At the beginning, it was nothing. It always was.
That's what Draco told himself and what he would have let anyone know if they were to ask him why he always seemed to study at the same time as Granger, at a table in view of hers; he would tell anyone that, if he were in the mood to give them a reply that wasn't a displeased sneer.
It was nothing, until it wasn't. Because as years at Hogwarts had taught Draco a variety of things, one of them was the fact that anything regarding Potter and his puny, unimportant friends, it somehow never bode well for him. It was most likely, at least annoying.
It was annoying, Draco assumed, until he realized that it wasn't.
He didn't even notice her at first; he wrote this off because of the endless homework and the stress that his Eighth year was putting on him.
The day he finally noticed her, he had been buried two hours deep in a potions essay and when he looked up from the letters and words blurring together on the parchment, he was met with Granger's eyes looking right back at him from a few tables away.
Draco startled, but she didn't react. He was about to sneer and tell her to look at someone else when he recognized the emptiness in her eyes. She was lost in her thoughts and probably hadn't even noticed that he was in her line of view. Draco met her gaze, not quite knowing why, taking the stolen seconds to study her appearance.
Her untamed hair had reached new levels of beastly wildness, fanned out around her pallid complexion in a large, boasting mess. Dark rings under her eyes stood in stark contrast to her pale face and for just a second, he thought, she almost looked like a ghost.
Granger's eyes finally regained their focus and their gazes met. Draco furrowed his brows. She squinted her brown eyes at him.
As if she couldn't believe that he dared to look at her.
Before Draco finished the thought, she had returned to her work with a slight shake of her head.
Later that night, when Draco kept his lids tightly shut, unable to relax into the comforting warmth surrounding his body, he realized that he'd never looked at Granger for long enough to notice that her eyes were a light brown colour. He fell asleep with a deep scowl etched into the spot between his eyebrows.
In the following week, Draco grew more conscious of his surroundings. And with a developing, worrisome awareness, Granger seemed to be placed somewhere in his proximity just about every time he was in the library.
It wasn't quite clear to Draco how he never noticed before, but it seemed that their respective favoured spots for hourlong studying were only two tables apart. Close enough to see what the other was working on but too far to hold a conversation.
Not that he wanted to talk to her, anyway.
No, Draco was done with that; while his previous years had been tainted with the need to embarrass and taunt Potter and his friends at every turn through elaborate schemes, he now wanted to be just left alone. Potter and his sidekick hadn't returned to finish their education anyway; all that was left of the once so shiny Golden Trio was the bushy-haired witch, hailed as the Brightest Witch of Her Age by every newspaper since the War.
And Granger just happened to have marked her favourite spot in one of the most secluded sections of the library.
It had taken Draco a while to adjust to his new position in the social hierarchy of Hogwarts. In the Great Hall, during class, when he walked through corridors; people looked at him with a barely hidden sneer and look of disgust in their eyes as they turned to their friend to whisper something in their ear as both turned to look at him again and giggle their ugly hearts out.
It soon became clear that Granger was also just realizing how close they were and judging from the squinting looks and distrustful purse of her lips, she was even unhappier about it.
It happened one day when he was translating a particularly difficult row of runes that refused to make any sense no matter how he tried to decipher them, when he looked up with a sigh and met Granger's attentive gaze.
It was startling enough to make him immediately look back down – not that he was scared of her but he didn't like looking at people a lot nowadays – and the blurry runes were just about to form a dancing circle on the parchment to perform a ridiculing ritual in his honour, when a book slapped onto the end of his table and Draco flinched hard enough to shake his inkwell, deep black splattering onto the corner of the bewitched parchment.
"I know you're somehow mocking me, Malfoy, and it's not working. Stop hovering over me."
Her voice was a low, ill-boding hiss that almost made him react. Her lips were pressed into a fine line, her hands perched onto the book as she leaned towards him, stern eyes demanding him to stop whatever he was supposed to be doing. Her wild hair made her look positively crazed. Draco stared at her for a few seconds, amazed at the amount of audacity it had taken her to do this, and then tilted his head back, assessing her slowly.
