CHAPTER THREE.

Hermione doesn't want to admit the how pleasant she found the conversation between her and Draco last night. She catches him staring at her when she gets out of her room for a while, and she pretends not to notice, as she has found herself giving him sly glances every once in a while. They don't acknowledge each other as she wraps her arms around Ron and breathes in his familiar musky scent. She sees Draco out of the corner of her eye watching them.

"Oi, what are you staring at?" Ron speaks up, a bit too loudly as usual, and Hermione lets go of him.

"How she seems to be strangling you," his familiar drawl comes. "Considering how," Draco pauses for effect and Hermione braces herself for the insult at Ron that is about to come, and how Ron's temper will surely fly through the roof following it, "her arms are as thin as sticks."

Hermione feels her face heat up as a blush creeps up her neck at his words that are directed at her. What was she thinking? That Draco might have changed and could actually be pleasant from now on? However Draco doesn't spare a glance at her, keeping his eyes on Ron. She prepares to tell Ron that it's all right, there's no need to get riled up, but instead, she hears soft words in her ear.

"Don't listen to him, 'Mione, he's been hanging around pasty faced, noseless beings too long to know what's good."

Ron leans in suddenly and gives her a peck at her lips and she stiffens. He throws a smirk at Draco before sauntering off and before Hermione can reprimand him. She's frozen in place, feeling all her expectations shattered and wondering what just happened. Her eyes turn to Draco as if asking for an explanation, but she knows she won't get it. She feels the need to explain that they're not together but it's Malfoy and he probably doesn't give two shits. Draco sneers at her before turning towards the fridge, muttering, 'stupid cold ice box.'

–

She sees him in the darkened hallway as she's heading back to her room. She's keen on ignoring him but her ears prick up when she hears him talk. It's soft and she doesn't know if it is what he said at all.

"He's in love with you."

"What?" she asks, alarmed.

Draco stops, a door halfway opened at his hand before she realises that it's the room next to hers. The room Neville had been staying in.

"What?" he asks back, as if simply questioning what he's doing wrong.

She shakes her head, thinking it's past her usual bedtime already, though it's barely 8pm, but she's too tired to question him, to confront him. Draco's about to step inside the room when she thinks to ask about Neville.

"Where's Neville?"

"He went to a different safe-house."

"What?" she asks, wondering when this happened, and how it escaped her notice. (She knows how. She won't admit how.) "Why?"

Draco stiffens, probably not used to her onslaught of questions. "Something about that Loony girl moving too."

"Luna moved as well?"

Draco simply stares, his eyes too bright and too intense in the darkness.

"All right, all right," she says absently, as if trying to piece the information in her head together. The click of a door closing sounds and she breathes shallowly, heading back to her own room.

–

Harry goes on more missions. She's no longer invited to meetings, having declined the first few ones following the one she went on a while ago. Harry had nodded understandingly. But now she feels useless, left out, as she no longer knows when meetings are, what they are about, when they even go on missions. Sometimes she sees them come back while she's having a cup of tea, usually with forlorn looks, sometimes with blood smeared on their clothes, hands, face. Hermione doesn't have the guts to ask who it is this time. Instead, they all go to their respective rooms quietly, and her cup of tea goes untouched, cooling down. She always pours it down the drain after.

–

She wants her mom. Her mom who hugged her tight when Hermione told her about the bully, Draco, at school. Her mom who supplied her with tissues after the mess with Ron. Her mom who should be here with her daughter consoling her, instead of being blissfully unaware somewhere in the eternal sun realm of Australia. Hermione sees Mrs Weasley with Ginny, and before they can see her, she bolts it back to her own room, foregoing dinner again. She can't help but feel a smidgeon of jealousy.

But no sooner is she in her room, does she hear a knock. She has half a mind to tell whoever it is to go away, but stays quiet in hopes that they think she is sleeping. However, the door opens and feeling her heart begin racing, Hermione closes her eyes tight, whilst lying as still as she can on the bed. But when she hears her name being called in his familiar reassuring voice, her eyes flicker open, and there's Harry, beautiful beautiful Harry.

