prided himself on the amount of self-control and discipline he could exert in any situation. And now, at the moment when his entire life was teetering on the brink of some enormous change, he couldn't even control his own mind. Because of HER.

And now he had to get back to her so she could give him this new potion. He wanted his strength back, more than anything. But he knew that if this potion worked and he had more control over his body…well, he might just have less control over his actions. He would have to be extra careful around Granger. She had the uncanny ability to infuriate him seemingly without even trying. And then she ended up pinned to the bed or a wall and Draco ended up highly turned on. But would he be able to turn himself off?

He put his shirt back on and took one last look at himself in the mirror. His skin was flushed from the effort of walking down the hallway. His hair was disorderly, all pushed up in different directions. Normally he would care. Right now he didn't.

He twisted the door knob with a shaking hand and gathered his strength for the trip back down the hallway. He had to stop and rest against the wall twice. By the time he got to the door, his forehead was beaded with perspiration and his heart was beating double time.

He pushed the door open and saw Granger sitting in the wooden chair beside the bed, holding a large goblet in her lap. Draco leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his stomach in what he hoped looked like a casual manner. He was secretly just glad the door was there so he wouldn't fall down.

There was a short moment of silence in which the two teens just stared at each other, neither knowing or daring to guess what was going on in the other's mind.

Then Granger dropped her eyes to the contents of the goblet and said, "This is the potion."

"Is this one going to make me want to rip my esophagus out?" he asked with an edge of bitterness.

He saw the hint of a smile on her lips. "No," she said, looking up at him again. "Sit down so I can give it to you."

Draco walked over to the edge of the bed and sat down. He was fairly close to Granger's chair; their knees were just a few inches apart. She held the potion out to him. He studied her face for a moment. He wanted to make sure she wasn't tricking him. But her eyes held no challenge this time. No mischief.

"I didn't poison it," she said.

He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but reached out anyway to take the goblet from her hands. His fingers brushed over hers accidentally. A tiny shiver went all the way up his arms and down his spine. Their eyes locked for a moment. He saw a flicker of something in hers. But she transferred her gaze to the wall behind his head before he could make out what it was. She dropped her hands into her lap and intertwined her fingers.

Draco looked into the goblet. It was filled to the brim with a thick, dark blue liquid. He sniffed it cautiously, but found that it didn't smell like much at all. Maybe a hint of peppermint, but that was all. He brought the goblet to this lips and tasted a very small amount. It was sweet and warm, with that same hint of mint. It was agreeable indeed. A very, very nice change from the last potion.

He drank it down while Granger looked on. As he drank more and more, a tingling warmth began spreading from his stomach throughout his body. He could feel it in his arms and legs, his fingers and toes. He finished the potion and handed the empty goblet to Granger.

"So…" she said. "How does it feel?"

Draco shrugged. "It's fine."

In fact, it felt very good.

For about two more seconds.

And then the tingling became more intense. Much more intense.

Hermione saw Malfoy's face change very suddenly. One moment it was relaxed. The next it was slightly puzzled. Then it grew uncomfortable.

And then quite suddenly, his eyes popped open wide and he gasped in a breath of air and collapsed onto the floor. He began writhing around, sucking in breaths of air.

Hermione froze like a deer caught in headlights. Was he having a seizure?

She was about to scream for Professor Lupin—when all of a sudden, Malfoy let out a strange noise that she didn't recognize at first. And then he did it again. And again.

And it hit her: he was laughing. Laughing uncontrollably, rolling around on the floor, flailing his limbs around wildly.

It was the strangest thing she had ever seen in her life.

Hermione dropped down to the floor beside him and stared down at his tomato-red face. His eyes were streaming with tears, his head thrown back against the floor with laughter.

"Malfoy!" she shouted. "What…?"

She didn't even know what to ask. This was so strange.

Between gasps of breath and wild laughter, Malfoy managed to wheeze out, "Oh!…Oh, God…it—IT TICKLES!…What…what did you…put…"

"Malfoy, calm down!" said Hermione. He looked like he was being tortured. But it tickled? The book hadn't mentioned any side-effects and Professor Lupin certainly hadn't said anything about…tickling.

"Just, uh…just stay here while I get Professor Lupin," she said. She jumped to her feet and ran out the door, all the way down the hall to the stairs. She could still faintly hear his laughter as she made her way into the basement kitchen where Lupin and Tonks were talking quietly at the table over some piece of parchment.

"Professor Lupin," she said breathlessly. "Malfoy's had a strange reaction to the potion, I think he's going to die."

He half-stood from his chair. "What's happened?"

"He's just…he's gone mad, he says it tickles. Is it supposed to tickle?"

Relief flooded Lupin's face. "Well, yes, actually, that does happen occasionally with this particular potion—"

"Well why didn't you mention it!" she yelled over her shoulder as she immediately began running back up the stairs. She didn't know if he responded to her or not. It didn't matter. She had to get back to Malfoy.