"My dear, Granger, you really think the world revolves around you. How arrogant."
His voice was even and monotone. She responded with widened eyes and a screeching voice.
"Don't you dare accuse me of arrogance, you cockroach! I know you only study in his corner to somehow ridicule me! I know you Malfoy, whether you like it or not!"
Something in Draco twitched. It was buried deep within, dead asleep and it had become unknown to him; yet Granger's words disturbed its slumber. It rose behind his chest, a thundering, sick force that blinded his brain of rational thought.
"You don't bloody know me, Granger, and you're fucking ridiculous for insinuating that I'm here only for you. We're in a damned library where people study and if you took just one look at the fucking stupid runes in front of me, you'd know that I'm doing the same bloody homework as you are. I'm not here to annoy you; don't bloody flatter yourself- "
Granger inhaled sharply, startled as if she was about to interrupt him and Draco leaned forwards, meeting her warm eyes with a cold, steely gaze, the words stumbling across his lips faster than he could process what he was saying and he was breathless, he just wanted to see the look on her bloody stupid face-
"-and if you took one second to pull your bushy head out of your ass, you'd realize that this is the most secluded corner of the library and that's why I'm here, so people wont come to laugh at me trying to study, so I have my bloody peace, and you're fucking disturbing it Granger, when you could both do us a favour and accept that the world doesn't revolve around you boring, stuck-up know-it-all!"
The air stood still when Draco finished, face inches away from hers, and the world around them had long dissolved into a blur; the words he'd yelled were slowly coming back to him and hot regret started creeping up his neck, he said too much, he said too much, and for a moment he thought he might have made her cry judging from the rosy cheeks, round-eyed look she gave him, lips slightly parted in what he delightfully imagined to be an ugly quiver, when her soft words swam back towards him through the thicket of their bubble.
A pang in his chest.
"How odd. You didn't call me a Mudblood."
And then she was gone, and Draco's eyes were stuck on where she had just stood, trying to make sense of this. And then the bubble burst, and the loud white noise in his ears vanished into thin air, into the low murmuring and aching of the school's library, and he realized that Granger was already sat back at her table as if nothing had happened.
Words and tremors and confused feelings bounced anxiously behind his chest, yet he kept a calm look as he collected his things and left the library in an even stride. He wanted to run so bad.
Later in bed that night, he realized that he had entirely forgotten to collect his materials by magic, and also, that twitch near his heart when he thought she might cry, was not that old joy he had felt at making the witch upset, the one a twelve year old Draco would have reveled in; no, that joy had slowly transformed into a bare inkling of regret.
Why didn't I call her a Mudblood?
The question plagued Draco all week long. He knew now that this moment of weakness was a mere burst of frustration after being treated like an outsider by the student body for more than two months now; I had nothing to do with Granger personally, no matter how stuck up and annoying and braggy she was. She was one of the more obnoxious people he'd ever met; not on par with a crazed serial killer and a predatory, psychopathic aunt maybe, but in terms of normal people, she was high on the list of people he'd like to avoid.
And yet, he found himself returning to that corner of the library over and over; he didn't like the view, in fact, it made him feel rather dizzy, but that particular nook had an otherwise alluring calm; a magic buzzing in the air that helped him focus and figure out the more difficult parts of his work.
They didn't talk again. A relief to Draco, really, because he was not keen on having her ask him about why he wanted to be away from other students. He was aware of the irony surrounding his rather precarious situation; him being bullied.
In another life, he would have laughed about it. In this life, he found less and less to chuckle about.
She left him alone after that, and there was nowhere else for him to go, so Draco was drawn back to that spot over and over again. After all, he really was far too focused on his studies to worry about anything Granger might be up to.
Yes, it seemed, that his outburst had satisfied her in some odd way.
It had woken a storm in Draco.
Why didn't I call her a Mudblood?
Draco could not make sense of his rant not ending with that word. He had used it enough during his earlier years.
But as he kept pondering, it became quite clear that he had not even thought about the word or its meaning since even before the War. Maybe even since Sixth year.
