Project Doom

Part II

By: FortunaMinor

Hermione, despite the fact the she never slept past seven o'clock, found herself crawling out of bed at half past eight; she would rather die than to allow Draco Malfoy to see her in her night clothes, especially feeling poorly as she did. Showering quickly before dressing, brushing her teeth and pulling her hair into a sloppy ponytail made her look halfway presentable, though she felt anything but.

Precisely at nine, the expected knock came and Hermione pulled the door open revealing Draco to be looking as he always did—impeccably dressed without one hair out of place; she thought it should be illegal to look so flawless when she felt so utterly wretched.

"Good gods, Granger, are you alright?"

In that moment, Hermione Granger deeply desired to get into her bed and never get up. "I'm feeling a bit under the weather." After assuring him that she was well enough to continue working on their project, they settled down and did exactly that, though it didn't last for long. Hermione, though she tried valiantly to act as though nothing were wrong, was feeling more and more ill with each passing minute. An hour into their session, she had been about to apologise to Malfoy for the inconvenience and beg off in order to crawl into her bed and die, her cellular phone rang from her bedside table.

"Excuse me," she mumbled while he looked at the thing curiously. "Hello?"

"Are you ill?" Helen Granger asked at once.

Hermione winced—did she truly sound so terrible? "I'm a bit under the weather," she repeated to her mother as she'd told Draco.

"You sound horrible."

"Thank you, mum," Hermione said before giving a hacking cough.

"Are you in bed? I worry about you being off alone, and now you're ill…"

"I'll be fine, mum, but no I'm not in bed. I'm working on my Transfigurations project and my partner is sitting at my desk—probably impatiently—so is there anything in particular that you needed?"

"Is your Transfiguration partner a boy?"

Hermione sighed as the headache she was developing blossomed full force, "Yes, mum."

"Is he handsome?"

"We are not having this conversation, mum. I have to go."

"Wait, Hermione," Helen said before her daughter could hang up, "I wanted to tell you that your father and I will be attending a dinner party tonight so I'm afraid we'll have to cancel."

"Cancelling plans with your only child? What kind of mother are you?" Hermione asked, though she certainly wasn't upset—she would go to bed the moment Malfoy left and she wouldn't move until Monday morning.

"The kind that hopes your Transfiguration partner is handsome; goodbye, darling."

Hermione set the phone down, willing herself to forget her mother's words.

"Everything alright?" Draco asked from behind her; she whirled to face him.

"Oh, sorry," she said hastily with a sniffle. "My parents have cancelled dinner this evening."

Draco smirked and began gathering their research materials—taking both the notes he'd compiled and hers; she wouldn't be able to do a thing without them. "Then I recommend that you take to your bed immediately; you look and sound dreadful. I'll see you Tuesday at seven."

Draco saw himself out, and Hermione couldn't find the energy to care that he'd taken her work; it was unlikely that she'd be up for intense research in the next couple of days. Hermione didn't bother changing into her discarded pyjamas; she simply shucked off her jeans and slid into bed wearing only a t-shirt. As sick individuals are prone to do, Hermione slept for a great deal of the day, waking only to go to the loo and to answer the phone assuring Harry that it was unnecessary for him to come to see about her.

She was only half-awake when she heard a tentative knock at her door—it had been so light, she thought it might have been someone knocking on her neighbour's door. She closed her eyes and began to drift off once more, but when her door opened she sat up abruptly. Draco Malfoy was standing in her room and he was holding a brown paper bag.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

"I wasn't quite asleep," she said honestly before considering what a frightful mess she undoubtedly presented.

He moved to her bedside table and deposited the bag onto it, she thought he looked a bit nervous, but she dismissed it as a hallucination due to fever.

"I've gone by the infirmary," he explained. "There's enough Pepper-Up to last you until Monday, but if you're still ill by then, the mediwitch would like to see you. I've also brought some soup so you don't starve yourself all weekend."

She was startled by this unexpected thoughtfulness, and made to get out of bed, "Thank you; you didn't have to…"

Draco abruptly turned away from her, making a point of looking anywhere other than directly at her—Hermione was completely bewildered…until she realised she was standing on her jeans, rather than standing in them, and that her legs were completely bare. When the blood rushed to her face in what had to be the fiercest blush in the history of the world, Hermione felt dizzy; she hastily slipped into her jeans and plopped onto the bed. The creak of her bed made Malfoy turn toward her, and though Hermione wanted to keep her eyes on the floor, she chanced a glance at him. His normally pale cheeks had a tinge of pink to them and he was looking at her, though studiously avoiding her gaze.

"Make sure you take that Pepper-Up right away," he told her. She noted that his tone was exceptionally light which, as she had recently learned, was a tone he took only when he was extremely uncomfortable.

"Thank you," she managed feebly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have dinner, cure myself of this cold, and then die from embarrassment."

Draco chuckled as he made to turn the doorknob; he dared to look directly at her…judging by the intense flush on her cheeks that was entirely unrelated to her illness, he didn't doubt her sincerity in the slightest. "You can beat yourself up a bit, but you won't die, well, maybe if you don't take that potion I went to the trouble of bringing, but I have it on good authority that it's physically impossible to die from embarrassment or boredom." She looked beyond miserable and he resisted the urge to laugh at her, "Come on, Granger—your legs are rather more shapely than I would have suspected."

