Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Not making any money, just having fun.
Note: The title of this story was taken from a line from the movie "Sleepless in Seattle." Which I thought was appropriate. :) SUPER thanks to my beta, Eilonwy! You're incredible!
General Reminder: These are deleted scenes from the story "We Learned the Sea." If you haven't read it, these won't make any sense. You can find that story under my profile page. Also, these scenes weren't actually deleted from the story; they're more like extra scenes. Enjoy!
Requested by: NotreDamegirlie, meganann07, DarcyJames, luci92, ChewedGum, SiriuslyPadfoot'sGal, TShinoda, delyn, Witchbeth, Angeepang, blue artemis, and I know there were more, but forgive my record keeping!
Time Frame: Begins six months after the night Draco doesn't kill Hermione's parents and goes up to the first week after Harry and Hermione move to the Edge.
ooo
The Bermuda Triangle
Draco slammed the front door shut to hard he heard the windows rattle and the dishes in the sink clink together. He took a few deep breaths, eyes shut tight, to calm his raw nerves and relax his pounding heart.
After a few moments, Draco started to relax, but soon images flashed in his mind. His eyes flew open and in three long strides he'd reached the kitchen. He went straight to the sink and started scrubbing furiously.
He liked washing dishes. He'd been living in his own house for about a month, and had struggled at first with the daily chores that needed doing. It wasn't a matter of knowing, but of making himself. His whole life, he'd always had someone to do things for him; he hadn't even known there was any other way, really. He'd never washed clothes for himself, he'd never cooked; he'd certainly never cleaned.
But he was determined to do everything on his own so he'd made up a chore chart—Jane's idea—of what chores needed doing when. He'd already read a number of books on the subjects of housework, and he didn't even mind that he had. He reckoned it had been seeing Steve helping Jane with basic work—and her appreciation of his efforts—that showed him it was okay for a man to do housework. But woe unto him if his father ever caught wind of it.
He followed his chore chart to the letter now, though he still left the dishes to pile up for just such times as this one—when he returned from a particularly heinous Death Eater meeting.
The strangest thing happened soon after Draco left the Grangers alive: his conscience, which he had thought long dead, buried, and rotting, came back to life with a vengeance. Things that hadn't bothered him in years now made him physically sick.
And he saw—he did—more than ever before in the month that had followed his promotion, putting him closer to the Dark Lord. The things he saw were burned into his memory, the things he did burned into his heart. He hated what he was doing and expected to crash at any moment, giving himself away.
But despite how horrible he felt about what he did, he still didn't feel as lost as he had that night. He still felt all the same flickers of hope—now a slowly building fire—and still felt he was doing something worthwhile. Almost…good, even.
Draco refused to let himself think that way though. He was doing the right thing, but in a whole bunch of bad ways. And that did not equal "good."
Draco focused on the dishes. He felt as though in some way, as he scrubbed the bits of dried food, as he made every piece clean and sparkling like new, that somehow he was making himself cleaner too. He could never erase what he was doing, but he would spend his life trying to make it right.
When he finished, he looked at his reflection in the window. Six months had been good to him. He'd been eating more, training non-stop. But still… his eyes.
His eyes lied about him. They were full of death and destruction and despair. Draco betrayed his eyes whenever he made them stay open while a fellow Death Eater tortured a Muggle—or worse, killed. If he shut them, he was as good as dead. The other Death Eaters would see his weakness.
Draco thought of Jane. The last time he'd been to visit was right after he'd been required to torture someone, laughing in apparent delight, as others watched. He'd stopped just before the girl died, offering to let someone else "have the fun." Jane fixed him glass after glass of orange juice.
He always wound up on the island whenever he thought he might spin out of control. Jane would always hold him and cry for him if it had been a really bad day. Draco hadn't shed a tear—he couldn't if he'd wanted to. But he still felt some of the shame and guilt melt away and Jane cried and maybe she'd known it would happen that way. Draco didn't tell them what he'd done—he didn't need to. They forgave—they cared about him anyway. He didn't understand it, but he took whatever good he could. He needed it.
