Chapter the Twenty-Ninth

The reprimanding lasted more than a few minutes. Hermione blushed and squirmed and felt more wretched than she ever had in her life. Worse, this was directed solely at her. Draco sat next to her, watching McGonagall, but his lecture would have to come from the head of his house. Hermione wasn't sure if she could bear to sit there while Snape failed to suggest in any way that Draco was in the wrong. McGonagall scolded her student, and Snape would do the same. It made her seethe to think of Draco getting off with a week's detention at most. She'd cost her house a hundred points already and would be cleaning classrooms for the next month, and that was still nothing compared to the simple fact of being told she was in the wrong. Fighting in a library! Not saving the world, not helping friends, but shouting in a library!

McGonagall left to fetch Professor Snape, who was proving hard to reach by any other method. Hermione wondered if she honestly thought Snape would punish someone from his own house the way she had Hermione. If Draco lost no points for his behaviour and language, then Hermione knew she would have to bring the whole shameful subject up again, to convince McGonagall of the unfairness of it.

She was just so furious, and she was struggling to define why, or rather, who at. She had long believed that no fight was the fault of only one participant. This did not mean some fights weren't unavoidable, necessary even, but she suspected this wasn't one of them. Her anger at herself seemed only to fuel her anger at him.

Neither had brought up the cause of the fight. There was some honour among them still. Hermione doubted it extended much further, though. She would certainly not go out of her way to help him. Maybe letting herself grow that much closer to him had made the pain that much worse. She knew now he wasn't deserving of her concern. She had wasted how many weeks, how many months? Had he changed at all, or had she just let her feelings obscure her vision? Perhaps Harry and Ron were completely in the right. She had scorned their opinions and trust her own, biased ones. There were five years of damning evidence as to Draco's nature. Why, in this sixth year of their acquaintance, had she allowed him to pull the wool over her eyes? She'd even known that he was playing for sympathy much of the time. He'd been lonely, he'd been scared, and he'd been willing to do anything for a little security.

For a brief moment, guilt and sympathy touched Hermione again, and she almost rejected the self-blame in favour of admitting this was just a routine fight between a couple.

A couple.

Draco scuffed his feet along the carpet. The sound made Hermione grit her teeth. Anger was safe. Anger protected her from thoughts like that. She was a modern, independent women with intelligence on her side. She did not need a man. She certainly did not need some oily boy with opinions dating from the middle ages. She had only been nice to him. They were hardly a couple, which meant this was hardly a couple's quarrel.

"Hermione?"

"Now probably isn't a good time to talk to me," she said stiffly.

"I try, Hermione. I try and I try and there's only so much I can tolerate."

"So much of what?" Hermione said sharply, turning to look at him. He had his arm bent, resting on the back of the chair, and was staring at her intently.

"So much change," he said. "I could pretend, but I'm not the sort to do that."

"You have changed, Draco," she told him. "You're apologising, for a start."

"I'm doing nothing of the sort!" he snapped. "I have nothing to apologise for! What do you think I'm trying to explain to you?"

"I'm a little fuzzy on that front," she said wryly.

"It's all your fault! My world changed. I didn't. I look like I've changed, but I haven't. I reacted."

"And that's my fault?" Hermione asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Ever since you came into my life you've been inserting an influence on me. I resent that." He paused, and sighed. "But I also appreciate it," he admitted.

"That's... fair."

"It's more than that. I'm not used to making such concessions. I have never needed to." He picked at his fingernails. "You've forced me to make a lot of concessions. I ought to hate you for that. I wouldn't take such treatment from my mother."

Hermione was silent. He looked at her for a long moment, then stood up. He fidgeted with his hands for a moment before tucking them firmly behind his back. She suspected that he had been taught public speaking. It was the sort of lesson his parents would have felt mandatory, like etiquette and deportment, and unlike, say, maths, or world history.

"Hermione, I was well brought up. Different people have different standards of such, perhaps, but I know that I was. I do not know much about your upbringing, other than the standards that you hold for yourself often differ greatly for mine. I was brought up to believe that such differences meant a lack of a proper upbringing."

"Different is bad," Hermione murmured. He frowned at the interruption, but went on as though he hadn't heard it.

