Draco Malfoy and His Quest to Sensibility

by cleury

Chapter XXV

Draco appeared in front of the psychiatric ward. He had decided to come there, not on an impulse, but because he wanted to find out how Hermione was dealing with Crookshanks' death. He had been devastated and he had only known the cat for three weeks. Draco couldn't imagine how Hermione would feel. He went into the psychiatric ward and greeted the receptionist. She seemed to recognize him by now and gave him a curt nod when he requested to book a visiting time for Hermione Granger at the earliest convenience. He sat on the plastic reception chairs and waited, for a few moments before the receptionist came to him.

"She says she doesn't want visitors," said the receptionist.

Draco lifted his head and his mouth involuntarily opened at the announcement. His face pinched and he walked woodenly up to the counter. I hadn't expected that at all. The receptionist looked up at him. Draco shot a small smile at her. One that had a tinge of hope and promise of a greater one to come if she granted his wish. "Please, I need to see her," said Draco, he cleared his throat and stood up just a little straighter. He slapped the silly smile back on his face. "I need to talk to her about something… Dr. Lovegood told me to go see her. It's part of my treatment."

A mixture of confusion and then comprehension shifted through the receptionist's face. "Dr. Lovegood, right?" she asked. The hospital policy was strict and no visitors were permitted to visit the patient if they didn't want to. But the man's smile was surprisingly endearing and it tugged at her heartstrings. He looked so honest. Though in the back of her mind, caution screamed he was Draco Malfoy, master dissembler and son of a Death Eater, at the moment he was stripped and reduced to an ordinary man, asking to visit someone he cared for.

"Right, and could you please tell Dr. Lovegood I dropped by and ready for the next session?" he asked and he drummed his fingers on the counter nervously as the receptionist nodded.

"Can you find your way to her room?"

Draco nodded. "I've been there before."

The receptionist waved her hand to the direction of the corridor. "Right this way."

Draco's eyes lingered on the reception and he read her name-tag. "Thank you…" he paused. "Ms. Scamander."

The receptionist smiled instinctively and wrote a note down for Luna. It was funny how simple pleasantries could brighten up one's day.

Draco bit his lip and his fingertips hovered over the door knob. His face stiffened and it became his life goal to keep the corners of his mouth upwards despite gravity's bribe to pull them down. His heart sped up and he squirmed uncomfortably. Draco took two steps back, preparing to walk away, turn tail and run home, when he stopped. He stared at the door knob again. If he wanted to find out how Hermione was doing, he could have Owled her. And yet he had come all the way in person to visit the woman.

Their relationship must've ran slightly deeper than their common love for Crookshanks. Why else he would have come to visit her? He hadn't seen her since That Night and he was afraid of how she would react towards him. A part of him hoped to see her well and laughing; Crookshanks would not have wanted his master to be sad for the rest of her life. Draco knew each person dealt with loss differently and Hermione probably had more experience than him in regards to losing friends in the War.

"You can do it." he muttered to himself. He knocked on the door three times but there was no reply. He hesitated. Run away! his mind screamed, yet his traitorous body twisted the door knob and pushed. He stepped into the room and registered several things. It was bright and extremely windy in the room.

Apparently the storm that had appeared on top of his manor affected the weather here too—but at a lesser extent. He saw that the windows were partially open and gleamed as the small splatter of rain hit the front side of the glass. Tiny puddles collected at the window sill and were growing in size; the diameter increased and two patches of water merged as one large puddle. A cold breeze blew through the room and chased the heat outside. The curtains arched in the middle and deflated like a heavy sigh, creating fluttery corkscrew up-and-down patterns. Pieces of paper on Hermione's desk danced and even her bookcase groaned in the face of the wind.

There was only one completely still object in the room. Sprawled on the bed, Hermione lay spread-eagle, her face towards the ceiling. She looked like some sort of cult sacrifice. The mass of food on her bed surrounding her—doughnuts, cookies, crisps, cakes, muffins, scones didn't do anything but strengthen the image.

Draco became the second still thing in the room and he observed the scene before him. The wind assaulted his hair, lifting a few stray strands of his fringe. His jacket flapped against him like a flag, and wordlessly, he listened to the whip and crackle of the curtains. There was a loud bang—like a gunshot, as the wind slammed the door shut behind him. Draco jumped, waking from his stupor and he went to the window, drawing it shut. The wind hissed and died, leaving all the objects in the room to become silent.

Hermione sat up and looked at Draco, an immeasurable expression on her face. Draco saw a slab of jam down her T-shirt and he grimaced. Merlin, is that—Draco's eyes and confirmed his suspicious. His eyes rested on a jar of jam with the lid screwed open, wedged between her thighs.

