A/N: I know what you're thinking... I know...
YEAR 7
The bell for eight o'clock chimed in the gryffindor common room– snapping my attention more than anyone else's. First years' looked sleepily to the friends and traipsed toward bed, whilst Ron and Harry glumly played chess in the corner.
"Six times in a row. This isn't fair!" Harry threw his arms up. Ron grinned smugly and took a handful of silver sickles, pocketing his winnings.
"Rematch tomorrow?" He asked.
"You wish." Harry's scar wrinkled as he frowned. "Coming up, 'mione?"
"Uh… no. I think I'm going to stay and study for a bit longer."
Harry smiled softly. "Knew you'd be back, eventually."
The laugh I gave in response sounded more nervous than truthful, though boys never read too much into those things. Instead, they waved half heartedly and disappeared up the staircase, moaning about the mock exams coming up, and how they should be putting in effort if they wanted to become Auras.
I couldn't agree more, though I was in no frame of mind to color-code their timetables now.
No, not when I had something else festering in the shadows of my thoughts…
Draco Malfoy, to be precise.
I had promised myself I wasn't going to go– not wanting to buy into some dark-arts pyramid scheme that could (and most probably would) embarrass me in front of the entire school.
No, I definitely wouldn't be going.
Though as eight o'clock slowly ticked to half past, and half past reached nine, I felt myself grow impatient.
Impatient enough that I thought a walk would ease my nerves.
I gave Crookshanks a scruff behind the ears and stepped beyond the portrait of the Fat Lady, listening to her snore and sing in that not-so enchanted voice. The castle was dim now, with the exception of a few chattering ghosts, and I could almost hear my breath as I wandered in such silence – the castle echoing even the smallest of sounds.
Or the quietest of thoughts.
I wish I had a better grip on my self control, though curiosity got the better of me – and now here my footsteps wandered, venturing up the enchanted stairs and toward Slytherin tower.
Really, what was I expecting?
Why had I come?
I hesitated only as the cold air whistled, and my curls tangled in its breeze– feeling the icy slap of reality in my face, and also the realization that it was way past nine, and he had probably left.
I gradually rounded the corner and faced the loneliness of my prediction– now facing the question of 'what?'
What had I expected by coming here?
What was it that Draco Malfoy was going to cure, exactly?
I looked over the faraway gardens and admired The Black lake and the frockling Giant Squid that ebbed beneath its surface. Merpeople were lounging on the rocks that stretched like shattered metal near the greenery, singing a fine-tuned song and bidding the Grindylows a happy twilight, for a lilac was now painting the sky.
I admired them all, letting my arms dangle over the tower-balcony ledge, feeling the wind rustle my pleated skirt and the ribbons on my gray socks. Captivated entirely in Hogwarts– so much so, that I didn't even hear the footsteps behind me until they were close.
"You came after all."
I whirled in a circle, now pushing my back up against that balcony ledge.
Draco Malfoy stood with a malicious glint in his eye, white shirt loose and flailing with the breeze, Slytherin tie hanging carelessly around his neck. He had grown lankily into his clothes this year, and now toppled above me in a height that shunned all fear from the sky– casting shadows as he casted worry.
"I did." I tried to say calmly, though it inevitably followed a hard swallow – an audible 'glug' that sounded loud enough.
"I must admit," he said, now narrowing the space between us, "when you didn't turn up five minutes early, I thought all was lost. After all, Hermione Granger is never late, now, is she?"
I remained quiet, trying to bide my time for my next witty comment, all the while he circled in on me – a hunter finding its prey.
Really, why didn't I tell Harry where I was going?
Why hadn't Ron insisted on a bedtime story?
"But then I thought," Malfoy said with a cunning sort of amusement, "she's different now. She'll play a game like a mouse would with a cat… trying to outsmart all previous knowledge of traps and hidden paths in the walls. So I waited, and waited, and now you're here."
"Now I'm here." I reiterated, inching my chin upwards to try and not look afraid. "I hope you weren't waiting too long. I'd hate for you to have gotten your knitting needles out."
A smirk played his mouth better than I could ever play him, and it took all the air out of my lungs.
"Why am I here, Malfoy?" I then asked.
"You want help." He replied.
"I do?"
He nodded slowly. "You very much do."
"And how are you going to help me?"
There was an overturned stack of boxes against the wall, and he used it to sit on– one knee cocked a little higher, his elbow casually resting on it. "I'm going to distract you." He stated, as if it was the easiest answer in the world.
"Distract me?"
Okay, now this really was a stupid idea.
"If I needed a distraction, Draco. I'd open a book, I'd go sit outside, I'd fry my hand off! I wouldn't need your help doing that."
"Then why haven't you?"
"What?" I demanded.