"Harry," she whispers, a croak in her throat.

Hermione sits up and shuffles to give him room to sit next to her. They sit in silence for a while as she leans her head against his shoulder and he rubs her back soothingly.

"I know," he whispers. "I know."

"When does it end, Harry?"

"Soon. I promise."

If he feels his shirt dampening, he doesn't acknowledge it. Hermione sniffles, lifting her head to see Harry's outline lit by the dim hallway light seeping in through the crack in the door. She sees his glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, still as round and ugly as ever in the dark. Hermione feels the need to tell him so, and when he chuckles, Hermione feels like for once, just in this moment, she will believe him.

–

When she goes in for her midnight meal, he's there staring at the 'stupid heating food box'. He's pushing buttons and pulling handles and Hermione almost ignores him completely, deciding to let him figure it all out. She doesn't catch it in time when a snicker releases. That's when she senses him glaring at her, and so she sighs and shows him how to work the muggle item.

"You have to push here and then pull the handle. Then you put in how long you want to heat it up for, and press start."

"That's the most complicated thing in all of existence."

Hermione snorts because microwaves are the closest and easiest things to life-savers in the muggle world.

"You're stronger than that."

Her blood runs cold. He's not talking to her, is he? But unless he's talking to his bowl of food, she doesn't know who he is talking to, or even referring to. She wants to ask him, to finally tell him to stop saying these bizarre one-liners to her, when she notices what he's just about to do.

"Wait!" she cries as Draco is about to put his bowl inside the microwave. "You can't put metal spoons or anything metal in it."

He scowls. "How come?"

"Because the heat and metal conducts electrical currents and–"

"It was a rhetorical question, Granger. Surely you don't think I would care to know."

"Well, if you're going to use it, then you might as well know–"

"That was rhetorical too! And it wasn't even a proper question."

Hermione feels her blood rising. "Maybe if you stop saying things that would warrant an answer, you won't get one back!" She feels half smug that she has finally managed to speak a whole sentence without him interrupting.

"Maybe I should just stop saying things to you altogether, seeing as you feel the need to reply to everything I say, even my statements."

"Then maybe you should," she huffs out, having enough of it all. She very nearly throws her hands up in the air in defeat, but instead just stomps out.

"But then they'll be no one else I can talk to with at least half a brain." Hermione hears scoffed out as she leaves, but once she registers that he's just given her half a compliment, she's already out of the room. She didn't even get to reprimand him about his one-liners either. And it is another whole minute later that she realises it feels like she's back at her Hogwarts years, quarrelling about the most insignificant of things with him. And maybe, she can get used to it.

–

His last weird sentence rings in her mind and she wants to forget it, disregard it as white noise. Because admitting anything Draco says as truth almost makes her physically want to spew. She knows. She knows how strong she is. The girl who got all Outstanding marks, except for Defence against the Dark Arts (which she is still disappointed about), the girl named the brightest witch of her age, the girl who neglected to attend seventh year in order to help Harry. She knows.

So it is with her Gryffindor courage does she open her drawer once again to see her wand, still as beautiful as ever, lying innocuously inside. She picks it up and decides she is ready. The magical buzz tingles her bones, and she feels it coursing through her blood, like it is her blood. But it's something otherworldly, inexplicable,

They train, her and Harry, and the first few days ends with frustrated sobs as Hermione realises her techniques have all gone down the drain. But Harry all but forces her to pick up her wand again with each failed attempt, and she does. It's almost too soon when she can recall everything she's learned, plus new tips that Harry has taught her. One day, when Harry smiles, as broad as the earth, she realises that there is only so much that he can teach her. It's all on her now.

–

"Stop," she says as he enters the kitchen, dreading another weird encounter with him.

"What?" he asks with a tinge of annoyance.

"Why do you keep saying–" (The truth, the truth. 'It's not the truth!') "–things that..." she trails off, unable to name the weird things he keeps saying.

