The Similarities of Love and Hate
By Jinxd n Cursed
Disclaimer: I promise to return everyone from free from harm. Except Severus. Who is in my closet.
Chapter Twelve
Disappear
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The first week of November was a beautiful extension of October. Across the grounds of Hogwarts, the leaves glowed in fiery shades. Inside, the students waited for classed to finish for the day. The lower years longed to go out and fly around on brooms with their friends or just sit and talk by the lake. Students in the upper levels of study welcomed the break in their studies. Many found hidden places in the gardens to spend private time with their boyfriend or girlfriend.
Yet, away from the rest of the student body of Hogwarts, Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy sat inside their common room. Both had the same free period. Or rather, Hermione had a free period and Draco was skiving off his History of Magic lesson to spend a little time with Hermione, who mostly ignored him while she worked on an assignment due in late January. He talked while she made vague, mumbled responses to.
"Are Potty and Weasel as horrible to the rest of the world as they are to me?" he questioned.
She shrugged. "Maybe," she said, scribbling something down on her parchment.
"I don't get why you're friends," he said. "Nor do I get why we're friends. Why are we friends?"
"Because you punched Blaise Zabini in the face," she said absently.
"Will you ever stop being such an overachiever in your classes?"
She mumbled something incoherent.
"Granger, I have decided to charm my hair purple, snap my wand in half, and go live with muggles," he said.
"Purple isn't your color," she replied. Looking up, she blinked several times. "What did you say?"
"Do you think of anything other than school?"
"Yes," she said defiantly.
He shook his head.
"You're a piece of work, Granger," he said. He glanced at his watch. "I have to go meet Pansy."
"For what?" she asked suspiciously.
He gave her a wolfish grin.
She returned it with a dirty look.
"Hey, I promised you I wouldn't bring her to our room, not that I would never meet up with her again."
Hermione sighed. "You're right. For once."
"And this gives you practice at being wrong, know it all. I'll see you after dinner," he said.
Hermione huffed as he ducked out the door. She had no idea why but the thought of Malfoy with another girl made her blood boil over. That afternoon was no exception. "He always distracts me from my homework with his perverted thoughts," she grumbled. Then she sighed. If she were to face the truth of the matter, Hermione would have realized she had a bit of a crush on Malfoy but Hermione, in all of her intelligence, was one to suffer a great deal of denial when it came to boys.
With a sigh, she pointedly ignored her frustration and returned to do her homework. Being completely immersed in her studies kept her from thinking about the time until she heard her stomach emit a very loud growl. Looking at her watch, she realized it was quarter past seven. Stretching like a cat, she got up from the couch and made her way to the Great Hall.
Finally, her pregnancy had reached old news status and every person in the whole school did not constantly harass her. Lavender and Parvati had given up hope that she was going to reveal everything to them and use them as a crying shoulder.
She wound her way through the tables and took her customary place with Harry, Ron, and Ginny. Thankfully, the house elves had not prepared steak and kidney pie, as they seemed to do every other night. Instead, it was a chicken and vegetable casserole with flaky biscuits that looked and smelled delicious. For dessert, there was a selection of many different ice cream flavors from the normal (vanilla) to the odd (cockroach and peach).
Hermione scooped a heaping portion of the casserole onto her plate, along with three of the biscuits. A covert glance over her shoulder revealed that Malfoy was sitting at the Slytherin table, chatting Amiably with Daphne Greengrass and Gregory Goyle. She turned back to her friends and started talking to Harry.
"How are your classes going, Harry?" she asked.
He grunted noncommittally. "Okay. It's no fun when I can't cheat off of you. I have to do real work."
"Yeah, but your grades have improved, mate," Ron pointed out.
"Harry, you can't go through life copying the work of others," she lectured. "It won't get you far."
"Yeah, yeah," Harry replied. "We know the deal. Spare the lecture, okay?"
Hermione shrugged and took a bite out of a biscuit. Sometimes she questioned whether or not Harry and Ron would ever grow up. Her stomach plunged when she thought of whether or not they'd get the chance to grow up. In every other aspect of his life, Harry had become an adult so he was allowed a little immaturity in his schoolwork. As she ate her dinner, she resolved to stop lecturing and let him be young while he could.
After dinner, she went to the library for a few minutes to return a few books and check out several more. As she looked for what she needed, she ambled through the stacks, running her hands across the worn leather spines of the thousands of volumes in the library. Each one held knowledge and she desired to know it all. While she knew she never would, she still tried, striving forever on a quest that she knew she'd never achieve.
'Will I even have time to read when the baby comes?' she thought absently, rubbing her stomach lightly.
She had mild cramps in her abdomen at the time. Throughout her pregnancy, she'd had trouble with indigestion after meals. The rich food and ice cream at dinner had not helped her. At that moment, she chose to ignore her cramps and selected a large stack of books.
Navigating the hallway was slow-going carrying nearly her weight in books but she managed to make it to the common room. To her surprise, when she walked in, Draco wasn't there. She frowned slightly. Going somewhere without telling her had become very unlike him. He'd taken to telling her wherever he was going, whether or not she actually cared. She decided—rather ignorantly—that he had just made spur-of-the-moment plans and hadn't mentioned it to her.
Completely unperturbed, she settled on the sofa and read from one of the books she had just checked out. It was a potions text; an index of every major potions ingredient there was. In all, it encompassed 37 volumes, each with 800 pages of materials. With determination to memorize every single ingredient, she began with the A's: aardvark tongue.
When she had finished with the A's, she was not shocked to realize that it was nearly midnight and Malfoy still had not returned. She was concerned.
'Where could he possibly be?' she thought. With an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she decided to head off the bed without knowing where he was, hoping that he had simply fallen asleep in the Slytherin common room after going to meet with his friends.
She put on her pajamas and crawled into bed. It was a long time before she managed to fall asleep. Worry clouded her mind and her head was spinning.
An hour later, she awoke with a start. She heard a few muffled thumps coming from the common room, along with a few voices. Hoping it was Malfoy, she climbed out of her bed and hurried to put on a dress gown over her nightdress.
She walked softly into the common room. "Malfoy?" she called tentatively.
There was no answer and she proceeded further into the room. The sight that greeted her made her gasp. A beaten and bloody Draco Malfoy lay unconscious on the floor, just inside the door. He sported a black eye and a nasty gash across his chest.
"Malfoy? Malfoy wake up!" she said, reaching out to shake his forearm.
As if bitten, she recoiled.
Burned into the pale white flesh of his forearm was the Dark Mark.
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Yes indeed, that was a long wait but this was a difficult chapter to write so do try and understand. I'm starting to build a small cult with this story. Let's make it a large one, eh?
