Disclaimer: I am convinced this is a mechanism to drive all fanfiction authors into depression. No, you imbeciles, I own nothing. Unfortunately, that includes Tom Felton :(. My sole hope is that someday… someday… my husband will be blonde, blue-eyed, built and British. 4 Bs baby…
When Potter and Weasley drop by their dorm later on to visit, he immediately notices her discomfort around the redhead. The last he had heard, in the immediate post-war celebrity status the trio had enjoyed, the two were attached at the hip and headed on the next train to paradise.
Obviously his information is out of date.
He and the bookworm were on opposite ends of their sitting area silently reading a book when her two sidekicks knocked on the door. Granger put down her book on the coffee table and got up to answer the door. Draco groaned internally when he heard Potty's voice resound throughout the room. Apparently the gods were decidedly against his enjoying a peaceful first night back.
"Well hello, Miss Head Girl."
"Oh, shut it, Harry. Get over here! I haven't seen you all day!"
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her embrace the dark-haired boy warmly. when she pulled back, the Weasel opened his arms, apparently expecting the same reception. Draco watched her hesitate, one beat, then two, before quickly hugging him and then pulling away before Weasel could even respond. Draco raised a single, mildly-interested eyebrow. Potter attempted, and failed, to covered up the awkward moment with a cough and an inquiry.
"Yeah no kidding. Where've you been all day, 'Mione?"
"Well, I was late getting to King's Cross, and just barely got on the train on time. Then I got to sit for about 2 minutes before Malfoy and I had to start Head Duties. After assigning rounds and making sure all the students were settled, I was just too tired to come visit you guys."
"Oh. Right. Well, we just came to say hello. You do look pretty worn out. We'll just go and let you rest. Bye, Hermione, take care of yourself."
Granger laughed lightly before closing the door behind them. "Bye, Harry. Er, bye, Ron." She turned back to face the boy she shared the dorm with.
Draco quirked a single, mildly disinterested eyebrow.
Granger sighed in exasperation and props a hand on one hip. "What?"
Draco simply shrugged and returned to his book. "I didn't say anything."
She eyes him suspiciously as she makes her way back to her chair. "You want to, though. Your ferrety little mouth is just dying to say something snarky. Go on then. Let's hear it."
He simply smirks and turned a page."I didn't say anything Granger."
And as he reads about this Elizabeth's utter loathing of Darcy, he can feel her eyes glaring holes through his forehead.
He notices several things about her in the first week.
She doesn't go down for breakfast anymore. She's up and dressed long before he is, but when he makes to head downstairs, she just sits there on the couch, rechecking the homework they both know is already perfect.
When she eats lunch and dinner, the seating arrangement is always the same. Granger. Potter. Weasel. The one in the middle engages both his friends in separate conversations, but all three never interact together. Draco can feel the tension from all the way across the hall. And he would almost feel sorry for the torn Potter (almost), if he weren't too busy trying to pry a horny Pansy Parkinson off his arm.
She always makes sure she goes to bed after he does. He notices this too. There's always something to keep her up just a half hour later. A Potions essay. Prefect round schedules. There's always something. It's like she feels that if he's up when she's asleep, something horrible will happen. He supposes, if he took the time to really think about it, this would mildly irritate him. But he never does. Why should the bookworm's sleeping habits concern him?
The thing he notices that most perplexes him, however, is her eyes. He's never really bothered himself with them before (why should he?). But he gradually realizes (actually, the recognition washes over him like a tidal wave) that there's something different about them. Like there used to be a light there that someone brutally extinguished.
Her eyes look dead.
The moment he notices it comes on a Saturday night, when she enters the portrait hole late in the evening after returning from the library. He looks up briefly from Collins' ridiculous proposal (Seriously. That man is an imbecile if he thinks that is going to win this woman's hand). "Potter and Weasel stopped by earlier looking for you. Told 'em you had locked yourself up in the library."
"Yeah I know. They found me." She trudges over and curls up in an armchair near the fire.
He sighs and tosses his book on the coffee table. "Alright. That's it."
"That's what?"
"What the bloody hell happened between you two?"
"Who two? Malfoy, what the hell are you on about?"
He stares at her like all the brilliance accredited to her has flown out the window, over the lake, beyond the Quidditch pitch, and landed somewhere deep in the Forbidden Forest never to be seen again. Evidently, it has. "Who two? Who two? You and the Weasel! That's who two! You're acting like a couple of bloody first years!"
She was sitting up in her chair now, no longer relaxed, her arms folded firmly over her chest in indignation.
"Oh, well I'm so sorry, Malfoy. I guess I just didn't realize that my personal life was any of your business!"
"It is when the awkwardness between you lot is obnoxious enough that you may as well be screaming at each other! Merlin, you know something is wrong when you three make me uncomfortable! Me! And I don't give a damn what any of you do!"
"We broke up alright! We broke up, and he acted like a child, and I can't even see his face any more without wanting to hex it! Much like your ferrety one, actually. Merlin, are you happy now?" She jumped out of her chair and stormed into her bedroom, slamming the door after her.
Draco sat stunned for a moment. Not at her outburst. He had expected her to get angry, expected her to scream at him. What surprised him was the look in her eyes as she had done so. They had been alive. And suddenly Draco noticed what had been off about her all this time.
Her eyes had been missing the fire that had always been there.
But for some reason, when she was irritated with him, when she was screaming at him just like they used to (before the world nearly fell apart before their eyes), she was fierce again, she was passionate again.
When she was fighting with Draco, she was Granger again.
Miss me? Silly question. Of course you did! And you're gonna let me know in a review, right? Right?