"Why haven't you, Hermione." He said, now standing. "I can't remember the last time I've seen you focused during class, outside, or caring enough to even see a threat coming."
"That's not true!" I yelled, now breaking the silent war between us.
Though it was…
Heaven save me, it was all true.
"You need to control all that hate you have. You need a better way to manage your unraveling."
"And this is where you come in." I say, a fact rather than a question, trying to hide my wobbling lower lip.
"Yes." He replied, blunt and raw. A splash of vodka for my open cut.
"How?" I asked, but a whisper, but a word.
All the cockiness melted away, and something else returned – something shadowed, and equally enticing. Perhaps as enticing as a dark mark, or the carving of 'mudblood' on the arm of an innocent girl.
"You're going to use me."
I waited for a further explanation, as right now my head was fireworks, explosions and half-eaten people dragging their lifeless corpses across the floor – stress, it really was a rollercoaster, wasn't it?
Thankfully, he continued.
"Like a fighter would use an open ring to vent out his pain, and a singer would vent her frustrations on an open stage - you're going to do the same. All of that anger, rage, sadness… you're going to use me to get rid of it."
"You're crazy." I breathed. "I can't hit you every day to feel better."
"No," He wagered, trying his absolute hardest not to give into a smirk, "you're going to bridge that fine line between hate and lust, and let me distract you from the trauma."
My mind eventually caught up with his words, and now I was flattened entirely to the balcony railing – my rear all but hanging above the greenery. Draco placed one hand on the marble beside my hip, and the other on my lower back – keeping me from a plunging death.
"I don't… like you, like that." I whispered, though even saying the words aloud, did I mean them?
Draco stood before me now, not as the sullen, cruel boy who made Harry, Ron and I's life hell, but as a man. Or better yet, as six-foot something of wide muscle, phantom white hair and haunted features. Of everything I hadn't noticed until this moment, and everything after it.
"Tell me to stop and I will." He said, now inching close enough to share the same air.
I inhaled the hot breath from his mouth, and expelled a lungul that he received in response – a gentle share of one another's space, as intimate as it was strange.
Strange, as I now felt my body answer to his words, despite my head not entirely caught up with the concept.
Tell me to stop, he had said.
Though now I realized I didn't want to.
Now all I could think about was—
A clatter of noise came from the bottom of Slytherin tower, and I shoved him in retaliation – sending him back a few steps, just enough that I could swipe my wand from my knee-sock. A few hushed voices carried from the flight of stairs, and my heart began to hammer.
Though he was there, behind me again – just as he had been that day in the dining hall when a forbidden curse tainted the skin of my lips.
"Breathe." He whispered, and my body rejected the thought.
Someone was coming… who was coming?
Danger.
Malice.
Evil.
His much larger hand went down my arm and around my hand– gripping all of my fingers and wand to keep the shivering muscles steady.
"Breathe." He said again, lowering my arm for me.
I listened intuitively and inhaled a shaky breath, feeling all the light igniting inside of me as the muscle of his body brushed to my back, and ruffled up my pleated skirt. A little too high – the breeze tickling the backs of my legs, my thighs, my rear.
"What do you feel?" He asked.
"Frightened." I replied.
"Why?"
"I'm not safe." I admitted, not realizing the truth in my words until saying them now. "I'm never safe."
The voices from Slytherin tower dispersed, though I had relaxed long before acknowledging their exit. It had been him to keep my heart steady, my nerves balanced. I didn't shun him away, but turned slightly, feeling his lips brush the shell of my ear.
"You and I are going to enter a little agreement." He stated.
I listened carefully.
"We're going to meet here every Friday at nine o'clock, with the pretense that you're going to work through your issues. Hate me, spit at me in the corridor, I don't care - though up here, we're civil and you listen to what I say - understand?"
"I…"
"Understand?"
Think, Hermione. Think.
What is your head telling you?
What is your stomach screaming at you?"
"I understand."
"Good."
We stood there for a moment, and his breathing sounded a little deeper – a little huskier. I thought he was going to speak, though nothing came. Nothing but the sound of my own voice, as I begged to ask what had been gnawing at my insides–
"Why are you helping me? Why do you care?"
He went as still as the night, though his body still responded behind mine.
"I don't know." Draco whispered after some time, and his honesty was good enough.
He was unsure, as I was unsure.
I turned my cheek fully, and stared up at him from over my shoulder – batting my lashes unintentionally, though feeling their weight with this much emotion in my eyes.
I could feel the warmth penetrate through his icy stare, and the cage of his arms tightened around me.
"I will never kiss you." He said. "Don't expect it from me. It's my only rule."
"I didn't even think about it."
He smirked, and the intensity between us was shattered– freeing me enough to walk away from his body, and pull down my pleated skirt. Slytherin tower only whispering about what it had seen, and what it would continue to see every Friday for the foreseeable year.