Draco dried his hands in frustration. There hadn't been enough dishes. He put the clean plates, cups, and silverware away and sulked up the stairs.
When he reached his guest rooms, he stopped and peeked into what would be, if all went according to plan, her room. It was empty, save a basin of water on a stand in the corner; He'd worry about furnishing it later. There was a single window that opened to face the sea. He went into the room and tried to imagine her there; he couldn't. All he could think was that when she got there, she'd fill the house with her hatred and anger.
He felt suddenly bone weary and sank to his knees in the middle of the room. Waves of fresh guilt coursed through him and he clenched his fists so tightly that he drew blood.
Draco thought about Hermione. He had been watching over her successfully for nearly six months and he couldn't help but develop a grudging respect for her. He'd expected her to just… fall apart. He'd waited, when he first started watching her after her parents' death, for her to crumble, to stop functioning. But she hadn't. It was better that way for him, of course; she kept to her usual routine, and he had an easy time of watching her.
But she'd never broken. And… well, he was mostly broken. He found it amazing that even though her parents had been killed, she'd moved. On. She'd kept moving, kept going; she didn't stop and let it consume her or drag her down. Whereas he had to fight every day to keep from drowning, and he had his parents. Not that that was any great consolation…
And so he admired her for her strength. Gryffindor had been the right house for her, no doubt.
The clouds parted and through the window came a startling ray of moonlight. It danced on the surface of the water in the basin and he stared at it. He slowly stood and went to the basin.
"Manifesto fenestra," he muttered.
The water shimmered, and in a few seconds he could see, plain as day, in Hermione's flat. He was always very careful when he did this, so as not to take advantage of the Grangers' trust. Because that was truly all he had, and if he blew that… he had nothing. Always the image opened on her kitchen. From there, he slowly moved the image until he found her, usually on the sofa with a book or at her desk. Tonight he found her on the sofa watching the television.
Only she had ice cream out, which meant she'd had a bad day. As he watched, she picked up a small box and put on a film. He'd become familiar with Muggle devices through her parents, and knew that the shiny, circular disc would translate moving, colorful images with sound that would tell a story. A movie.
He'd had an entire weekend lesson with the Grangers about electronics and the like, though he hadn't been able to really see any of the devices in action, as there was no electricity on the island. He'd learned about other Muggle things too – mobile phones, computers, the internet… not that he was the least bit interested in any of it, but they seemed to think it would be good for him to learn it.
He'd seen this same box before. On many previous occasions, when she'd had bad days, she would come home, get the tub of ice cream—honestly, he had no idea she ate so much ice cream—and put on this very film. He'd never bothered to think too much about it.
Tonight he was in a strange place after the day he'd had and the inadequate number of dishes he'd scrubbed. He zoomed in on the box and saw that it read "Sleepless in Seattle," and had a picture of a man and a woman on the front, gazing as though at the stars. He had no idea where Seattle was, and made a mental note to ask Jane about it.
He returned the image to normal and was about to deactivate the spell that allowed him to see Hermione when something inexplicable made him pause. Usually, at this point in the routine, he'd cut out and find something else to do, but tonight, he noticed she grabbed a box of tissues and hugged it close to her, as though for comfort.
It was odd, he thought, to cling to a box of tissues so tightly. And he was in that strange place, and so he wanted to know what purpose the tissues would serve. He pulled the basin carefully off its stand and set it on the floor, then sat for an hour and forty-five minutes while he watched Hermione watch the film.
She cried a few times—hence the tissues, though they had quickly been forgotten after the film started. He didn't understand the idea of crying at a movie, but then, what did he know about movies?
One thing he realized though, in watching her cry, was that he didn't like it. Sure, he'd seen her cry before—he'd made her cry even. But… after watching over her for the last six months, watching her be so strong and sure and steady, to see her go to tears over something that wasn't even real puzzled him.
It struck him, as he watched her, that she suddenly seemed human. She'd always been placed on a kind of pedestal in his mind, both by his father and by everyone at school. His father, though most unwittingly, put her on a pedestal as the perfect example of what was wrong with the wizarding world, and most especially, of the tolerance of dirty blood. Whenever he'd get onto one of his rants, inevitably, he mentioned her. It was always with the purpose of degrading her and putting her down, but it was a pedestal nonetheless.
