I'm putting this chapter up because I'm in a great mood.
I'm running away for the weekend, so I'll put this up.
Ok so here's the deal with this chapter.
It has a happy ending. The next chapter, whether this is good news for those who love angst-or bad news for those dying for fluff-will get fucked up and dramatic again.
Enjoy!
(And thank you SO MUCH to my reviewers Anne and Satannpink for their exemplary support!)
You make my inbox happy!
The history of forming medical ailments for swelling was no longer enthralling Hermione.
Instead, her gaze was drawn towards the window, the teasing sunlight dancing through it.
Glancing around, she noted that there was none other, even Madame Pince seemed to have stepped out.
She walked towards the window- stretched from floor to ceiling- and opened the iron clasp that sealed out her sunshine.
Stepping out onto the ledge, Hermione gasped as her skin met the crisp September air, slowly warming as the day went on.
The grounds were scattered with students- none that noticed her.
She leaned against the window's frame, closed her eyes, enjoyed the simple pleasure of the sunlight upon her tired eyelids, allowed her creased forehead to relax.
"Are you going to jump or not?"
Pausing heaven for just a moment, Hermione turned to see Malfoy behind her, arms crossed, wand in hand, broom beside him. There was something… odd… something off… about him. He had a half smile on his face, and his eyes were soft… in her newly found paranoia, Hermione questioned if he was high…
Hermione honestly wasn't in the mood; she didn't even have a passionate response.
She cocked her head and looked at him blankly.
"I don't know. Are you going to push me?"
Flinching at her odd reaction, Malfoy scoffed in order to regain his composure. "It's tempting, but I figure you might splatter across the whole field and kill all the grass."
Hermione scrunched up her face and faced the firmament once more, speaking to him behind her. "That was weak… What on Earth are you doing here, anyways?"
Suddenly Hermione felt him grasp her roughly, her eyes and mouth open wide in shock.
He leaned into her ear and muttered "Pushing you," before putting his weight against her and sending them both plunging over the edge, his broom forgotten.
Just as Hermione was starting to enjoy the thrill- a hand found its way to her arm and she pulled her face off the book in front of her.
Looking up, she saw Neville glancing at her curiously with concern in his eyes.
"I'm sorry I had to wake you up Hermione, you looked happy but… uhmmm…" his voice dropped, "Madame Pince was getting peeved because you… uhh, snored…"
Smiling slightly, Hermione thanked Neville and he backed away from her, causing him to walk into a bookshelf and earn a shush from Pince for his profanity.
Hermione rubbed her face.
Everything felt so real. The sunshine on her face… It felt better than real life, it felt like heaven, and actually made her happy. Is it still living if it's in a dream?
And Malfoy… Well, no wonder he looked nice. He wasn't real. And he still turned out to be a prick!
But why would her subconscious project an image of Malfoy like that?
Ignoring herself, a skill many should be jealous of, if they were aware that Hermione was particularly adept at ignoring the traitrous corners of her mind, Hermione decided to try it again.
She walked cautiously over to the window, reached for the clasp… nothing different so far.
She glanced around behind her and across the field, she stepped out.
She had imagined there was a ledge.
There was no enjoyment this time, only the hope for a scream to rise from her throat, an arm to wake her gently-
The arm around her waist was her savior, but it was not for waking.
As gravity rearranged itself, Hermione was pushed against the broomstick and the rider.
Should her subconscious be right, she might go mad.
And as Malfoy wrapped his arm around her waist, she questioned if she just might be already
-
Something had told him to glance to the library windows. It was completely random, but he would never accept it as a sign, just something completely random.
He had been doing his rounds, circling the school until it was time for lunch.
He had seen the mousy brown haired girl plunge, and did not question why, not why she dropped, not why he knew to look, not why it was an immediate, compassionate reaction to fly as fast as he could to catch her.
The fact that it was Granger changed nothing. Because he hadn't done anything. She just happened to interrupt his route, that's all.
As he clung her against him, he noticed she was pushing herself into him- which surprised him. But since it was Granger, he ignored it. Because chances are she wanted him like the rest of the school, and chances are she would deny it the second he brought it up.
Might as well have some fun with her, because even though she had been driving him nuts, it was interesting to him to see that someone listened when he rambled off linguistically.
Steering them towards the lake, he stopped right in the middle, and Hermione stiffened.
Suddenly he had her on the edge of the broom, his hands against her shoulders, and he leaned forward into her ear. "Can I push you?"
Hermione felt that her head was going to explode. Her mouth was agape, and she glanced back at Malfoy, but she saw the mirth on his face and she immediately put malice into her own smirk.
Not bothering to respond, Hermione grabbed his wrists and used her momentum to pull him into the lake with her.
Malfoy's girlish squeal was silenced as he submerged, and Hermione surfaced, laughing as she spat the water from her mouth, the lake water warm from baking in the sunlight.
As he surfaced beside her with a strand of plant growth in his hair, Hermione was almost unable to stay afloat in her laughter. "Draco Malfoy, unable to hold onto his broom! Just whatever will Slytherin do without you?"