She could still hear his laughter. Actually, she could hear a lot of laughter as she made her way up the second staircase. She immediately saw the source as she reached the hallway.

Harry and Ron were standing right outside Malfoy's door, each in their pajamas, laughing hysterically at the unfortunate Slytherin.

Hermione's eyes blazed with anger. She pushed past her two friends into the room, turned to them, and said, "You should be ashamed of yourselves!" before slamming the door in their faces.

She dropped to her knees beside Malfoy's writhing form. She grabbed him by the shoulders and looked directly into his bloodshot, streaming eyes.

"Breath, Malfoy, just calm down and breath," she said soothingly.

His hands reached up to grasp the tops of her arms. He held on tightly, but didn't try to pull her closer. Hermione could tell that he was making an effort to stop laughing. Slowly, the laughter became more of a gasping, gurgling sound and he stopped flailing his legs around so much. Hermione stayed where she was, holding onto his shoulders while he held onto her arms, for a good ten minutes while he calmed down. It seemed like an eternity.

Very suddenly, she felt the last remaining tension leave his body. His eyes rolled back and his head slumped onto the floor.

"Malfoy…Malfoy!" Draco heard a girl yelling as the blackness slowly cleared from his vision.

He saw Granger kneeling over him. Something hard was pressed against the back of his head. It was the floor, he realized.

The potion. The tickling. It flooded back to him.

It was torture. He had been laughing uncontrollably. But nothing had been funny, not in the slightest. He remembered that Potter and Weasley had been standing over him. Laughing at him. There had been nothing he could do about it. He couldn't even move, couldn't even yell at them to go away. He was trapped within his own convulsing body.

Now he sat up gingerly. He felt Granger's hands on his shoulders, guiding him up and over to lean against the side of the bed. He looked up at her. Her eyes were brimming with concern, something he was not accustomed to seeing.

"I didn't know that would happen," she said, kneeling beside him. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

Draco closed his eyes. He didn't want to hear this. She was being kind and reasonable. That's not what he needed from her. He needed her to be cruel and heartless so he could hate her and keep himself away from her.

The two of them sat silently for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts.

"How do you feel?" asked Granger.

"Not great," said Draco.

"Do you mind if I…" said Granger, pointing at his stomach. "Your wound?"

Draco nodded his assent. Granger slid closer to his side. She slowly reached out and took the hem of his shirt in her hand. She glanced up at his eyes before looking back down at his body. Draco felt a chill go down his spine as she began pulling up the fabric of his shirt. They were both silent. The tension grew. It was like she was opening a long-lost treasure chest and they couldn't wait to see what was inside.

When the wound was finally exposed, he saw her face light up. Then he realized he should probably be looking at his own injury instead of her face, and quickly looked down at it.

He was surprised to see that it was almost completely healed. All that remained was a reddish patch of raised skin.

"It worked," said Granger with growing excitement. "It actually worked. You'll probably have a scar, but…well, who cares, it worked!"

"You're doing that thing again," said Draco.

Her happy expression turned puzzled. "What thing?"

"That thing where you get really excited about weird stuff like disgusting wounds and…books."

She shrugged, but didn't say anything. There was a silence. Then she seemed to remember something.

"Um, Malfoy…there was something I wanted to ask you," she said, fiddling with the hem of one of her sleeves.

A million possibilities raced through his mind. "What," he said.

"Well…actually…I wanted you to explain to me why your Dark Mark was taken away. You never did before. And I've been wondering. So…"

He let her trail on. She seemed nervous. He had to make a decision very quickly: go with the sudden urge he had to talk with her, explain the Dark Mark issue to her, and risk seeming like he didn't hate her completely…or simply tell her to piss off and be able to keep the status quo.

The first urge took him.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked.

She stared at him for a moment. Then, scooting herself over to lean against the bed beside him (making sure to keep a foot of space between them, mind you), she said, "Because I'm curious. You don't have to have a reason to want to know something."

Draco mulled this response over. It was silent in the room. He was staring straight ahead at the wall. She was looking down at her hands. Neither was eager to make direct eye contact with the other.

Draco saw his opportunity. He could still tell her to get out. Things could stay exactly the same. All he had to do was say the words. Get out. He opened his mouth to say them. He had every intention to. But this is what came out instead: "It hurt like hell."

He could sense her face turn towards him. He kept staring at the wall. Wishing he hadn't just said those words.

"What did?" asked Granger.

He touched his wrist, almost unconsciously, in the place where his Dark Mark used to be.

"My Dark Mark," he said. "When he put it there. The Dark Lord."

"You still call him that," said Granger.

Draco turned to look her in the eyes. "What."

"The Dark Lord," she said. "He's not your lord anymore.

"So?"

"So why don't you try the V word."

He looked at her seriously. "I don't speak his name."

"Because you fear him."

"No," was Draco's immediate response.

"Then why?" asked Granger, her eyebrows raised skeptically.

His stare turned cold on her. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me," she said.

"You were born a muggle. You can't understand. It's that simple."