In school, she was very quickly labeled "the smartest witch in their year," and by the time he left, he doubted anyone in recent memory was as bright as she was.
Yet there she was, snotty, runny nose, red, puffy eyes, crying on her sofa with her cat and a soft blanket. And still, she was the picture of strength to him, despite this foray into humanity. He knew his heart was softening toward her, but he wasn't sure if he was upset about it.
It would be a good thing for him to really, honestly care about her, as he was charged with watching over her. He rationalized that it would only help him in his task if he really and truly cared about her well being beyond simply doing it for her parents. The task would be easier, more bearable. If only he could have known the danger he was putting himself in, he might have shut off the window the moment she pulled out the little box with the foreign city on it.
But he didn't, so he watched her all the way through the end as she ate her usual favorite ice cream. When the movie ended, he looked into the bowl and saw what looked like just a few bites left, completely melted. He frowned; why hadn't she finished? Perhaps, he reasoned, she'd been so caught up in the movie that she'd forgotten it completely.
There were tissues piled all around her—how could any movie make a person cry that much? He wondered if it had anything to do with her parents, if maybe this was how she let herself go, if this was when she let herself not be so strong. If she could watch this movie, and cry at it, and that was in some way still mourning her parents.
He didn't know, as there was no sound through the window, wanting to pry as little as possible. After the movie, Hermione lay down on the sofa, pulled the blanket over her and went to sleep. Right there, on the sofa. He wondered briefly if she'd think to set her alarm so she'd get to work on time, but then he realized it was Friday. She probably knew that; there was no work on Saturday for her. At least, not most Saturdays.
She'd fallen asleep almost as her head hit the pillow. Either that, or she was very, very still when she slept. There had been no transition from watching the film to going to sleep, and so he found himself still watching her. Her hair—her insane, billowing hair—was everywhere all over the pillow. And she was still in her slippers, tissues scattered over the blanket and the floor.
Something hit him then, something that set in motion a movement inside of him that wouldn't be complete until she finished it—he no longer thought she was ugly.
He thought she was pretty.
It hit him like a ton of bricks when he realized what he'd thought. But as he stared at her, it just grew. And it wasn't just what she looked like; she was a really beautiful person. It made him think about her parents and everything they'd done for him, and he figured she must have gotten that inner beauty from them. He wondered why he'd never seen it before.
He scoffed; it had been everything in his life, all the prejudice he'd been infused with his whole life. Before now, before her parents, he couldn't have seen the good in her if he'd tried. But now… it was screaming at him.
He was really shaken.
During the movie, he hadn't really been able to see her face, but now that she was sleeping, he could. As she lay there, falling asleep, he could see that she was troubled. That not all was well in her world. But when she fell asleep, that passed. He stared for hours, at first watching her, but then letting his mind wander. Only it didn't wander over what he'd seen that night, he didn't think about the bad things he'd done.
Oddly enough, it went to a memory he'd forgotten from when he was a small boy. He didn't have a lot of warm memories of his parents from growing up, but there was one of his mother.
She'd got it in her head one day to make biscuits. Now, Narcissa didn't even know where the kitchen was because they always had a house-elf. So she had to ask the house-elf to take her to the kitchen. She had just wanted Dobby to take her to the kitchen, to show her how to make biscuits. It was the nicest she'd ever been to the elf.
Draco went looking for his mother at the same time she was in the kitchen trying to figure out flour and sugar and eggs. He called for Dobby.
"Where's my mother?"
"The kitchen, young Master."
Draco scrunched up his nose. "Why?"
"Mistress wished to know where the kitchen was, so Dobby took her there, Sir."
"Well, I need to see her, so take me to the kitchen."
Dobby did as he was instructed and led Draco into the bowels of the Manor. When they reached the kitchen, there was Narcissa, the only person in the room, laughing, up to her elbows in dough and flour absolutely everywhere, including her hair and her robe.