"Hi," she said and she lifted up her hand and waved shyly at him.

Draco looked at her, at all the food around her, and back at Hermione again. "Hi."

They both said nothing, he felt self-conscious and turned beet-red. It was as though Hermione was the one who caught him acting like a slob. "What are you doing here?" she asked. He looked up and saw her concentrating on the jar of jam wedged between her thighs. She took a finger and dipped it into the jam. Draco's face scrunched together and contorted into an expression of disgust.

"Gross!" he yelled finally unable to take it any longer. Hermione looked up at him sharply and stuck her finger in her mouth.

"What is?"

Draco threw up his hands, exasperated. "You're eating jam. With your fingers!" Draco stopped and sniffed the air. "Do I smell popcorn?" He glanced at the empty foil bag by his feet. "And did you eat the whole bag of corn chips?!"

She took her finger out of her mouth, making a popping sound. "For your information, you're smelling stale popcorn. I ate some the day before yesterday."

He looked closely at her to access her mental state. She looked like she hadn't showered for days and as though she gained a few pounds from eating the junk food on her bed. No, that wasn't even enough to justify what was happening here. Hermione wasn't eating as much as she was devouring everything in her sight.

"Cookie?"

He grunted a 'no'. The popcorn was nowhere in sight and it looked as though she had been like this for several days. "How much food have you eaten?"

Hermione looked up at him, nibbling a chocolate chip cookie. She frowned and shook her head. "Just a few biscuits."

That was obviously a lie. He could count four empty biscuit wrappers and their completely empty trays on the side of her bed. "Just a few biscuits," he repeated dumbly.

She dipped a new cookie into her jar of jam, licking her other hand clean. "I don't have to explain to you," she said. Draco cringed. Hermione looked like she had spent the last year in the wilderness. Her hair was tangled and more untamed than his aunt's and there was jam at the ends of it. Biscuit crumbs stuck to her hair, probably collected when she rolled in her sleep. She caught him staring at her slovenly appearance—it seemed that she finally realized how she looked and muttered a poor excuse. He could only wince and nod. Wanting something to do with his hands, he turned over and took a book from her bookshelf. Hermione looked down and snuck a broken piece of cookie into her mouth when she thought Draco wasn't noticing.

Crossing his ankles, he opened the book and began to read. Several minutes past and Draco felt the tingling sensation of someone—namely, her eyes on him. The feeling did not leave even after a considerable length of time passed. He shifted positions in his seat, suddenly feeling uneasy of her scrutiny. He gripped the book tightly. Draco flipped the pages with more fervor, creating loud rustling sounds as he did so. He looked up to see Hermione opening up a tin of cake. She caught him staring at her, and started guiltily and her fingers dug into the lid.

"Hermione."

"Draco."

He snapped the book he had attempted to read shut. Dorothy and the yellow brick road would be visited on another day.

"I miss Crookshanks but I think I've accepted his death," her said, biting into a slice of cake. He shook his head, what he was seeing didn't look like she had accepted or was coping with anything.

"So why are you still binge-eating? I heard you haven't left your room for days."

Hermione looked down around her mountain of food and had the grace to blush. "I got a little hungry."

"A little hungry?"

"Gosh, Draco. I know I sound very intelligent but the way you parrot me just makes you sound stupid."

12345678910, 12345678910—Oh, screw this! Draco opened his mouth and was prepared to scream at her and shoved the piece of cake up her nose.

"Oh okay, maybe I'm a bit depressed. I like eating when I'm depressed; it takes my mind off things."

"Clearly."

It was one of those rare moments of insight for him as he watched the woman consume another healthy slice of cake. Though she seemed sore over the loss of Crookshanks, it appeared that there was something much worse bothering her. He shook his head, looking at the present state of Hermione, he wondered why he found her attractive in the first place.

While it wasn't up to him to pull her out of whatever hole she fell into, he could at least give her a few words to strengthen her resolve so she could motivate her in coming up herself. Having done the same for him, it was only right he could do something like this for her. It was really too bad, Draco could tell Hermione wouldn't be thankful with him for it. Most definitely now, and possibly even in the distant future. He took a deep breath. He would talk to Hermione and convince her to leave the institute. If he helped her, he was sure she would leave the wizarding community and into the Muggle world. It would be a pity because it meant forfeiting the opportunity to know her better—it was a shame really, he admitted he would miss her.

"You need to move on," he said with stones in his voice. "And I'm not just talking about Crookshanks either. I'm talking about everything else."

She made an incredulous face at him. "What do you mean?"

"It means that I know you've completely healed from the effects of the curse. I know the only reason why you still suffer the effects is because you won't try to move on with your life. It means I know you why refuse to leave this place even though everyone's told you to."