He gives her a look as if she belongs at St Mungos.

"You know, you're all civil one minute, and then the next, you're all hostile, and then you say these absolutely bizarre things that aren't true, they aren't true–"

"As usual, I have no idea what you are honestly yapping about."

Her face flushes as she realises this isn't at all how she wanted this conversation to go down. At his patronising look, now she looks like she is the one who is spouting bizarre shit left and right. She had thought up the questions in her head moments before, rehearsing them until she got it all down pat. But the moment he stepped into view, all words seemed to fly out of her brain, and she was left as a blubbering mess.

He approaches her, pouring a cup of tea and she watches him. (No sugar, milk only. How does she know his tea preference already?) Her eyebrows crinkle at his words because surely he does know what she's talking about. He's probably just messing with her, thinking her too insignificant to listen to, to respond to. He looks at her, his light eyes too fucking pretty for such an arrogant man. He doesn't deserve them. Especially not his thick eyelashes that curl up of their own accord. Hermione thinks to how she has to curl hers religiously to get them like his, and in the end, it isn't worth the effort.

"It's rude to stare," he drawls, and Hermione snorts because he surely does it more than her. She thinks it would be impossible to escape a look from him, even through thick vines of overgrowth in the middle of a forest, maybe. He's the champion of staring.

"I'm not," she answers indignantly, knowing full well she is.

His face suddenly seems too close as she cranes up to look at him, realising just how close he actually is. Realising just how tall he is. Taller than Harry, maybe the same height as Ron. She feels his breath as he becomes inexplicably closer and all warning signs in her mind are screaming for her to move. But she doesn't, watching as his eyes lower. Hermione resists the urge to lick her lips, knowing that they are probably dry and cracked. Everything around them becomes hazy and all she sees is Draco. Draco and his eyes that are too good for him. Draco and his angled cheekbones in just the right places. Draco and his lips.

They press against hers softly, then harder, and she feels a hint of his tongue. She melts, part of her mind screaming at her to abort mission! Abort mission! But the other part assists her to lean in as Draco pulls back. She doesn't want him to go.

"What–" she begins.

"The bloody hell is this!?" his too loud voice has her cringing.

Ron stands at the door and Harry pushes him to get in.

"Is this why– I don't believe this!" Ron bellows and Hermione stiffens.

"Please, Ron, this–" (isn't what it looks like?)

"How could you! With him!"

"Ron, come on," Harry tries to reassure him but Ron shakes his hand off of him.

That is when Hermione notices the silver chain around his neck. She walks to him, and grabs the chain, trying to unhook it. "Ron, please, the locket," she sobs.

"At first I thought– with Harry. Always Harry! Do you think I haven't noticed? You and Harry always whispering behind my back. It's never me, is it? Never me. And now with him! Death eater scum!"

"What did you say–" Draco begins but Hermione intercepts.

"Ron, please take it off, you wouldn't be saying all of this if you hadn't been wearing it all day–"

Ron pushes aside Hermione's shaking fingers and with one movement, unhooks the chain and locket from his neck before slinging it on the ground. It makes a loud discordant noise with the floor and Hermione winces. Harry swiftly picks it up to pocket it.

"I'm going, I can't– Harry?" Ron asks, his blue eyes burning with a fire.

"Come on, mate."

And with a last withering glare, Ron disapparates in front of her. She lets out a sob and a harsh gasp before turning to Harry. Please. Please, she wants to say.

"I'm sorry, 'Mione," he whispers sadly, before disapparating himself.

A/N: The characters personalities are a mess. Draco and Hermione aren't supposed to be so open towards each other so fast but I don't know what to do without throwing in mindless fillers. Apart from that, I was honestly aiming to write a little bit each day, but instead, what I do is write half a chapter one day, wait a week, then finish it. (And by that time, I've forgotten everything I've written, so any discrepancies is due to that.) But anyway, I hope you enjoy. Comments make my heart spin.