Doubts crept up his neck at night, suffocating him and making it hard to breathe; dreams of long, pale fingers closing around his throat and squeezing hard, haunted him. Every night, they came back, and the hands' grasp became a bit stronger, a bit longer, and the livid, feral need for air or water, anything to fill his lungs, grew and could not stop growing.
He woke up with tear-stained cheeks and paralyzing fear shaking his limbs, gasping for the cold air in staggering breaths that made him cough and shake in the dark as he stared up, not seeing at all but recognizing the task more clearly every night.
It was almost as though the hands tried to squeeze something out of him.
Regret.
Christmas break passed in a blur. Draco stayed at Hogwarts; Narcissa had taken up residence in one of the Malfoy's estates in the South of France to "find herself again" – whatever that meant, and Lucius, well, he spent the holiday in Azkaban, where he would remain for the next twelve Christmases as well. Draco knew that his mother would have been glad to have him down in France, but he just didn't want to. Whatever bad memories Hogwarts used to hold for him, they slowly faded into the warm rustling of the library, into the rustic books and shelfs aching with the amounts of knowledge they held up.
They had little homework over the holiday break and the library was entirely deserted at most times. It was perfect for Draco to slowly catch up on his essays, wander the aisles and practice his magic, when no one was around to watch.
Not even Granger.
The first few days, Draco just stared at the empty spot where she was usually sat. He shook himself out of that trance quickly and moved his things one table over, closer to hers, simply because from this angle, he could see a faraway window that hinted a the Scottish Highlands their school was surrounded by.
The view was simply much better.
Granger was among the few who had also stayed at school during the break; It was hard to miss her bushy head during mealtimes at the Gryffindor table. Their school was almost deserted. Almost all students had gone home.
Draco liked the emptiness.
But the emptiness was not perfect. It grew stronger when he spent his time in the library, listening to the utter silence, and he could not quite pinpoint what disturbed his peace until he came back from the loo one day to find Granger at her usual spot.
Right next to his new one.
And she was stood at the edge of the table, looking at her load of materials and his own homework spread out on the adjacent table. As if she were waiting for it to disappear.
She looked up at his entrance where he stood frozen, his mind churning with thoughts, deciphering the feeling in his chest. That blooming heat.
They stared mutely, until she nodded. And she sat down and started taking out her books and parchments and inkwells and prepared herself for a good studying. And when Draco sat down on the table next to hers, he finally knew what had been missing in hat perfect emptiness around him. The table next to him was finally not lifeless anymore. An evergreen smell invited him.
It was their new routine. Nothing had changed but the closing proximity and the haunting hollowness of the library; not much, anyone would scoff, but for Draco, it was like mountains moved.
It happened then, one day, with the word Mudblood echoing and haunting in the far back of his mind when he just finished a criminally difficult row of runes, when the endless scratching of quills and rustling of parchments was interrupted by a hiss.
"Draco!"
He was so disoriented by the sound of his own name, he did not even realize that she was actually talking to him. When he looked up, she had leaned forward, towards him.
"What?", he said, voice monotone. She pointed at the row of runes he'd just put aside.
"How did you solve the third one? With the owl's eye in the middle?"
Right. She also took runes.
How in the world was Hermione Granger asking him for advice? The Golden Girl?
His head swarmed with questions unanswered and he slowly lifted the parchment to look at his own work.
"You need to translate each side with separate bridges. Gallighan's and Ayola's bridges. It's a weird combination, it took me hours to figure out."
Granger nodded enthusiastically and smiled.
"Thank you!"
And she was back, hunched over her work, as if nothing had ever happened.
Later that night when Draco was curled around his pillow, hugging it tight, waiting for sleep to come and the fingers to close around his neck, in the last bouts of consciousness before his mind drifted away, he barely realized that she didn't call him Malfoy.
He was Draco to her. Not just Malfoy.
It started slowly. Draco walked the hallways of Hogwarts confused, pondering questions he just could not answer. His pounding headache was a testament to the mental gymnastics he was doing. And it all revolved, regrettably, around Granger.