"Mother!" Draco called. "What are you doing?"
She looked up at him, a rare smile on her face. "I'm trying to make biscuits, son."
"Why on earth would you do such a thing?"
"I heard someone say it was fun. I wanted to give it a try."
"That's what the elf is for, Mother. To make biscuits."
"I know that, I just wanted to try it for myself." She stopped struggling with the contents of a very large bowl for a moment and looked at him. "Would you like to help me?"
Draco looked at her as though he'd never seen her before, but she was smiling in a way he'd never seen before in his entire life. Something told him maybe this was something he should stick around for.
"Well… okay. What do you want me to do?"
The two of them tried for the next three hours to make a batch of biscuits. They weren't successful, except in making the biggest mess that had ever been made on Malfoy properties.
Narcissa called Dobby and asked him what they were doing wrong. Together, the three of them made a batch of chocolate biscuits. It was the best memory Draco had of his mother, by far. He'd been thirteen; it had been before the return of the Dark Lord. He hadn't seen his mother smile that way since. He'd barely seen her smile at all.
He thought about the biscuit-making experience while watching Hermione sleep, and then his thoughts traveled over other good memories—Quidditch, flying, successfully brewing a potion correctly. Nothing bad, and it meant something; he couldn't help but think it might be coincidence..
Eventually something in the window caught his attention; the cat had moved. With an odd combination of longing, of a strange companionship, of understanding, and even disappointment, Draco set the basin back on its holder and closed the window into Hermione's flat. He shut the door, feeling almost as though he was shutting off a piece of goodness, and went to his own room.
As he lay in bed that night, unable to sleep for all the thoughts speeding through his mind, he kept thinking about the fact that he found himself attracted to Hermione. When he'd seen her before, she'd been nice to him. She'd talked to him—of course, it hadn't been him—but he supposed it was just that she was who she was, a good, kind person, and that everything his father had ever told him about her, or her kind, or her type, wasn't true, because she was so universally good and kind. She'd only ever been mean to him when he had been mean first.
Coupled with seeing her in what he figured she would say was one of her least attractive moments, crying at a movie, he thought she was pretty.
Draco let himself think about it until he went to sleep. He decided that it wasn't such a big thing, really. She was a pretty girl, and he was simply acknowledging it to be true.
He didn't think too much about it until the next morning when he was eating breakfast at his table and it really hit him: he was attracted to Hermione. Everything changed at that moment. He didn't want to be. He wanted to care about her, but he didn't want to like her. Didn't want to be attached to her, any more than he had to be.
He panicked; what if it never went away? What if it was a thing? What if?
Draco decided he wouldn't think about being attracted to her. He compartmentalized the knowledge, put it aside, out of reach. He didn't try to deny it, or get himself to stop being attracted; that was the fastest way to get it to grow. But he ignored it. Put it aside, to deal with later. It wasn't on his agenda, and he would think about it later. Certainly, in all of his planning, this… thing that had crept up on him had not been a factor. It hadn't been a thought. It hadn't been a shadow of a whisper of a thought. Never in his wildest dreams would he have foreseen finding Hermione Granger attractive.
Thinking of her that way was unacceptable. So he stopped.
ooo
It worked for a few months, refusing to let himself think about her beyond what was required to accomplish his task of watching over her. He accepted his attraction and moved on. He didn't think about it, and he didn't think about her.
Then, in the middle of November, he was in the Apothecary in Diagon Alley, buying a few ingredients for a potion. He had disguised himself so as to be completely forgettable.
He gathered a few ingredients in his arms and headed toward the counter, his head down and his thoughts on about the next item on his list. When he reached the end of the aisle, he collided with something quite solid.
Everything in his arms spilled out, a few bottles breaking on the floor and one of the vials splashing on his shirt. He stared at the ruined ingredients on the floor, then looked to see what he'd hit.
It was Hermione, and she was likewise wearing an ingredient or two. He stared at her, dumbstruck, for a moment.
