A/N Big thank-you to everyone who reviewed! Shout-out to guest reviewers Ashley, Joey and Dianna (No, Dianna, I didn't know it was in auto-correct - guess that shows how entrenched Harry Potter is in Western culture!) and the anonymous ones - I can't reply to you guys personally, so thank you very much! Your reviews gave me such a lift. Again, if you're following this fic and haven't reviewed, I'd love to hear from you.
I added an A/N to the end of the previous chapter to try to address some repeat questions. If you haven't already read it, you might wanna pop back there first...
Hope you enjoy :)
Chapter Ten:
"Always remember to pace yourself – and your Granian. If you realise you are in danger of scaring the Granian into flight, return to a previous level of engagement with which you know it is comfortable."
Extract from "From Wild Beast to Wizard's Steed, a how-to guide on taming Granian".
It went totally against the grain, against what he wanted to do, but Draco knew that he had to do something to set the pendulum swinging back following his all-too-brief kiss with Hermione; to normalise things for her. To do otherwise would be to risk spooking her into bolting, and that wasn't a risk Draco was prepared to take; not when he was so close.
So, the next time he saw her, he picked a fight.
To his lack of surprise, this time she had come looking for him.
Draco was walking back from the Herbology greenhouse when Granger hailed him in a low voice from the vegetable patch. (Herbology, like Potions, came rather easily to Draco, so despite the former lacking the cachet of the latter, not to mention the presence of galumphing oafs like Longbottom, he had chosen to continue with it at N.E.W.T level.)
Fortuitously, and entirely deliberately, Draco was walking alone. His class fellows consisted of a rag-tag gaggle of the lesser houses, so it was entirely normal for Draco to segregate himself, and it was easy enough to slip away undetected. Well, almost undetected.
As he left the path, that batty, bug-eyed Ravenclaw Lovegood, who was walking just ahead of him with Longbottom, inexplicably chose that moment to look back, meeting his gaze long enough to offer a dreamy smile. He scowled at her unseeing back and slipped between some pumpkins left over from Halloween to join Granger.
The location wasn't lost on him, the memory of their last encounter with giant vegetables distinct in his mind. Even as an internal voice marvelled at how much things had changed since then, another more sensible voice pointed out that Granger's current expression wasn't wholly dissimilar to the one Draco had seen moments before her fist made contact with his face back in third year.
Clearly, she had recovered from her post-kiss daze the night before and was now intent on having it out with him. Draco hurried to get in there first before she got the bit between her teeth (no pun intended).
"Sorry, Granger. I don't really have time to talk right now – I'm due to meet Professor Snape in a few minutes."
Granger's features warred between indignation and the ingrained good student which told her you should never keep a teacher waiting.
"I'd invite you to come with me, but we both know Snape wouldn't be happy to see a Muggle." Granger grimaced, but didn't take the bait as he had hoped. Damn. He was going to have to push harder; he knew where he needed the conversation to go.
"Actually, Granger, I'm glad I ran into you. I've been meaning to talk to you about psychoanalysis." Draco enunciated the word carefully.
Granger paused, totally wrong-footed. "Pardon?"
"That book you lent me – it made for interesting reading. It got me thinking about you – about what made you the way you are."
A tell-tale blush crept into Hermione's cheeks. "Oh?" she asked, looking self-conscious. "And what did you decide?"
"Well, let us consider the amount of time you spend studying, and the fact it's clearly so important to you to flaunt your knowledge. Either you're incredibly arrogant… or you feel you have something to prove. I'm betting the latter. So, the question is, what is it you're trying to prove? Who are you trying to prove it to? And why do you have to try so hard? It's as if, on some level, you think that you'll never – really – be good enough."
Colour flared again in Granger's cheeks; from anger rather than embarrassment this time.
"You mean because I'm Muggle-born?"
Draco shrugged. "You said it." Now she would flounce off in a huff and he would win her over by—
Hermione squared up to him with fists on hips.