"These differences fascinated me. You were not ashamed of them. In fact, you scorned me. From the beginning, you fascinated me. Harry Potter, as well," he said quietly. "I had to understand, you see? But understanding altered my opinion of you, and thus my treatment, and I went on to realise that you would never make any attempt to understand me. Your scorn would not abate, as mine did."

"That's not true," Hermione objected softly. "I do understand, and I don't scorn you for it."

"You still think what I was taught is wrong."

"You still think a lot of what I was taught is wrong," she countered. She knew she couldn't actually disagree with what he said, but this close alternative would perhaps prevent him from noticing that.

"Well, yes." He pulled one hand from his back to wave the matter away before replacing it. He looked like a general talking to his army, pacing up and down with his face more serious that Hermione had ever seen. "Still, I agree that you have made some concessions of your own, and I respect you for it. But not enough."

"Oh really?" she couldn't resist responding tartly. He really was being stupidly pompous.

"I can not love you if you persist in this muggleborn martyr complex. My opinions are no less valid than your own, and you have no idea of the sacrifices I have made and the crises I have gone through simply to maintain a friendship with you." He crossed his arms and stood in front of her, frowning down. "You would tear my whole self apart and rebuild it as you see fit."

"That's not true!" Hermione stood up as well, the chair tumbling backwards. "I have done nothing to you except be nice!"

"That's it! That's the point!" he told her fervently. "You've changed how you act around me and you can not tell me that you had no intent of changing me!"

"For the better!" Why had that seemed reasonable in her head? As soon as it was verbalised every flaw and hole became glaringly apparent. They were implicit in every counter argument she had ever used against him. The shame she had felt earlier was nothing compared to the recognition of her own double standards. Anything to distract herself, anything.

"For what you deem better! Shall I change you? Shall I change you into what I deem better?"

Hermione wasn't listening. She had succeeded in distracting herself, simply thanks to short term memory.

"Can not love me?"

It dwarfed her knowledge of her own failings. It even went so far as to suggest that either they did not exist, or Draco wasn't aware of them.

"Shall I have you adopted into a pureblood family? Shall I teach you how to treat a house elf?"

He seemed to have noticed those failings now. Would he take it back? Though he hadn't really said it, had he?

"Love me?"

Deny it, please deny it. I can't deal with this right now.

"Shall I..." He paused, and grimaced. "Are you done echoing me?" he asked tersely.

"I think so," Hermione managed, trying to shake off the numbness. "I just, wasn't expecting you to say that."

"What? I do love you," he said dismissively. "I never wanted to. You're a muggleborn. I was brought up to believe that such a thing ought to be entirely impossible, baring sexual deviancy."

"Sexual deviancy?" Hermione's jaw dropped. As she had already taught herself, anger was the easiest way to suppress all other upsetting emotions. And Draco made it so easy.

"Well, yes. But I still love you."

"You just said you didn't want to!"

"Everyone you know doesn't want you to love me. I know you want to please your friends, so surely you're not so happy about this either!"

They both stared at each other, inches away and miles apart. Hermione could feel the gulf of confusion and absence of understanding opening up between them.

"I.... love you," Draco said.

Hermione closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. "After all you've said to me today," she said slowly, each word dropping like a lead slab over the mouth of a tomb, "do you honestly expect me to return the sentiment?"

Silence stretched on indefinitely. The only sound was breathing, discreet breaths heavy and long, intentionally out of step with each other. No shouts. No sobs. No screams. Anger gone cold and dry and dead, but still ruling like a puppet emperor as other emotions fought for dominance behind the screen it provided.

"I suppose not."

Hermione looked at him. Had he been trained for this, as well, or was he just applying those other lessons? Dry eyes, firm mouth, straight back. Either he was as skilled an actor as she feared, or he did not love her.

"I hate you," Hermione said, surprised at her own bitterness.

"I... see."

"I always have done. I was trying to be charitable, to be kind, and you repay me with a slew of insults! I am well brought up, as evidenced by the fact I haven't just destroyed all faith you ever had in humanity! You can dress it up in eloquent words and talk of proper upbringings, but everything I know of you tells me that you are no gentleman, Malfoy, and your pretences and affected airs do nothing to disguise that fact."

"Are you going to slap me with your glove?" he growled. "Hit me with your fan?"

"No, I'm going to leave."

And she did.