Commonality

Draco watched her for weeks; studying more with Nott, and paying more attention to her during classes and meals. She was never really there. For him it was like watching her move around every day, unaware of the passage of time, wearing a mask. She spoke up less in class, but studied just as hard, but then again, he'd caught glimpses of her staring at her hands in the library, like something about them was slightly amazed and mostly disgusted by them. She still limped a little, but it was less noticeable than her habit of constantly tugging her sleeves down. He remembered her old mannerism of spell casting in class, of shaking her sleeves down to reveal her porcelain wrists and a bit of forearm, and the tensing of muscle and veins as she flourished her wand, along with the self-assured smirk that always graced her face as she did it. Now she would look at her arms, tug her sleeves down until they touched her thumbs, and only flourished her wand as much as the spell required, her impertinent and cocky style was gone. He had decided in the last few weeks of observing this that he hated it.

He had continued writing back and forth with his mother, mostly asking her advice on how to approach Hermione, though her name was never mentioned, and trying to build up his courage to do it. He could only imagine it ending worse because he'd been so terrible to her for years, that she would immediately reject him. It would probably end in her making a scene that would get him in trouble. It was getting to him. His frustration and curiosity about her was starting to not only irritate, but dislodge him a bit from his natural routine. He continued to watch her, and every time she caught him at it, he would look away, or sneer, but without the harsh hatred of before. He was walking a fine line between trying to care, without caring, and it was maddening. He'd begun having dreams about her, as she had once been. In the dream, she was running across the grounds from the Quidditch pitch, her hair flowing behind her in the sun and the wind. Then he would watch her face change, and realized she was running towards him in fear, running from something, and he stood unmovable as a black cloaked figure threw her to the ground in front of him. He kept waking up in a cold sweat at the instant that she cried out, her robes ripping from her shoulders. His appearance was beginning to suffer for it, a fine purple haze developing below his eyes, and he too found himself casting a cloaking spell on his face in the morning. He'd always had trouble sleeping, and this girl, worrying about her, was definitely not helping. He was sitting in the Head's Common Room with Nott, when Theodore's voice broke him from his reverie.

"Draco, mate?" Draco blinked hard and looked at his friend, trying to register if he was being spoken to. Nott shook his head and chuckled a little as he spoke again,

"Draco, you need a drink. Whatever has been bothering you is going to your head. It's a Friday; shall we start the weekend off right?" He pulled out a bottle of Firewhisky from a cabinet in the corner and cast a refilling spell on it, while setting two glasses on the table. Draco smirked, This is what I need, to relax.

Draco lost track of time, but when he came to, he found himself on the Head's bathroom floor, his face pressed into the cold marble floor, and one arm reaching towards the toilet. He didn't need any help figuring out that he'd probably been sick. He sat up slowly, the room spinning slightly, and was suddenly stopped by what he saw:

It was Hermione in the huge tub.

She was sitting with back facing him, pulling her wet hair off her shoulders to wash it. He was transfixed, watching the back of her neck and the delicacy of the tiny wet curls at her nape. It only took a moment for him to take in the whole picture, and then he immediately noticed what was amiss: Her arms. The porcelain perfect skin that he'd once secretly admired from across classrooms was marred, bright red, raised lines crisscrossing her wrists and inner forearms, and the occasional word carved into it. One was still faintly trickling blood down her wet arm: Mudblood. When she pulled her hair away from her face he could see that she had pierced her ears, he could see several small silver rings through her cartilage, and most of them fresh because they were swollen and red. He lifted himself off the floor silently, and approached slowly, waiting for her to dunk under the water and rinse her hair. When she sat up again, she was up to her shoulders in the water, her head leaning back onto the same cold marble floor, and he could see her face had healed in the last month now, her cloaking charm wasn't on. He silently removed his own; he knew he looked like he'd been in a fight with the dark purple circles under his eyes and the disarray of his clothes since he'd passed out on the floor. His mouth was dry, but he licked his lips and tried his best, hating the little crack in his whisper when he finally spoke:

"Granger, don't freak out--" But it was too late, she had turned to face him and was visibly shaking in the water and trying to hide in the bubbles. He raised his open hands, in surrender, and tried again, speaking a little louder and slower,

"Granger, I'm not trying to hurt you, ok?! I just want to talk to you." She shot him a suspicious glare and spoke with a bitterness he'd never heard from her before. He'd heard it in his own voice before, it was hard, cold, and it bit hard.