Why was he not bothered by their proximity?
He clearly remembered in their Second Year, first insulting her on that Quidditch pitch, a sick tremor in his stomach at the thought of her coming too close to him. He was so convinced that her touch could be poisonous, spreading her sickness, her dirt; he was a mere child, but deadly convinced that a young girl could be his demise.
Draco did not care about blood supremacy anymore. They were hollow words, yet still hurtful, in the wakes of a raging war, and the hatred and rage in his heart had calmed into a simmer. A low flame flickering up now and then, reminding him of who he was.
But when did he become okay with being so close to her? When did they start talking? When did they start doing the same homework at the same time and sometimes lean over to see what the other was doing?
It made complete sense in a way. They worked at the same pace. He never needed to explain anything twice to her, nor did she to him.
They worked well together.
It kept him awake from the suffocating nightmares. Nothing made sense anymore.
"What potion are you going to choose for the analysis essay?", Hermione asked one day during February, when school was back in full swing, and they had finally resorted to simply working at the same table. It was large enough for the both of them after all.
She was still scribbling wildly on her parchment and if Draco hadn't heard her voice, he wouldn't be sure she had said something.
"Maybe the Polyjuice Potion. Its properties are quite fascinating."
For a few moments there was no answer, and he looked up to find her smiling as she wrote.
"What's so funny?"
He meant to say it in a barking, demanding voice. It came out without bite or wit. He hated it.
"Oh, nothing. I like the Polyjuice too. I thought of doing it as well."
The topic was done with after that, and they only spoke again when Hermione asked him to hand her a book about Transfiguration.
The queasy feeling in his stomach was evergrowing, and Draco started to suspect that he might just be sick. The dreams of long, pallid fingers were still haunting him, and his mind was still muddled with confusion regarding everything Granger.
He fell asleep that night, words of gratefulness on his lips, and the familiar tightness around his neck welcomed him into his recurring nightmare. But this time, it was different.
There was no seemingly endless pressure on his air tubes, slowly closing his access to air more and more until he was gasping for nothing anymore, like a fish; pain pounding in his lungs, scratching into his ribs, his body writhing and shaking in the horror that would just not end. He always screamed without hearing his voice, unable to see anything but the disembodied hands of Voldemort squeezing the life out of him.
No, tonight, something changed. The familiar pressure disappeared, and the hands slid down to rest on his shoulders. Draco gasped for air, for the first time in months, able to breathe deeply, and his eyes trailed up the hands where they finally connected to the person in front of him.
It was Hermione, with a warm glint in her eyes and a chaste smile on her lips.
"Do you finally get it?", her voice called through the thicket of his dream, echoing and bouncing off the darkness surrounding them.
"Get what?", he rasped, his chest still heaving, searching her face desperately. She shook her hand and stepped into him.
Her arms wrung around his torso and squeezed tight. Nice, and warm, and present and so close, like no hug he'd ever felt before. His chest bloomed with that familiar heat, and then, through the fleeting and muddled dream thoughts, something clearly stood out.
She was his equal in every way. And she made him feel safe.
Draco shot up in bed, straight as a candle, heaving and coughing into the darkness of the chamber, hands gliding up to feel his throat like he usually did with the phantom squeezing still echoing in this reality; but his throat was fine.
All he felt was the slow cold creeping into his body where dream-Granger had hugged him.
In hindsight, it should not have shocked Draco that much. His prejudices were gone, and in every sense of the word, Granger was just as strong-minded and gifted as he was. The last hint of bigotry had been squeezed out by the witch herself.
He despised the confusion muddling his mind. The nightmares disappeared. He didn't understand what it was all for. There was just one thing left and every time he thought he'd caught whiff of it, the edge of it, to finally see what it was, it slipped away again.
They were just studying together.
Phrases like these and more repeated themselves in his mind in an endless, maddening loop. Classes were difficult enough; there was no need for him to think about her too.
He hated it. But despite his best efforts, he could not hate her anymore.