She looked down and opened a bag of crisps in her haste. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

He shoved a portion of food away from the bed and sat in the cleared space. "Whenever you lie, you always look away."

Hermione shot a venomous glare at him and stuffed a handful of crisps in her mouth.

"Stop eating!" bellowed Draco and Hermione jumped in fright. The remainder of the crisps fell on her lap.

"How?"

Draco had a feeling she wasn't asking about how to stop eating. She was asking how to move on. "You need to go outside, and do something with your life." He stood up and went to her bookshelf, throwing the books she had read on the floor.

"The Wizard of Oz! After defeating the powerful wizard, all you want to do is go home! Alice in Wonderland: you want to go back to where you originally belonged! 'There's no place like home'?! It's so obvious even I can tell you want to live back in the Muggle world. "Hermione looked down and it Draco knew that it was her gesture of confirmation.

She looked up at him in shock. "What did you say?" Her hand nervously lingered over a sugar doughnut.

"I said if you want to, then you should go." He sat down on her bed again and looked at his hands. He grabbed a biscuit and started chewing on it. His eyes widened; it was an awful time to note such things, but the biscuit was heavenly. He could understand why Hermione ate four trays of it.

"I knew I was special every since I was young."

"You are special," he said. He stifled his last words with another biscuit. "Especially troublesome."

She started eating the crisps off her lap. "Before I learnt anything about Hogwarts or that I was magical, I had a dream that I would do something great in this world that would help heaps of other people. I-I wanted to be a lawyer and help represent those who didn't have a voice in society."

He nodded. "Sounds like you." Then he frowned. He couldn't see the conflict. Why couldn't she just be a lawyer and work for the Ministry? Surely they would hire someone as brilliant as Hermione. He still couldn't understand what was drawing Hermione into the Muggle world.

"During Hogwarts, I was so busy figuring out how to defeat Voldemort and topping the NEWTS, I didn't give much thought what I wanted to be after." She munched on a chip. "I didn't think I was going to live through it, you see."

Draco could only nod dumbly.

"After the war, I had to stay here to recuperate from the curse effects. It took me a year for my body to fully recover. But by then, it was already too late."

"What do you mean too late?"

"Everyone had already moved on in life. Harry and Ron were training to become Aurors, Ginny was playing Quidditch and I was just stuck it here completely with no plans. But then I realized, my passion for my old dream had never died. I still wanted, I still want to be lawyer."

"Wait, I don't get it," he said, dusting the crumbs off his hands. "Why does this lead you to go back living with Muggles? You could always work as a magical lawyer—"

"Because I'm scared! I checked out the statistics: every single lawyer that has graduated from a British magical school is employed by the Ministry! There's a huge conspiracy that monopolizes all the jobs. No wonder there are pirates running amok. The whole banking system is run by a race of goblins! The magical government is so controlling," burst out Hermione. "Did you notice? They're everywhere!"

"Um…"

"Everyone works for the Ministry! There are no career options that aren't tied with them… with the exception of family businesses, but even they cut deals with the Ministry. Don't you find it horrifying?" she said. "I mean, the moment you're born… if you're magical, your name is recorded down and then when you're eleven, you're shepherded into Hogwarts. Then you're forced to stay in the magical world for the rest of your life because we know nothing else."

He felt as though shutters fell from his eyes and he was seeing a much wider picture of the world, probably not how Hermione saw the world as a whole and magic as a counterpart of it, but enough to notice there was something glaringly wrong with the system. He had noticed this as he was reading books of the Muggle world and had noted how differently the Muggles led their lives.

"I'm not even going to go in the corruption in politics—"

Here, he gulped guiltily. The Malfoy played a large role in that slice of pie.

"—and the invasion of privacy. Did you notice that the Ministry can track underage wizards using magic, anytime and anywhere?"

"So?"

Hermione was aghast. "That means nothing is a secret to them! There's normally a right to privacy and..." She gasped for breath. "It's just wrong on so many levels. I don't want to be part of the wizarding community anymore."

"That's why you want to go back," he said. "But what's stopping you? I mean, even if Hogwarts doesn't provide you the education you need to for the Muggle world, you can learn it can't you? I'm sure you can catch up quickly."

She shook her head. "It's because everything is different there. The law, the culture, once I'm there, it feels like I have to choose. With the Statute of Secrecy, I can't tell my future friends or anyone about my magic. I'll have to hide it and in effect, forget the last decade. And what if they ask me where I went to school? I can make one lie, but I can't lie about half of my life." Bitter tears shone out of her eyes.

"Are you a computer?" he asked.

"What?"

I accidentally uploaded chapter 26 first, so sorry if you read that before this chapter. I deleted it as soon as I found out. Whoops.