Filler filler, short and not sweet.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but this twisted so-called "plot".
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Hermione smiled down at the small red 'O' glistening above her Runes assignment.
"How did you do?" she turned to Theo and asked.
He was grimacing as he looked at something above her head. "That's her, isn't it? The Bowtruckle?"
She glanced over her shoulder and sighed. "That's Mandy, yes."
"Pff." He sneered and looked away. "Nothing special, is she? You know, she actually does look a bit like a Bowtruckle."
"Theodore."
"What? Look at her, all long and twiggy."
"You're being a prat," Hermione snapped.
He stuck his tongue out at her. "I got an A."
"An A?!" She stared at him, appalled. "How is that possible?"
"I was distracted," he sniffed.
She frowned and began putting her books back into her bag. "N.E.W.T.s are just a few months away, you know?"
"Five months, Hermione. Five."
"Still!" she cried, "You can't let yourself get distracted so easily..."
She spent the entire journey to the dungeons telling him about how he must start to get serious about his studies. Perhaps she overdid it... perhaps she overdid it a lot. It just felt so damn good to sound like an obnoxious swot that she kept breaking into giggles in the middle of her tirade.
"You're so absurd," he observed as he laughed with... at... her.
Theo could say all he wanted about Mandy, swayed by the inexplicable bitterness that had taken him over, but there was no denying that she was quite a looker.
At dinner, she and Malfoy walked into the Great Hall like they were the guests of honour. She was nearly as tall as him – slender and modelesque – and she kissed his cheek before they parted for their respective tables. Malfoy loped over to where Theo was sat, brushing his hair to the side and smirking as the latter made a face. He pointed towards the dish of leek soup, and Theo, without missing a beat, pushed the dish further down the table.
"Arsehole!"
Ginny threw down her bag onto the floor with unnecessary force, and she fell onto the bench next to Hermione.
"Fucking Potter," she snarled as she piled food onto her plate – an amount that would've made Ron proud to call her his sister.
"Something on your mind, Ginny?" Hermione asked cautiously.
"That – that moron – that complete tosspot – isn't going to be here for Christmas!"
Her exclamation was shrill with righteous anger.
"What do you mean?"
"He's going to bloody China!"
"China?" Hermione sputtered.
"That's what I said, didn't I? Both him and Ron, as a part of their training program."
"But – but – China?"
"Yeah! To learn some secret combat techniques." Ginny put on a ridiculous deep voice and continued: "That's all I can tell you about it, Gin. Once in a lifetime opportunity, Gin. I'm sure you understand, Gin. Bloody sodding wretched–"
"But during Christmas? Can't they go any other time?"
"No. Apparently that's the only time Shifu is willing to give."
"Tch," Hermione made a sympathetic face, "I'm sorry, Ginny."
"Bah," she grumbled. "I thought we'd finally get some time together again! And mum was so looking forward to having a full house! Stupid, stupid, ah!"
She ate in thunderous silence while Hermione shook her head madly in warning to anyone who tried to ask what the matter was.
"I can only come by after the twenty-eighth," Theo said, "I'll be in Brittany for Christmas."
Hermione frowned. "What on earth will you be doing in Brittany?"
"Visiting Narcissa. The Malfoy's have a lovely little place on the coast."
"I... see."
"Yeah. She's not been keeping very well; a bit down in the dumps." Theo – surprisingly – grinned. "Draco seems to think that having me around makes things less uncomfortable. Isn't that simply mad?"
"Ho hum," she drawled.
It was a cold Sunday evening, and they were thawing in the library after returning from Hogsmeade. He'd stretched himself across three chairs, with his soggy boots propped up on the arm of the last one, despite Hermione's overt disapproval.
"Anyway, so let's see if I have this right: Your Aunt Malorie is married to Jack, and they have a nine year old son named Jeremy, who's the sweetest little boy you know."
"Yes."
"Then there's Pat, Jack's spinster sister who hates your mother, and by extension, you."
"Yes."
"Sounds like a grand old time."
Hermione groaned, and Theo tugged at a lock of her hair and laughed.
"By the end of my visit," he declared, "I promise she'll love you simply because you brought me into her life."
"Oh, bugger off!"