The realization came to him one day when he was breaking his skull over the analysis of a particular Transfigraton spell that he could just not figure out. Once she noticed his low groans and curses, stuck on the same spell for 30 minutes, she leaned over to look at what he was struggling with. Without a word, he turned the parchment towards her and laid his head on the table, wishing away the headache hammering behind his temples, unforgiving and hard.
And as she explained his error of thinking in a calm, patient manner, the cold wood soothing against his head as he looked up at her blearily, listening to her explanation, he finally noticed it. She was nice.
She was generous. And patient, and not at all as condescending in her knowledge as he'd assumed for years before. There was not a hint of ridicule or mockery in her voice as she shared what he didn't know.
He had been so utterly wrong about her all along, and while he couldn't tear his gaze away from her, watching her point out his mistakes and give the parchment back with a sweet smile, he knew that he was gone.
Hermione was not all smiles and graciousness. Draco learned that one day in March when she arrived minutes after him after dinner, muttering and cursing under her breath. Her back-breaking bookbag slammed onto the table with such vehemence, Draco was glad he hadn't opened his inkwell yet.
"Bloody Binns! They should never let a ghost teach, he's hovering dementia!"
Draco watched her tip over her bookbag and look through the books tumbling out frantically, searching for a specific one, whipping the unneeded ones away, almost off the table. He saved a particularly close call with a flick of his wand.
"Granger- "
"And he refuses to listen too! I know I'm right! Stupid bloody ghost, I know I didn't make a mistake, he's just- here!"
She cried triumphantly, ripping out an ancient library book from the bottom of her bag and whipping it open, leafing through the pages almost aggressively.
"The Goblin wars of 643 started, against popular belief, in the year 648, due to a mistranslated script from Emil the Ugly, who was believed to be 88% percent blind at the time of translation!", she read aloud, and slammed the book down before going back to rummaging through the wild array of parchments and books on the table. Draco slowly walked over, pulling the open book towards him to read the quote himself.
"Here! He marked it as a mistake! He doesn't even know his own bloody material!", she screeched, slamming down a history essay about Goblin history from 600 to 720. And she was right; Binns had underlined and scratched out her proper writing repeating that same quote, correcting the number with "643".
"And he didn't even believe me! I'm going to go to McGonagall over this, this is bloody preposterous- Why are you laughing?"
Her eyes were wide and crazed, staring at him in full disbelief, while Draco wrung an arm around his middle, unable to keep the blubbering laughter fighting its way up for his stomach.
"I had no idea you could be so mad over a mistake that you didn't even lose a point for", he pressed out, and Hermione's pink cheeks turned a tint redder.
"It's the principle of it! And yes, I did lose a point! This is not okay, he made a mistake and I'm suffering for it- "
"Granger. Your NEWTs will not be destroyed because Binns makes a mistake. All of the tests get double-checked", he said in a calm voice as he walked back to his end of the table, trying not to let the smile on his face show in his words.
When he turned back towards her, she had her hands propped on her hips, looking at him with squinting eyes. A thinking pose. Then her tense shoulders sacked, and she started collecting her books and parchments with a sigh.
"Fine. It's still not funny though."
"Please, I could never believe you could speak such foul words over a beloved professor. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that rage."
He heard the grin in her voice, and he was sure she heard his too.
"Actually, if I remember correctly, you were once, back in- "
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
The smile on his lips didn't disappear even when they fell silent for the next few minutes, and he had an inkling that she was still smiling too. He was proven right when he looked up a minute later to see the hint of a grin still on her lips as her eyes flitted quickly through the book she was reading.
As the NEWT's were approaching, a sick nausea manifested itself in Draco every evening when he went into the library to study. Exam's had never made him particularly nervous; he knew to do what he could and whatever work he would put in it, would come back. So he just worked hard and trusted his instincts.
This new lightheaded dizziness frustrated him. He had supposed that once his dreams would be gone, his gut would calm down and allow him to study in a calm and relaxed manner.
But, well, the dreams weren't really gone. They returned less now, but Voldemort hands had disappeared, giving space to Hermione who stood in front of him, her heavy hands on his shoulder, talking, her lips moving, without any of her words reaching Draco. He cried and screamed, unable to move to wake up, demanding that she tell him how to get rid of that flickering fire in his chest.