"Then what the fuck are you doing in my bathroom while I'm naked in the bath?!"

"I had passed out on the floor in here, Nott and I got drunk, and I must have gotten sick, ok?" She smirked. He knew it put him more on her level that he had something to be embarrassed about. She kept her arms under the water and curtly asked him to leave the room so she could get dressed if all he really wanted was to talk. She told him to wait in the Common Room; that Theodore was in his room passed out. He took one last look as he walked out of the door, of her back as she rose out of the water. He swore he could feel his heart rate increase and a lump develop quickly in his throat, but he didn't know what brought it on. He instead sat on his favorite long black velvet couch in the Common Room and tried to calm himself down, trying to map out what to say to her so as not to scare her, or worse, piss her off. He remembered the punch in second year vividly, and was not looking forward to explaining a broken nose to Poppy, again.

When she came out, her hair was brushed over her shoulders so that it was straight and dangling just above her hips; dressed in a Muggle hoodie sweater and exceedingly baggy sweatpants, carrying an enormous pair of scissors loosely in her left hand. She sat directly across from him on the floor and stared at him, her pupils a little dilated, she was high on something Blaise had given her. He could see it. She looked away for a moment and distractedly pulled a chunk of hair into her face as she spoke to him,

"So what do you want to talk about?" He faltered a little, having forgotten how direct she could be sometimes and knowing that it was the drugs giving her the courage to talk like this again, otherwise she'd been meek lately.

"You." She looked back up at him through her hair again, an eyebrow elevated,

"What about me?" He paused, and looked down at his feet as he spoke, afraid to look her in the face as he said this,

"I know what happened to you. I want to help." When he looked back up, he saw her huddling her knees to her chest, not looking at him, but off into the distance, and shivering a little. He got off the couch and lowered himself to talk to her, careful not to touch her or scare her,

"I want to help, I'm not going to tell anyone, I just want to make sure you're…ok." She looked at him hard, direct eye contact, something she'd been avoiding with everyone since it happened, and she stared into his eyes, as if they would somehow tell her whether or not he was sincere. Apparently she thought he was, because she pressed the scissors into his hand, and turned her back to him suddenly, then looked back and gestured to a spot on her shoulder,

"Cut it. Here." He sat open mouthed for a second, staring at her, her hair, and the large scissors in his hand, and his voice had slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it,

"But I like your hair, why cut it?" She turned again, and stared at him; this time more amazed, and then turned around again. She was looking at the floor when she spoke quietly,

"Because he pulled me by it, and I don't want it anymore."

"Oh," he paused again, staring at the scissors, his mother's message ringing in his ears, do anything, and then tapped her lightly on the shoulder

"So where am I cutting this again?"

She turned up, and smirked despite her cheeks being wet with tears, and indicated a spot a few inches below her shoulders. He cut the first chunk right where he finger was, and then smoothed down her wet hair so that he could cut a straight line across. The sound of cutting hair was interesting to him, a soft metallic sound and the texture of her hair in his hand was something like wet, squishy silk. He watched as the cut off hair dried on the floor into tiny circles and spirals curls, the ten or so inches he'd cut off covering the floor, and what was left was curling tightly around her face. Again those little delicate curls on the nape of her neck were exposed, and he found himself staring at them. She broke his reverie when she turned around suddenly and looked at him, not quite in the eye, but almost,

"Why do you look like you haven't been sleeping?"

"Because I haven't been."

"Why not?"

"Nightmares."

"Me too."

They sat in silence for a little while, both thinking separately about the things they had in common, and at midnight she showed him out and headed to bed. He walked silently through the corridors back to his own House Common Room, and finally fell onto his bed, asleep as soon as he hit the comforter. And they both had strange dreams that night: Hermione dreaming of the sincerity she had seen in his eyes and Draco dreaming about the quiet tone of her voice and the curls on the back of her neck. The next day, when the school was abuzz with gossip about her haircut, and the Patil twins were speculating the reasons for such a drastic change in her appearance, they shared a little smirk across Snape's Potions classroom, they both knew something that no one else did, and they were relishing in it.

Both were different people in different Houses, both thinking the same thing:

Secrets can be fun.