"I—I'm terribly sorry," she said, bending over to clean up what had spilled on the floor, while he just stood there gawking like an idiot. He just couldn't believe he'd run into her. Literally. She was supposed to be at work.
After the initial shock passed, he bent to help her clean up the mess, both of them picking up loose feathers and rounding up the glass shards with their wands.
"I'm so sorry," she repeated. "I was caught up in…in what I was doing, and I wasn't looking where I was going… and I'm so sorry."
"It's… okay, really. The fault lies with me as well. I wasn't paying attention either."
Hermione looked at him and smiled shyly. His stomach flipped over uncomfortably and it hit him again that she was really, really pretty. It also struck him that she looked worn out and…thinner than he remembered.
"What were you buying?" she asked.
"Oh, er, cherry powder, arrowroot and dragon scales."
She cocked an eyebrow. "Really? Those are interesting ingredients."
Draco shifted his weight, feeling ridiculously awkward. "Yeah, well, interesting potion."
"Must be. Dragon scales are really hard to get, and quite expensive. And I ruined them—you must know they can't be exposed to air for too long or they lose their potency."
He made a face. "Oh, that's not a big deal, don't worry about it. Don't feel bad."
"No, please. Let me pay for them."
His eyes widened. "No! I mean, it was just as much my fault—I should be buying your ingredients."
"Oh, no. Mine were just a few Galleons. Yours were very expensive, and I know how tight money is for everybody right now."
"I absolutely refuse to let you buy my ingredients," Draco said.
"Well… okay, then how about coffee?"
He looked at her, wide-eyes, for a brief moment. Was she crazy? Did she know who she was talking to? Well, no, she didn't. If she did, she wouldn't be asking him to coffee.
She looked at him expectantly, and he realized he'd been staring again. "If you don't want to, that's okay," she said. "I've never asked anyone I just met to coffee before."
"Oh, I, um…"
"But it's coffee or the dragon scales, so…" she said, looking at him shyly.
It hit him suddenly: she was flirting with him!
"Coffee or dragon scales, huh?"
"Yup. I'm afraid that's the way it has to be."
"Coffee then, because I definitely can't allow you to pay for the scales."
They went through the shop together, collecting new bottles of the ingredients they'd ruined, and went to pay, all the while making small talk and flirting harmlessly. He stared at her as much as he could discreetly, trying to figure out what it was about her that he now seemed so drawn to.
After they paid—and he insisted on paying for both bottles of dragon scales, to Hermione's astonishment—they made their way through Diagon Alley to the only cafe still open.
Draco had a really good time. They were there for nearly an hour. Hermione seemed very comfortable interacting with a relative stranger, and she made for delightful conversation. But despite the fact that he had been watching her for nine months, he hadn't been interacting with her. So he was surprised to find that he could sense a sadness in her. A darkness, even, hidden behind her eyes. It puzzled him.
She appeared to be quite happy and carefree, but every now and then a shadow seemed to pass through her features. Her hands would tense, her knuckles turn white as she gripped what was in her hand—a napkin, her fork.
When they'd both finished their coffee, and eaten as many sweets as they could justify, Hermione said, "You know, coffee doesn't actually equal a bottle of dragon scales. How about… dinner?"
He looked at her, and he could tell that she was incredibly nervous and very much outside her comfort zone. "I…shouldn't," he said, wishing that somehow things were different and there weren't really a million reasons why he couldn't have dinner with her.
"Oh, okay, yeah. Um, sure. Right."
He hated the look on her face at that moment and he really wanted to have dinner with her, but he couldn't lie to her. He knew there might come a day when he'd tell her about that moment, when she'd flirted with him after ruining a bottle of dragon scales in the Apothecary, and that they'd had coffee. He refused to make it worse.
They said goodbye and as he walked away, he wondered how she would react that night, how their interaction might affect her. He finished his errands and returned to the Edge, going straight to her room and turning on the window.
She was with Harry and Ron having a wonderful time in some kind of Muggle club. When he looked very closely, he saw that, indeed, she looked very thin. She was dancing very enthusiastically, but after watching her for a few minutes, he saw that she seemed to be in another place altogether. As though she were trying very hard to drown out every thing around her.