They were frustrating, but better than being choked.
Yet every evening he looked up to find Hermione was ahead of him in her studies, the feeling worsened, and it got to the point where he just felt too sick to even go to the library.
But somehow, that made it worse. It was unexplainable and Draco might just resort to hiding in his bed all day, ignoring the nausea and dizziness.
Yet he knew it wouldn't make things better.
He finally realized what that disgusting feeling was one day, when Hermione and he were rewriting their notes from Charms class to write a coherent essay about some stupid spell that could reconfigure muggle machines.
It was mindless yet durable work, and their topics were light, jumping from teachers to students and things that happened in the past. Nothing bad. Nothing touchy. Just small talk.
"…And I had to call him Severus, too. Can you imagine how weird it was to come home from being taught by that bat for a full year to have him sit in our parlor and I had to suddenly address him by his first name? Every time I said Severus, he stared at me like I'd insulted his mother's very existence. It was terrifying."
Hermione laughed at his memories of his Second year and when Draco looked up to see her blinding smile, splitting her cheeks, a warm glow radiating from her and the sweet giggle vibrating through the air, his nausea shot from the depth of his stomach into the bottom of his throat and he thought he might just hurl, when a clear thought crept into his mind.
He wanted to make her laugh just like that every single day.
It was a feral wish, an instinctive need, that became so clear and urgent all at once, Draco's own smile faded, and he finally knew that he was thoroughly and epically fucked.
Knowledge was terror.
Draco had thought that his nausea and dizzy and the sick fluttering in his stomach would become easier to deal with once he knew what the cause was.
But it had taken months for him to even accept that he didn't hate Hermione Granger anymore. Now his stupid luck had to go and make I even worse. Now he had a bloody horrible childish crush.
Draco was not familiar with these kinds of feelings. He used to have an inkling of a crush for Pansy in Third year, one he expressed through obnoxious bragging and jabs at other students to somehow impress her. The mindless teenagers they were, it seemed to work, and for a short amount of time, Draco had been convinced that they would be together forever.
It didn't last.
Now, this was something entirely else. The sickness, as he called it now, acted up whenever he was around Hermione. It also flared up when he even just thought of her.
Or was thinking of being near her.
Or just thought of her smile.
It was disgusting, and he was determined to rid himself of it. And that's how the worst part of this year started.
He stopped going to the library.
Years ago, when he found a muggle magazine in the ridges of the couch in the Slytherin common room, he read an article about nicotine addiction. "Cold turkey" was recurring term, and Draco had finally found a use for it in his life.
He was going cold turkey on Granger. Because if he just stopped seeing her, being around her, those measly, stupid feelings would simply have to disappear. He would not allow anything else.
Draco Malfoy did not have crushes. He did not fall in love. He was not meant for that, and it was preposterous to think that she could somehow return whatever his feelings were for her.
He didn't even like to think about it.
It turned out that cold turkey was a near death sentence. For three days, Draco sat hunched in a deserted classroom somewhere on the Fourth floor, unable to focus on his studies, sitting on the floor with his face buried in his knees.
She didn't even care about him. It was a miracle she had even studied with him. This was just his problem.
That was, until during dinner on the third evening, he felt a piercing stare boring through the top of his head and when he looked up, he met her steady, hard gaze from across the entire Great Hall.
He did not even need to see her tensed jaw and flaring nostrils to know that she was mad.
He could just feel it.
The second he was done gulping down the tasteless dinner, he got up and strode out of the hall, clutching his bag close to him, feeling her presence closing in behind him.
It was the height of embarrassment, but the second he was out of eyesight, he started sprinting away, too afraid, too scared, to deal with it.
A crush was a fleeting interest, an inkling of blooming feelings.
When Draco finally realized that his feelings for Hermione had never been just a crush but much more than that, he was ready to rip out his hair. Cold turkey was bullshit. But he kept doing it.
