New chapter! I spoil you, really :P special thanks to harrypottergeekychick16, JessicaRavenGlade, Ariel and bluebook1496 for your reviews - as always, I love hearing your feedback :) hope you enjoy the latest instalment!
By the time Draco had pulled his trunk onto the Hogwarts Express, his mind was made up. He would not see Hermione Granger again.
He was sure he'd be able to get along without her now. She'd left him a reading list, and he already had the notes he'd made from their previous sessions. His marks were already picking up; he was sure he'd be able to carry on without her help.
By the time his trunk was being carried up to Malfoy Manor, he was certain of it.
It would be better for both of them if he did not see Hermione Granger again.
Draco slipped out of his mother's embrace and up to his bedroom. It was exactly as he had left it: an immaculate four poster bed with soft cream sheets, green silk curtains on the wall and elegant furniture made of dark wood. Mother had never let him put up posters; she said they damaged the walls. It was a bare, sparse room, and all that he really liked about it was the view of the maze. From this height, he could see the rose garden at the centre, and the lake off in the distance.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, staring into his hands.
He was no fool.
He knew he was becoming far too attached to that Hermione Granger. It'd been sneaking up on him for a while now, but he couldn't ignore it any more. When he saw her he laughed, he smiled, and the weight he'd been carrying on his shoulders began to slip away and soon she was everywhere. In his thoughts, in his dreams, even hidden in the notes that would help him pass his NEWTs.
She was haunting him.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
He sighed, and fell back on his silk sheets.
That wasn't strictly true. If he was a Gryffindor – a great, hulking troll of a Gryffindor like Charlie Jackson – he'd ignore everything that was holding him back and pester her until this little crush went away, but he was a Slytherin, and there was far too much to ignore. She had a boyfriend, for one thing. She was adored by the entire wizarding world and he was despised by it. She had job offers flooding in on all sides, while he could even find a tutor desperate enough to teach him. She had part of the reward for defeating the Dark Lord and his followers and – if the rumours were true – a whole folder full of sponsorship deals, while money was leaking out of Malfoy Manor like water from a sinking ship.
And then there was his father, who despite his public repentance would never be able to look him in the face if he brought a girl like Hermione home for dinner. He'd tried imagining that disaster before and was unable to picture it without at least two people crying.
And what if – his stomach gave a little flip at the thought – she actually did want to take up with him? What could he offer her then? She'd have to turn her back on everything and everyone for someone with no money, no job prospects and a family who would only despise her. What woman in her right mind would want to live like that?
He sighed again.
The best thing to do, he thought, would be to avoid her and wait for it to go away. It was just a little crush, and like all his other crushes, it would pass.
His father drank through Christmas.
His mother smiled through it, but it was a strained, desperate smile, as though she was barely two burnt dinners away from breaking something.
Draco just sat in his room and waited for it to be over.
Draco saw very little of his father that holiday. He'd locked himself away in his study, and although Draco knocked on his door more than once he very rarely answered it. From behind the ebony door, he could the chink of a bottle on glass and, occasionally, his father's muffled swearing. When Lucius Malfoy answered the door his hair and clothes had clearly just been tugged back into place, and there were large dark circles under his eyes. He very rarely looked at his son, just ruffled his hair in a slightly tipsy way and took whatever Draco had brought him – the Daily Prophet, or a plate of sandwiches – back into his study.
One cold January morning, Draco was standing outside his father's study, newspaper tucked under his arm, when he heard his father shouting.
"No!" he yelled, and from behind the locked door there came the sound of breaking glass, "I won't hear a word of it! After all he's been through I just – no, you stay away from my son!"
Draco's heart began to pound and he flattened his ear up against the study door. Someone else was in there. Someone with a low, rumbling voice that was so deep the words barely made it through the wood.
But he did not have to strain his ears to hear his father.
"No!" Lucius Malfoy cried, "get out! Get OUT!"
Draco flattened himself against the wall, ready for the door to spring open at any second. But nothing happened. Instead, he heard the sounds of his father's armchair being dragged across the floor and a long stream of swear words Draco never thought his father knew.
He crept away from the door, paper still tucked under his arm. He'd give it to him later, once he had calmed down a little. Draco climbed the stairs to his room and sat on the end of his bed, thinking hard.
Someone had been in his father's study. He doubted it was his mother; he could hear her calling up the stairs to her husband, and since that wretched Dobby had got away there was no other being in the household. It was a person, then, and – as it was impossible to Apparate into Malfoy Manor – it was probably someone using the Floo.
But who?
Draco shook his head and unfolded the paper. His father's business was his own, and he knew that no matter how many bottles of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey his father consumed, he would never let anyone hurt his son.
He glanced down at the headline, and his eyes widened.
HERMIONE GRANGER AND RONALD WEASLEY IN SHOCK WINTER SPLIT