Her eyes snapped to his and he saw annoyance in the brown orbs, "Goodbye, Malfoy." He left without another word, only a small snicker at her expense.

Once Hermione's ears had stopped steaming from the Pepper-Up, she took full advantage of Draco's thoughtfulness and had a small bowl of the most delicious chicken noodle soup she'd ever had; she wondered where he'd gotten it.

A knock at her door nearly caused her to drop the bowl, and Hermione didn't have time to answer it before Harry Potter opened it and moved in immediately.

"Harry!"

"You sound much better," he told her, eyeing her critically.

"I only said one word," she told him flatly.

"And that one word sounded much better—honestly, I could hardly understand you on the phone. Did you take something? Who brought you soup?"

Hermione didn't like to be questioned in a rapid-fire manner, and she was even less inclined to answer her best friend for fear of his reaction to her answers.

"Well?" he said impatiently.

Hermione sighed, "Malfoy stopped by about an hour ago…"

"So?"

"So," she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, "he nipped by the infirmary for some Pepper-Up and brought it by."

Harry looked genuinely perplexed, "So Malfoy brought you potion," he stated, seeking clarification.

"Yes."

"And soup?"

"Yes."

"Anything else you need to tell me before the world comes to an end? I thought I felt the temperature drop drastically…hell must have frozen over."

"He saw me in my knickers."

"What?"

Hermione spent the next few minutes telling Harry the whole sad, sorry tale. When she had finished, he had the nerve to laugh at her. "You can't expect me not to laugh, Hermione," he chided. "Were they nice knickers? Or were you wearing your 'laundry day' ones?"

"I may be a bit ill," she said furiously, "but I am still quite capable of using a variety of very inventive hexes."

Wisely heeding her warning, Harry ceased his line of questioning.

When Hermione settled in next to Malfoy during their Transfiguration class on Monday, he turned to her and said, "Well at least you wore clothes to class. I take it you're feeling better?"

Ignoring his jibe, she said, "Much better, thank you."

Professor Trumbull, who was quickly becoming public enemy number one amongst the freshman class, entered the room and began lecturing almost immediately. After class had ended, Hermione gathered her things and set off to her last class of the day—Theoretical Arithmancy, a notoriously difficult course.

"You've got another class, then?" Draco said as he fell into step next to her.

"Theoretical Arithmancy, on the other side of campus," she grumbled.

"You would take that course," Draco said with a snort. "Blaise Zabini failed the prerequisite examination."

"And you?"

"Refused to take it. Honestly, if he failed I had absolutely no hope."

Hermione grinned; the test had been complex bordering on obscene. Most students failed the exam, and despite the fact that Blaise Zabini had been nearly as talented as she had been in Arithmancy, Hermione couldn't find herself surprised that he'd failed—the test was just that tough. She'd passed, but only just.

"You aren't missing much," Hermione said ruefully, "it's like a N.E.W.T. examination every day—the professor actually laughs if you come up with a wrong answer."

Draco looked horrified, "I'll tell Zabini he should be bloody thrilled that he failed."

The pair continued their idle chitchat until Hermione arrived at the classroom door; Draco, snickering at the time, wished her luck before setting off in the direction of the residence halls. It was halfway through Theoretical Arithmancy—which she was contemplating dropping—when she realised that Draco Malfoy had walked her to class. The unpleasant laugh of Professor Deerbourne brought her out of her thoughts; a girl in the front row was near tears and Hermione had to resist the urge to tell the villain at the head of the room that he was an arse. When he finally dismissed the students, Hermione thought she'd never been so relieved to see the end of a class.

After stopping by her advisor's office and filling out the necessary paperwork to remove the class from her schedule—when asked for the reasoning behind her decision, she claimed that the instructor was a sadist and that she was inclined to start a petition in order to remove him from the faculty—Hermione went up to her room.

"What's gotten you so amused?" Draco asked from behind her as she unlocked her door and pushed her way into her room.

She didn't question his presence—he lived down the hall and it was possible he was on his way out, "I've just dropped Theoretical Arithmancy."

"You sound rather proud of the fact; I can't believe you would sound proud about giving it up."

"Oh, no—I feel like the worst sort of quitter, but that's neither here nor there," she said dismissively as she tossed her bag onto the chair at her desk. She smiled, noting his confused look, "But I had to give a reason for why I dropped the class." When she had explained fully, even he was smirking.

"It would be a better pastime than that house-elf rights club you organised."

Hermione no longer took offence to anything said against her failed attempts at S.P.E.W.—it had all been said before, and she had practically been a laughingstock. "Yes, well. He would deserve it; he's so foul."

"What are you doing this evening?"

"Actually—I'm due to meet my mother in just a few minutes. She said something about shopping…"

"You look thrilled," he drawled sarcastically.

"Of course I do—I love having my appearance nitpicked by my mother."

Draco tried to suppress a snicker, and failed rather spectacularly, "I'll leave you to it, then. See you tomorrow."