Hmm. Maybe it hadn't meant anything, maybe she really did talk to blokes in shops on a regular basis and buy them coffee. For her, he'd just been some random guy, but for him…
Part of her had liked part of him that day. Maybe it was because he'd been himself, at least the parts of himself he could reveal without raising her suspicion. He'd had a good day, and then felt awful.
He wrote to Jane, told her what had happened, but not that she looked almost sickly. He told her that they'd had coffee, and Hermione had asked him to dinner. Draco felt he had to be extremely upfront and honest about whatever passed between Hermione and him—their trust was the most important thing in his life.
ooo
The one-year anniversary of her parents' death was in February and Draco had arranged for Ron to win four tickets to see The Weird Sisters. He received a letter in the mail saying that because he'd purchased a certain product, he'd been automatically entered into a contest for the tickets.
Draco knew Ron would invite Hermione at least, and he also asked Harry and Ginny. Draco wanted to do something for Hermione that day, to at least get her mind off her parents, even if only for a little while. He watched as Hermione seemed to struggle with what to do. She walked to her closet and flipped through her clothes, then shut it and paced the room. Then she returned to the closet, hesitated for a moment, then grabbed a book and got into bed. Finally her friends showed up and she decided to go.
Draco watched them at the concert, completely happy to see Hermione so… happy. She laughed with her friends, danced with Ginny to the music, and never once showed any signs of being anything but delighted.
So he was surprised when she got home, went straight to the freezer and pulled out the ice cream, then went to the DVD player and put in her film. By this time, he had her reactions to the movie memorized. He expected tonight might be different, more emotional, because of what the day was. He loved watching Hermione watch the movie. There was something about the predictability, about knowing where she would cry, every time, that was comforting to him. Now that she'd taken the DVD out, he expected this night to be worse, expected her to cry more.
Only she didn't. She may have cried more during the times she usually cried, but she didn't cry more frequently. She was still wearing the dress she'd worn to the concert. It was green and he couldn't help but really appreciate the green on her. It was a dark, Slytherin green, and she was sitting on her sofa, legs crossed, bare feet, her hair falling out of the style she'd put it in earlier, but Merlin help him. He thought she was incredibly beautiful.
He had to remind himself that he had known for some time that he found her attractive, and that was it. That he wouldn't let himself feel anything for her.
And then, five months later, she moved in with him.
That first night she'd been there, he'd he covered her with his cloak. He'd gone to see if she needed anything before he turned in, and saw that she'd fallen asleep in the chair. He knew if she stayed there she'd have an awful crick in her neck, and he glanced at the swing. He wouldn't take her up to her room—what if she woke up? She'd probably panic and, if they were in her room, she'd probably hex him. No, it was much safer all around if he left her outside.
And he thought, for the first time of many, how glad he was he'd decided to install the swing.
He levitated her—the less jostling, the more likely she'd be to stay asleep—from the chair to the swing and set her down. Then he Summoned his cloak and laid it gently over her.
He looked down at the face he'd seen sleeping so many times and he had to fight—fight really, really hard—falling for her right then and there. But it was simply impossible. It couldn't happen, it wasn't supposed to happen. It would never happen, it would never work…. Just thinking about the possibility boggled his mind, and he couldn't… it wouldn't…
So he tucked her in and allowed himself a brief moment to look at her. She still had that peace he'd first seen in her after Christmas, but it had grown over the months since then. Even on the night of the anniversary of her parents' death, she'd been sad, but there was this…this feeling he got from watching her that she was above it all. She was in it, but she was above it, too.
He was mesmerized by her. And there she was again, looking completely at peace with the world and it just added to his attraction. It hit him, then, that it… the attraction… wasn't going to go away. So he forced it away. He had more important things to think about, more important things to do, than have a silly crush on a girl. No matter how wonderful and amazing she was, he couldn't allow it to be anything more than it was at that moment.
She's amazing.
But it can never happen.
That night, he repeated it until he convinced himself that he really believed it.
ooo
A/N: Thanks for reading! Happy Friday and see you next week!