He glared at her, glanced to the far off spectators on the shore, who seemed to walk away quickly- and reached into his pockets for his wand- when he remembered that he had taken advantage of the wand holder on his broom- which was levitating ten feet above the surface of the water. "Shut up Muddy, you're the one who got us into this mess."
"Moi? I think not, gopher brain."
"Oh really, should I have just let you splatter across the cement?"
Hermione blushed. "I didn't mean to jump, for your information." But she had too much pride to admit to her folly, and instead she was satisfied with splashing him in the face and pulling out her wand.
"Accio broom!"
When nothing happened, Malfoy scoffed. "You don't think I wouldn't have a security lock on it? It won't answer to you."
Hermione sent him a seething look. "Then you do it!"
But Malfoy faked a concerned look, "Well golly gee Her-mi-on-e, I don't seem to have my wand on me." With that, he grabbed hers and pushed her away when she tried to retrieve it. "Accio broom!"
When still nothing happened, Hermione mocked him. "My wand won't work for you; I've got a security lock on it."
With that final remark, Draco presented it to her roughly. Hermione glanced at it, then him, then the wand again. "You know, if I take the spell off it, and you get your bloody broom, I don't think I'll be getting a ride on that broom. Or my wand back."
"Exactly right, Mudblood."
She scowled at him and treaded water in a circle, trying to decide which shore was closer-which was futile because he somehow got them in the immediate center of the lake- and started swimming towards land.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm getting out of here before you say something else useless."
Immediately Malfoy was swimming beside her and shoved her head underwater. When she resurfaced, he was meters ahead. "No one shows up a Malfoy!"
Scoffing at his cockiness, Hermione put on a burst of speed and caught up with him just as he reached the shore. And even though Hermione was the first up- "Ha! I told you!"
Hands on her hips, Hermione looked at him unbelievingly. "I was here first!"
As Malfoy clambered clumsily next to her-his robes were heavy and uncomfortable- he stood before her and glared contemptuously down at her. "You can't defeat me."
Shoving her into the sand, he tickled her sides with one hold, held her arm with the other and, breathless, she tried to roll him off of her, squirming into the soft earth below her.
When she managed to get him to stop, she looked up at him with a half-smile…
Until she saw he was smiling back.
Creasing her forehead quizzically, Hermione looked straight into his eyes and asked- "Why are you being so different?"
Something immediately clamped shut over the softness in his eyes as he pushed himself off her, roughly, stood up, and started dusting off his robes, futile for the fact that it was more mud than sand.
Hermione looked up at him, outraged, and he denied her. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're acting different to me. Why? A few days ago… a few days ago you were awkward being in the same room as me. Why… why all this?"
He glanced down at her, his nose in the air. "If this is me being different, I must be a new kind of different every day. Does that make sense to you?"
Hermione nodded, and looked out across the lake emptily.
"Hermione… do you see any benefit to keeping your animosities?"
Hermione scowled up at him, ready to divulge into a rant of how he treated her. That if he was going to be a bitch then she would respond accordingly.
But he glanced down at her seething rage and continued with a blank face. "I guess I do too."
Malfoy called his broom to him with a simple wave of his hand. Everything would have been fine if she had not made it so serious; he was just toying with her.
He dropped her wand in front of her. "You look like a drowned rat, Mudblood. I hope I am the reason you are so very miserable."
With that, Malfoy left her to cry, and as she watched him walk away, she noticed that he did not look back to her as he mounted his broom and flew away, out over the forbidden forest- just as Ron had done not so long ago.
If he can't make a big deal about it then neither can I.
Deciding that walking in her drowned glory would be suitable for her thoughts, Hermione made her way up to the castle. At one point she stopped-and she saw the youngest Weasley fuming towards her.
Before Hermione could respond, Ginny had shoved her roughly. "You think I'm stupid for having stupid teenage fun with Harry? You're the one romping around with Malfoy! I don't believe you!"
Hermione couldn't tell if she saw the slap coming or not, but seconds after impact she wished she had. As Ginny stormed away, Hermione collapsed onto the steps below her.
She wondered how long she could stay there, if she would feel better if she just let herself cry to the sympathetic cement below her.
Hearing a soft sound beside her, her tears cleared enough for her to see the proud form of Malfoy just before he spat in front of her.
"Could you get any more pathetic?"
Hermione shook her head, looked to the ground below her, rejected by everything and everyone.
When she raised her arm to wipe her face, she noticed that Draco was still standing before her, but did not look up to him, instead crying out her anguish, hiccupping. "Why torment me, Malfoy, isn't breaking me enough?" Finding some kind of pride in her words, she gained the audacity to look up to him with adamancy.
Offering a gloved hand out to her, offered a blank expression, he gestured for her to rise.
Placing her hand in his, her tears ceased, and she only stared at him.
"I will not engage us into another argument of what is alike and what is in common- only that the idea that there is more behind this trivial rivalry we compel ourselves in… whatever it is, it is real. I will not have you jumping out a window before I can figure out why."
Hermione stared into him, trying to memorize every word he said.
"It is…" Hermione stabled her voice. "It is something that… that must be found out. It will drive me mad, and I need to know why."
Malfoy took his hand back from hers and held the door open for her. "Precisely. We have every reason to pursue this- this… discovery. It is imperative to understand, for our own peace of minds."
I am not alone…