"Do you really think Muggles have to try harder than purebloods?"
Draco was surprised into giving an unfiltered answer. "Well, of course they do – it's just logical. They haven't been raised in a magical environment; purebloods have. Muggle-borns will always be playing catch-up."
"Okay, granted that may be true in the first year – but not by this age, Malfoy. You can't possibly be stupid enough to think that!" she cried.
Draco bristled. "Come on, Granger. It's just good sense that pureblood families would be better at magic – it's been passed down in their families for generations. They had centuries to perfect their methods, hone their techniques... Blood will out," he concluded.
"Which just shows how woefully lacking your non-magical education has been," Granger snapped. "If you knew anything about genetics, you'd know that keeping within the same bloodlines has the reverse effect from what you've just said. Taken to its extreme, it leads to dangerous inbreeding, an increase in inherent flaws, and a greater risk of deformity, which could ultimately wipe out magical ability altogether as the original stock gets more and more concentrated, and with it, all of its defects!"
"Malfoys are not deformed!" Draco roared. He paused, then took refuge in cold hauteur. "Look, Granger, you're a Muggle so you wouldn't understand. If you had grown up in the wizarding world, you'd get it – you'd know your—" He broke off as the infelicitous nature of his remark occurred to him.
"My place?" Granger suggested acidly. "Is that what you were going to say, Malfoy? That I would know my place? If you really believe that, Malfoy – if you really believe I'm inferior to you because I am Muggle-born," she paused, taking a deep breath, then hurled her next words like an Expulso spell: "WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME TO TUTOR YOU?"
And she stormed off.
Draco stared after her. When had this fight turned genuine?
Except… Draco realised, it hadn't been totally genuine. Obviously, it had been real to Granger, and she seemed to be taking it as a matter of course that he had meant what he said. And he had – when upholding the Malfoy name. But as to the rest of it... to his ears, his words had lacked strength. As if he had been speaking by rote. As if he didn't… quite... believe them anymore.
Draco stared, unseeing, through a grinning pumpkin.
When had that happened?
Not that it was a huge shock to conceive that Hermione was better at magic than some purebloods. Indeed, it would take far less than Draco's superior intellect to see that she wasn't inferior to all of them. Good grief, she could beat Goyle in a wizarding duel gagged and bound, following a week of sleep deprivation and after being hit by a Confundus charm.
There were even times, in the deepest, darkest recesses of Draco's mind, that he had been pushed to conclude… to admit… that in certain – very specific – areas Granger might just be… better... than... him.
Of course, there were also areas where the reverse was true.
Many, many areas.
Okay, not "many" – but Potions was one in which he had the edge on Granger. (Not by much, a pedantic internal voice pointed out, sounding remarkably like Hermione's; better is better! his inner Slytherin snarled). But to his great annoyance, he wasn't in a position to demonstrate this superiority. Not with the Boy Who Lived to Annoy and his ginger ape hanging around like a bad smell.
It was a pity. He rather relished the idea of solicitously bending over Hermione as she brewed a potion under his close tutelage… giving her tips as she gazed admiringly up at him. Perhaps standing behind her as he showed her the best technique for chopping Murtlap tentacles… then turning her around and pulling her into his—
Hang on, where was he?
Then he realised. There was a way he could tutor Granger – in a subject at which he far surpassed her, and even better, one that would require a lot of physical contact.
Okay, good. He had a plan. His rigid shoulders relaxed.
Now he just needed to get Hermione talking to him again.
A/N 2 I took a little artistic licence with this chapter: I normally try to stick rigidly to the books for canon and descriptive purposes, but thanks to the films, the Hermione/Draco confrontation in PoA is so entrenched in my memory as a punch amongst pumpkins, I didn't realise it was actually a slap at an entirely different location until I looked online and then confirmed by re-reading the passage in the book! So, yeah, artistic licence :P