He laughed again as she stood up. She tapped his head with her notebook and disappeared behind the bookshelves, in search of a book about incarceration spells for her Defence Against the Dark Arts essay. She skimmed her fingers across leather-bound spines, as a monotonous thump thump thump commenced on the other side of the shelf.
That infuriating twit was obviously knocking his boots together in an attempt to draw her away from the books. Well, she wasn't going to oblige him.
Thump thump thump
She wasn't going to think about how flecks of damp dirt might be falling onto the chair.
Thump thump thump
Thump thump thump thump thump thump
"Draco?"
She froze, with a book half pulled out in her hand.
Thud! – The sound of boots hitting the ground. Then there was a noise of a chair being pulled back, the swish of a cloak being removed, and a heavy sigh. Followed by silence.
"You alright there?" Theo asked, concern evident in his tone.
"No," Malfoy replied, crisply. Coldly.
Theo sighed. "Look, don't pitch a fit, but you should know that Her–"
"They cut his hair off."
Another short silence befell them. One a penny, two a penny – Hermione gently pushed the book back into place.
"What?" Theo breathed.
Malfoy's voice was gritty with emotion. "Those Azkaban arsewipes cut Lucius Malfoy's hair off. Can you even picture it?"
"Draco..."
"He was standing there in that hideous, filthy grey uniform, his hair shorn... and he – he smiled. You know what he said? Guess, Theo. Just guess what he said to me!"
"D-Draco..."
"He said, 'oh you turned out to be the most Slytherin of us Malfoy men.' Ha!" Malfoy's laugh was like the sound of glass getting crushed under your shoe. "The first thing he's said to me since – since he found out that I'd deflected."
Another stretch of quite.
"He asked about mother, of course. And he asked about you. Told me to give you his regards, worthless as they are. Here you go then, Theo. Have his regards. Do what you will with his bloody regards–"
SLAM! It sounded like a fist hitting wood.
"Then he asked me how my lessons are going. My fucking lessons. That hollow husk of the man I used to know asked – asked about –"
Malfoy broke off with a choking gasp, and Hermione's blood turned to ice. She needed to leave. She ought to have left ages ago.
Slowly and delicately, she peeked around the side of the shelf. Just as she'd hoped, both boys had their back to her. Theo's spine was so straight with tension it looked painful. And Malfoy's was completely stooped, with his face buried in his hands. She cast a muffling charm on her feet, and quickly darted out from her hiding place and streaked across them, charging down the aisle in a jog.
But of course, because she was trying to be as careful and stealthy as possible, her foot hit a chair just as she was a few metres away from turning the corner. The subsequent noise was like nails against a blackboard.
She stopped dead, filled with unimaginable horror. There was absolute silence behind her... but she knew – oh, she just knew – that they had to be staring at her.
Hermione broke into a run. She ran like she was being chased out of the Ministry of Magic by a mass of angry Death Eaters. She ran without stopping until she was clutching at her ribs and panting outside the common room door. She walked in, her limbs feeling like jelly, and climbed upto her room.
Only then did she unfreeze her mind to reflect; to fully realise what a terrible thing she'd done by eavesdropping on such a private conversation. Malfoy's gasp kept ringing in her ears, and she sat down heavily on her chair.
xxx
Early on Monday morning, Theo was waiting for her in the common room. She approached him with shame and apprehension, but all he said as he handed her her bag was, "You'd left this in the library."
"Thanks," she muttered.
He looked down at her with tired eyes; she bit her lip and looked away.
She didn't get to say anything to him as they walked down to breakfast, since Luna had been waiting for him outside the common room. She saw Malfoy in potions, way on the other side of the classroom. She couldn't stop herself from glancing at him over and over again – as he chopped dandelion roots, as he stirred his potion, as he measured pickled slugs. She waited for him to glower, sneer, or throw a hex at her. But nothing came her way.
At the end of the day, when the whole batch was in the common room, she waited for him to charge over to her and scream. The anticipation had her making all sorts of ridiculous mistakes in her homework. And yet, midnight struck and nothing happened. He remained ensconced in his room... or wherever he was.
xxx
The next day, while she and Theo were walking by the lake, she asked, "How angry is he?"