Curse this bloody witch. She refused to leave his mind. It drove him crazy. It was her and that licking flame in his chest that kept him awake at night.
Draco had always been the most rational person he knew. He never lied to himself and pretended that something could be possible that he knew couldn't. And yet, his brain would not let go of the image of Hermione. Smart, nice, angry, fiery Hermione. She took his mind hostage, she lived there day in day out, and she refused to let anyone else in. Even though he knew that it was impossible. They were impossible.
She could never possibly consider him. The faded mark on his arm reminded him of that every day.
It was a losing battle. Hermione deserved better than suffocating dreams and sleepless nights, the scars on his mind and the marks on his body.
Draco was not capable of love. He was just fooling himself.
But Hermione did not give up. After classes they shared, she would wait as he was packing up and walk after him until he lost her. His legs were longer than hers.
At dinner, she would stare holes into his back. He felt it every day. He wondered why she wasn't worrying about her NEWT's; they were only a month and a half away, after all. It didn't make sense.
Morning after morning when he looked into the mirror, he felt catapulted back into his Sixth year. The depression had faded into a slow slumber but now he was riddled with anxiety and nausea.
Love wasn't meant for him. His body's reaction just proved it.
Two long weeks had passed during which Draco slowly managed to get back into his old working rhythm. That was, until one late evening, he had to get a specific book.
Which was in the library. Where Hermione probably was.
There'd been a reason after all, why he always went to the library at first. All the resources were right there.
He kept working, until around half an hour before the library was due to close, it became clear to Draco that there was no way around it. He needed that book about Potions.
The castle was empty and tired. The halls were dark and vast, and his steps echoed around the high ceilings as he hurried up and down stairs and corridors, finally arriving at the library.
It was predictably quiet and empty; only especially vigorous and stressed students were sprinkled around the many tables in immediate sight. Draco didn't look around, his ears burning and heart pounding, and instead he veered straight towards the back section with the Potion's books.
He was too focused on finding the correct book to hear the footsteps approaching.
"What the hell is your problem, Draco?"
Draco froze, book in hand levitating above the shelf, when he slightly turned his head towards her. His ears were rushing, his breath coming in quick, uneven bursts.
She stood there with her arms crossed and the moon shining from her back. He saw nothing but her silhouette, her face a dark slate, but he knew that she was fuming.
His mind was a blank slate. He should have known she would find him if he came here. They had the same homework.
"I said, what the hell is your problem?! Answer me!"
Her tone was a whisper – they were still in a library after all – but there was still a screeching, shrill quality to it that made Draco flinch uncomfortably. How was he going to get out of this?
"Draco!"
She stepped closer, into the dim light above them, and he finally saw her face.
Her cheeks were red, her eyes angry slits that stared him down, and her steady stance was testament to the predicament of his situation. She was not going to let him get out of this.
An image of her, seven years ago, at age twelve standing in front of him flashed across his eyes; the hurt in her quivering lips and pale expression when he hurled that word at her like a bullet.
The flame in his chest, the one from his dreams where they screamed at each other without hearing, it flared up and drenched his body in an uncomfortably cold chill.
"I'm sorry", he blurted then, and she furrowed her brows just slightly. She stepped closer again.
"Sorry for what?", she asked in a low voice.
God, how he'd missed her voice. He closed his eyes and faced the shelf, laying the book flat down, his hand on top of it.
"Sorry for what I did to you. All those years. The bullying, and the taunting."
There it was again. That deadly silent bubble that turned everything but them into a blur. Hermione said nothing and his heart would not stop beating, beating, beating-
"I'm sorry for how I treated you. You don't deserve it. You never deserved it. I was wrong."
"And amongst all of these revelations, you decided to just ignore me forever? Is that how it works now?"
The tenseness in her voice was almost gone. There was an inkling of light curiosity. Draco turned his head to look at her, slowly, taking in all of her features.
The light brown, knowing eyes. Her rose lips, pressed into a thin line. The elegant slope of her neck. Her wild hair, toppled into a messy bun. And best of all, was the evergreen smell that always surrounded her, inviting him back with a warm, welcoming hug.
