Next chapter! Hope you all enjoy it, and special thanks to kvance for the review :) always appreciate any feedback you guys can give me!
Draco had gone to great pains to ensure that Hermione never found the notes.
Halloween had come and gone, marked by the usual pumpkin-based parties that Draco did his best to avoid. This year had been no different. He'd hidden up in his dormitory, the curtains around his bed closed, and ate five Pumpkin Pasties while he read through his Transfiguration notes. Now, it was November, and a cold wind was rattling the glass in every window.
So far, he had received four notes.
Each one warned him to stay away from Hermione Granger. They were never handwritten; each one was made up of letters cut out from the Daily Prophet. Each had a curse attached to it. One had burned his fingertips like acid when he touched it and another had leapt up off his pillow and tried to strangle him. He hadn't opened the other two; he'd thrown them straight onto the fire in the boys' dormitory.
They had both exploded.
He had never told Hermione about them. In truth, they didn't really bother him much; he knew she would be far more disturbed than he was. The Malfoys had always had enemies, only now there were more of them – such things were to be expected. His father had always said that a wizard was never truly great unless he'd made a few enemies…
Hermione, he knew, would never see it like that.
He sat down at their library table, tucked away in the corner, and waited for her to arrive. His marks had shot up since she'd started tutoring him, but he was still very shaky and hadn't covered all the material from sixth year. There was no question of stopping these sessions, not when he had so much more to learn, and so he got out his books and stacked them up in a defensive wall – just the way Hermione liked it – and waited for her to arrive.
She skidded into the library, hair flying, and collapsed in the chair next to him.
"Sorry I'm late," she gasped, her face red from running, "I got cornered by the Gobstones Team. Someone's talked them into setting up an international league and they want me to set it up for them, I've been avoiding them for weeks! Shall we get started?"
He smiled, careful not to look too closely into her bright, brown eyes, and pulled out a few sheets of parchment, a quill and an inkpot from his bag.
An envelope fell onto the desk.
It was not addressed to him but Draco recognised it instantly. The envelopes were always the same: heavy, white parchment with a black band running around the flap. They reminded Draco of the ones his mother had used to send out the invitations to Grandpa Abraxas's funeral.
Hermione bit her lip, her eyes raking over the black band on the envelope.
"Hadn't you better open that, Draco?" she said, her voice very quiet, "it…it looks important…"
"It's nothing," he said, eyeing the envelope warily. It didn't seem cursed, although he knew they always were. Perhaps something was tucked inside it…
"Look, we don't have to have a session tonight," Hermione whispered. She reached out and squeezed Draco's hand and electricity ran right up his arm. He tugged it out of her grasp and she sat back in her chair as though she was ashamed of herself.
"I told you, it's nothing!" he hissed, and grabbed the envelope.
It burst into flames.
He leapt back at once, flames licking up the sleeve of his robes, and dropped the envelope. The burning envelope landed on a pile of parchment which caught fire at once. Smoke billowed up into the air, Madam Pince hurtled towards their table and Hermione screamed "Aguamenti!"
A jet of water streamed out of the end of her wand and quenched the flames in an instant. Madam Pince shrieked in fury, snatching up every last library book off their table as the envelope smouldered, still hissing and spitting steam. The last pieces of parchment crumbled away, and only the message was left behind.
STAY AWAY FROM HERMIONE GRANGER
Hermione stared at him.
Draco snatched up the damp letter and pushed it onto his sleeve, putting out the last smoking shreds of his school robes. He didn't look at her. Everyone in the library was staring at them.
"I'd better get up to the hospital wing," he muttered, pushing past her. He'd barely made it two steps down the corridor before she was running after him, her books and bag forgotten.
"What was that?" she demanded.
"Out of the way, Granger!" he snarled, pushing past her with his good hand.
"Who sent you that letter?"
"It's none of your –"
"Is it the only one? Are there more?"
"Just drop it, Granger! It's nothing!"
"It is not nothing!" she hissed. She darted in front of him, spreading her arms wide and blocking his path. "Your hand got set on fire, you've been beaten up more than once – that's not nothing!"
"Get out of the way, Granger!"
She took a step towards him, glaring right into his grey eyes. She was very close, far too close – close enough to kiss her, if that was what he wanted…
"Draco," she said, "you don't have to put up with this. Someone's got it in for you and they're not afraid to hurt you. What you did…it was bad, I'm not denying that, but you don't deserve to be persecuted when you're trying to make things better."
He said nothing.
When she spoke, Hermione's voice was soft, and so quiet that he had to lean in to hear it.
"You're a good person, Draco. You've done some bad things, but you aren't rotten to the core. I've seen people like that, and you aren't one of them. Dumbledore believed you were a good person, and so do I."
He froze.
She was staring at him, her brown eyes wide and serious and something was swelling in his chest like a huge balloon.
"Dumbledore said that?"
She nodded.
Draco had nothing to say. He stood in the middle of the corridor, too shocked to do anything more than blink. Dumbledore had believed in him, even after everything he'd done…
He made no complaints as Hermione threaded her arm through his and steered him up towards the hospital wing.