The sun was blazing behind them and their misshapen shadows stretched long and sharp on the ground before.
"Honestly?" His sigh was a physical thing: A murky cloud of mist on that cold, cold day. "I don't think he has any energy left to be angry with you."
Hermione pulled at the ends of her muffler until they were at exactly the same length. A slip of mist escaped her lips, too: Aureate and wispy. She wrapped her fingers around Theo's elbow, giving it a subtle squeeze. The corners of his mouth pulled up in the saddest smile she'd ever seen.
The topaz yellow sky diffused as it touched the ground; the evening's haze curled and coiled around Hogwarts like tidal waves. Like angry smoke. Like tendrils of fiendfyre. She could imagine the heads of serpents and dragons and frenzied beasts howling and roaring amid the fog, their gaping, gnashing mouths reaching towards her as she whizzed across on the back of a broom, holding tightly onto Malfoy...
(...Three hundred and sixty five days ago, Hermione and Harry had been practicing seamless apparation while under his cloak. Cold, scared, miserable, broken after Ron's apparent desertion...)
Now: She was standing outside the owlery, and a thick stare of owls flew over her head.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Their shadows slid across her one by one, each tearing off a piece of her. They ripped and ripped and ripped away at her until she was left bare before the world... until she was nothing but a wilted weed of a girl who'd been tormented all night by visions of a giant snake bursting out of the skin of a dead woman.
Flitwick introduced them to Protean charms in the last week before the hols, and Hermione was utterly bored. She'd completed the day's task within seconds, obviously, and tried helping Neville with his... in vain. She left him in Ginny's reasonably capable hands, and got herself completely immersed in doodling an elaborate pattern made out of runes. By the end of the lesson, her rune-mandala was the size of a cantaloupe.
Walking out of the classroom, she smiled idly as Neville grumbled about her having the audacity to master the charm back in fifth year. Ginny countered by asking him why he hadn't come to terms with the fact that Hermione was a bloody genius yet.
Theo was only a few steps ahead, flanked by the blond heads of Luna and Malfoy. They appeared to be having a pleasant exchange, if the grins she saw every time they turned to look at each other were anything to go by.
Terry Boot jumped in, remarking that Ravenclaw had been robbed by the sorting hat. Ginny retorted that, no, sorry – Hermione's nerves were completely scarlet and gold.
Up ahead, Luna wrapped her arm around Theo's waist and said something that turned the tops of the boy's cheeks bright pink. Malfoy tossed his head back, and the sound of his laughter bounced all around the passageway.
"Sort this out, Hermione," Terry urged, "Ravenclaw or Gryffindor? Where do you think you really belong?"
She chuckled mindlessly in lieu of a response. I belong in bed, she wanted to say. In bed with a book and a mug of spiked hot chocolate.
How was the term over? How had four entire months gone by? How was she sitting in a carriage, racing towards the Hogsmeade station?
Hermione felt like she was a tiny, flea-sized creature sitting inside a vast automaton, screaming and screaming at it to slow down, but this body – this independent thing – kept moving, jumping out of the coach, walking along the platform, climbing onto the train...
Had she really lived through everything that had happened since that spatula-portkey had brought her back from Australia?
Theo's hand was warm and steady on her shoulder as he gently pushed her into a compartment. She sat by a window, staring at the turrets and towers that rose out of a thicket of trees in the distance.
Her friends poured in one by one: There was Ginny, looking as lost as Hermione felt, and Luna happy in the circle of Theo's arms. There was Neville, leafing through the latest edition of The New Journal of Herbology, and Hannah by his side.
"Where's Draco?" Theo asked Dean, who was the last to enter.
"Dunno," he replied as he pulled his black woollen hat off his head, "I think I saw him with Mandy Brockle–"
"Oh sodding Salazar," Theo groused.
The train's whistle sounded, accompanied by the long drawn hiss of steam... and then they were off, with the dull chug-chug gradually gaining speed. Hermione turned away from the window, dizzy with motion sickness.
"Exploding snap, Hermione... you in?" Dean asked.
She shrugged. "Sure."
"I thought we could play gobstones again," Luna chimed in hopefully.
"You mean your barmy version? No thanks!"