"There are much worse things to be born as," she said with a pointed stare.

"I can only assume you're referring to me," said Draco. "Which just goes to show how skewed your perceptions are. Being a mud—" he stopped. "Being a muggle-born and all."

What. Did. I. Do. THAT FOR! He thought immediately. He had just let her win. This battle had been going on between them for years. The Mudblood Battle. And now she had won. Because he had slipped. And corrected himself. For no apparent reason. What. So. Ever.

Mother—

"Thank you," she said, interrupting his thoughts.

He didn't know what to say. He sure as hell wasn't going to say "You're welcome." And he couldn't deny the fact that he had changed "mudblood" to "muggle-born" to accommodate her. It was so obvious. Hell, he had stopped mid-sentence and corrected himself.

So he decided not to say anything. He turned his face away and stared at the wall again.

"You do have a point, though," she said quietly. "We were born into completely different worlds. But you can't choose the life you end up in. It's given to you. And it surprises me that you realize that…because you'd think it would make you more sympathetic to those born into lower stations in life."

When Draco said nothing, she continued. "You didn't have to do anything to be born into a pureblood family. You didn't earn it."

Draco knew it was true. It wasn't exactly a shocking revelation; he'd thought it over before. He understood her point of view.

Which was slightly unsettling, really.

He saw her, from the corner of his eye, turn her head away from him. She'd made her point and he would let her have it. He wasn't going to feed the flames for an argument he knew she wanted. Not right now anyway.

"Your question, originally, regarded my Dark Mark," he said. "You've strayed considerably off topic."

"You haven't answered me yet," she replied.

"Fine: a Dark Mark represents loyalty. I was disloyal. End of story."

"Why were you disloyal?"

He looked at her as if in disbelief. "He killed my parents. What would you have done?"

"Well, of course, I would defy the man who killed my parents," she said. "But…well, I wouldn't have expected you to."

He stared at her hard. That was just insulting. Really, just…insulting. With a glare, he went to stand up. And he found to his surprise and delight…a flash of agonizing pain did NOT shoot up his side. His dagger wound was really healed.

But he also found (too late, when he was already on his feet) that he was still very weak, very drained, and very off-balance.

Luckily for Draco, Granger's falling-body-catching abilities were in fine working order after all these days of trying to keep him in the upright and locked position.

She shot to her feet and grabbed him around the waist. Draco caught onto her arms.

He immediately grew even angrier. He was so sick of this. He couldn't even support his own body weight.

"You took that the wrong way," said Granger quickly, looking up at him.

He ignored the subject at hand. "I thought that fucking potion was supposed to give me my STRENGTH back?"

"I meant that I wouldn't have expected you to defy Voldemort for anything," she continued, speaking rapidly.

He gripped her arms more tightly and stared daggers down into her eyes. "No, you meant that you thought I was a brainwashed little fuck who would do anything to stay in the good graces of the Dark Lord," he nearly yelled at her. "But I wouldn't overlook the fact that he murdered my parents, Granger." Strong emotion crept into his tone. "I wouldn't support the bastard who made my mother scream before she died."

Draco suddenly saw Granger's eyes turn all wide and glisten-y. Once again, at a moment when he should be the one sobbing his eyes out, Granger got all teary-eyed and emotional. Damn the female species.

He felt a pang of…well, something, deep inside his chest as her tears started spilling over onto her cheeks and she was staring at him with that tragic expression she pulled off so well.

He realized how close they were when he felt the little shaking sobs in her chest that she was trying to suppress. She had turned her face away from him and was now staring at the floor.

He also realized that there was no reason for them to be embracing each other any longer. He had regained his balance long since. But here they were anyway. Still together.

And somehow, without either teen really knowing why, their death grip had turned into a hug of sorts and all pretenses of an argument had been dropped. Hermione was no longer gripping him around the waist, but hugging him, her palms pressed against his back. Draco stopped caring who and what she was for a moment and pulled her against his chest, which she was now sobbing against, and put his arms, somewhat haltingly, around her shoulders.

It was strange for both of them. This hug went against their very nature. A Slytherin and a Gryffindor. But it was warm, and it was comforting, and above all…it felt right in a way neither of them could deny.

It was meant to happen. And they couldn't have stopped it even if they had seen it coming a mile away.

A/N:

Well, it's true: review responses are no longer allowed. Sorry guys. If you specifically want me to reply to you from now on, mention it in your review and make sure you're signed in so I can hit the fancy little "reply" button. I also might just reply to you randomly. Who knows?

Please review, but don't yell at me for how long it took me to update because that will only de-motivate me even more. And de-motivation will certainly not lead to a speedy chapter 12. Take my word for it. Just tell me what you thought of this chapter. Thanks. Oh and a huge thank you to those of you who are being so patient and kind. I really, really appreciate you guys. Yours are the reviews that encourage me to write. Also, please note that my slow updates are due to a lack of time, not a lack of interest. I feel them as much as you do.