How he'd missed looking at her.
Yet, he had no words.
"I'm confused. It's nothing to do with you", he whispered, and he knew that was the wrong thing to say, because suddenly she was squinting again.
"It obviously has, Draco, so quit lying to me. Tell me what your bloody fucking problem is."
"There is no problem. Just leave me alone. Haven't I made it clear?", he replied in a cold voice, one that grated at his nerves and made him want to curl into a ball and die.
"You're bloody lying. Tell me what your problem is!"
"I told you, the world doesn't revolve around you!", he snapped back, and her jaw tensed, eyes flaring.
"I know it bloody doesn't! But you're avoiding me for now good reason! I thought we were study partners!"
"I can't bloody tell you!"
Hermione fell silent at that and Draco squeezed his eyes shut. Bloody hell. He was so stupid.
"Then show me."
His eyes snapped open.
"What?", he breathed, exasperated and Hermione nodded vigorously.
"Show me! If you can't tell me, then show me!", she demanded, and Draco shook his head. This was ridiculous. He needed to get away.
"I'm not going to show you anything, because there's nothing to show, Granger. Just leave it."
And with that, he turned to walk away, but before he could make even a second step, fingers curled around his wrist.
"Bloody show me! You can' just study with me for six months and then just disappear! That's not how this works!", she hissed, but Draco kept walking, muttering under his breath. His resistance was crumbling and he warmth of her hand around his arm was making it topple like a sandcastle under a bucket of water.
"Bloody tell me or show me what your fucking problem is!", she cried, loud enough to make others hear, and the string in his chest, the one that had been yearning to rip apart for a week now, it finally snapped.
Draco turned around and with the force of his body, he slammed her into the bookshelf and pressed his lips onto hers in a chaste, hurried, beautiful kiss that made his heart and knees tremble.
Later, Draco would not be able to remember how he didn't just fall over in happy delirium; he supposed, no one could just handle a white explosion of electricity and happiness shooting through his entire body into every corner, as if for just a moment, he was being delightfully electrocuted.
The kiss was short and sweet, and Draco pulled back mere seconds later, waiting for a repetition of Third Year. A slap, a kick between his legs, any kind of bodily harm he knew she was entirely capable of, and willing to.
He opened his eyes to find her cheeks tinged a sweet pink, her eyes round wonder, and her chest heaving rapidly against his.
"That's my problem", he breathed, still waiting for the inevitable punch. It never came.
"I think we can work on that", she whispered and suddenly, her arms looped around his neck and pulled him down and however sweet and chaste their first kiss was, their second was a fiery explosion.
He lapped at her mouth hungrily, like a drowning man would gasp for air, and he pulled her flush against him, every inch of her pressed against his body as he pushed her into the shelf, trapping her between himself and the books.
His hand was deeply buried in her curls, loosening the bun, just stroking and tugging at her soft strands and her fingers were scratching along his neck as if to get impossibly closer, clawing into him.
And dear Salazar, she was melting into his hold, procuring sweet, light pants for air in between the kisses he peppered on her and he knew he could keep doing this forever, anything to keep tasting her, feeling her body react to what he did, her evergreen smell making his head dizzy, he would never stop doing this, he knew he couldn't' stop even if he tried-
"The library's closing in ten minutes", a voice boomed loud and sudden, and they sprung apart hard enough to each slam into opposing bookshelves, panting and gasping for air.
"And no lewd behaviour like this in my library again. This is unacceptable."
Miss Pince's snappy voice had inflicted fear in Draco since his first year, and now it had grown into a full-festering, bottomless, existential terror at being caught kissingg Hermione Granger into a bookshelf.
"Sorry", Hermione breathed, and Miss Pince nodded, assessing them over the brims of her glasses. Then she turned to walk away.
"Have a good evening, Miss Granger. Mr. Malfoy."
And with that, she finally disappeared into the darkness of the empty library.
When Draco finally tore his gaze from where Miss Pince disappeared to, to look at Hermione, she was already looking back at him.
And there was that blinding smile he'd missed so much.