Note: This is Larix' favourite song, but I think I like "I know him so well" more. :) Enjoy the chapter!

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Chess

Heaven Help My Heart

It was a very good thing that the Ravenclaw House was situated in a tower. This way, as Hermione stood by the window and gazed out into the darkness, she could pretend she was still in Gryffindor.

It wasn't that she regretted her choice, as surprising as it might be, thinking back to her initial reluctance to changing houses. When it came to NEWTs and studying, Ravenclaw was the best place to be. Where Gryffindors would have sat before the fireplace and moaned about their homework, Ravenclaws sat before the fireplace and moaned about their lack of homework. All right, perhaps not quite like that, but they were prone to study and discuss interesting theories about this or that they had picked up during the lessons or from some book. For Hermione it was pure joy to be studying with people who not only appreciated her thirst for knowledge, but were just like that themselves.

Acceptance and friends, a matter she had worried about, turned out to be a lot easier in reality. Draco, the Hogwarts Champion of Chess was welcomed with open arms and smiling faces (which meant he sometimes had to take cover from people who were too nice to him), and once Hermione had opened her mouth (and talked for three hours about the impact of one's mood to performing charms) , she was as good as a born Ravenclaw.

Even Terry Boot had warmed up towards her and apologized profusely, and after receiving her forgiveness, they had become good friends.

Yet making new friends and enjoying the pure joy of studying with them didn't take her mind off her old friends, those who had thrown disgusted glances her way whenever she had even mentioned homework, and later had pleaded on their knees to let them borrow her notes.

Now that she was officially in Ravenclaw, her Gryffindor friends chose to mostly ignore her. They had less lessons together, they ate at different tables, they slept in different towers. And even though she greeted them whenever they met in the hallways, and even though they sometimes nodded back to her, that was the full extent of their relationship.

And she missed them terribly.

Then of course there was Draco. They were friends, and yet at the same time they weren't. It was hard to explain, and she had trouble understanding it herself. Sometimes they would talk, about schoolwork or other matters, and then he would raise his eyes and give her a look that would make shivers run down her spine. The good kind of shivers. But then he would look away again, and she would wonder whether it had all been only in her mind.

As awful as not knowing what his feelings for her really were, what horrified Hermione a lot more were her feelings for him, and the fact that she knew exactly what they were.

Standing alone in the empty common room and staring at the reflection of the dying embers on the window glass, she heaved a heavy sigh.

"If it were love I would give that love every second I had
And I do
Do I know where he'll lead me to?
Did I plan
Doing all of this for the love of a man?"

No, she hadn't planned this. What's more, if someone had told her some time ago that she would be spending the last seven months of her seventh year in Ravenclaw pining for Malfoy (who also happened to be in Ravenclaw), she would have found it utterly ludicrous (and sent that person to Madam Pomfrey right away). But here she was now – alone in the darkness, singing about her unrequited love for Malfoy. It would have been so ridiculous, if it weren't so serious.

"Well I let it happen anyhow
And what I'm feeling now
Has no easy explanation, reason plays no part."

Hermione had no idea how these feelings had come to be. There had been the time when he had promised to win the game for her, and she had been so happy when he did. Then there was the time he had kissed her in front of the whole Hogwarts, and she had forgotten all about those hundreds of pairs of eyes watching them. She remembered the disappointment and hurt when he had called her just a friend, and the jolts of pleasure and excitement whenever he looked at her as if she was everything he would ever want.

But she remembered the moment she had realized that she loved him. It was the day they stepped through the window hole into the Ravenclaw common room, but this time not as a player and a second, but as two members of that house. She had squeezed his hand reassuringly a moment before, and when they stepped in he had turned towards her and smiled a smile that had lit up his whole face and brought a merry twinkle into his eyes. She had gasped, and almost spoken out her feelings in front of all the people in the common room, but fortunately Terry had chosen that exact moment to notice and greet them, thus saving her from the embarrassment, and making her realize he might not be that bad at all.

"Heaven help my heart
I love him too much
What if he saw my whole existence
Turning around a word, a smile, a touch?"

Because Terry was not always around to save her, and even if she managed to keep her mouth shut about her feelings, she was not accustomed to hide them, and as Padma had very kindly told her on her first night in the Ravenclaw girls' dormitory, it was practically written on her forehead. And although Malfoy could be many things (including the love of her life), he was not stupid.

"One of these days, and it won't be long, he'll know more about me
Than he should
All my dreams will be understood
No surprise
Nothing more to learn from the look in my eyes."

Or perhaps he already knew, but for some reason or other never mentioned it. Perhaps he did not want to break her heart, which sometimes felt so close to shattering into millions of tiny pieces, or maybe he was just playing with her, giving her false hope, waiting for her confession to then sneer at her and tell that he could never love a Mudblood like her.

No, she didn't want to believe that of him. He had changed, and anyone could see that, provided they looked. The Ravenclaws had noticed, thus them being so nice to him that he sometimes couldn't bear it. No. If he had still been what he was before, he would have never spent those days during the tournament in an unused classroom instead of his own comfortable bed, and he would have never abandoned Slytherin and brought the wrath of his former housemates upon himself.

Now they considered him a despicable traitor and a worthless renegade. The fact that he had kissed and was now friends with a filthy ex-Gryffindor Mudblood didn't help him win back their respect. Even Snape was a bit cold towards him, although those 12,000 housepoints he had won them had put him into a mood so great that he had decided it was time to loosen up towards the Gryffindors (because it was fun to give them a few points and then remark casually that they had no chance whatsoever to win the House Cup), but to maintain his evil reputation he had chosen to torture the Ravenclaws instead.

Whereas Hermione found it most unfair and felt a bit guilty to cause such undeserved misfortune to the poor Ravenclaws, Draco merely smirked whenever Snape took away any points from him, as well as whenever any of his old housemates tried to curse him in the hallways.

He always said good riddance whenever she dared to bring it up with him, but she could see he wasn't that indifferent about the whole deal.

"Why do I need them when I've got you," he had once said, making her blush furiously for the next fifteen minutes.

"Though I know that time is not my friend..."

The Christmas Holidays were to begin in only a couple of days, and she wondered whether she would be able to survive all that time without him. It wasn't that she wanted things to remain just the way they were right now because she wasn't in a very happy place at the moment, but she feared that the small chance to be together they had now would fade to nothing either over the holidays or after graduation.

"I'll fight it to the end
Hoping to keep that best of moments
When the passions start
Heaven help my heart
The day that I find
Suddenly I've run out of secrets
Suddenly I'm not always on his mind."

The practical girl that she was, and bearing in mind what had happened with Ron, Hermione didn't believe in happily ever after. But she believed in happily for a while, and beautiful memories for later on. Whenever she started to miss her old friends too much, she recalled all the things they had done together, all the great times they had had, and it made it a lot easier.

"Maybe it's best to love a stranger
Well that's what I've done - heaven help my heart."

A stranger no more, her heart was telling her. With all the time they had spent together, with all the stories they had told each other about their lives, it felt like she knew him better than anyone else, and vice versa. Yet, he did have his secrets and mysteries, and she didn't really mind.

Outside the window snowflakes had started to fall. Ever since the end of the tournament, the unusually cold weather had withdrawn, and instead of the biting frost it was now perfect for all kinds of winter fun. This reminded her of the snowball fight she had had with Draco the very same day, which had ended up with the two of them rolling around in the snow, and a delicious cup of hot cocoa later on.

With another sigh she opened the window, and catching a few snowflakes on her palm, she watched them melt.

"Heaven help my heart," she whispered to the swirl of whiteness in the dark night.